The new Sony UHP-H1 plays everything - Blu-ray, SACD, CD, even DVD-Audio

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by back2vinyl, May 20, 2016.

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  1. Blair G.

    Blair G. Senior Member

    Location:
    Delta, BC, Canada
    $198 at B&H Photo

    Edit: Upon further digging that looks like a pretty common price
     
  2. DLD

    DLD Senior Member

    Location:
    Dallas, Tx
    That's what I paid at Amazon last week/
     
  3. back2vinyl

    back2vinyl Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    London, UK
    Sorry, it was late and I was talking nonsense. What I meant to say is:

    The HDMI output of the UHP-H1 needs to carry out a handshake with the HDMI input of the de-embedder, otherwise it does not know what sample rate or bit depth to send. If the de-embedder is not equipped to offer this handshake, the UHP-H1 may assume the worst and default to 44.1 kHz.

    It's excellent news that you're not getting this problem. Can you say what de-embedder you're using? It may help other people, if you've found a good one.
     
  4. grx8

    grx8 Senior Member

    Location:
    Santiago, Chile
    [​IMG]
     
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  5. acdc7369

    acdc7369 Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    The reason I stayed away from this product is because everything I've bought from SONY in the past has stopped working way sooner than it should. Their products are cheaply made junk
     
  6. Bill Mac

    Bill Mac Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Unfortunately I've had the same experience with Sony disc players. But at $200 for a universal player it's an excellent deal.
     
  7. John1026

    John1026 Member

    Location:
    Valencia
    Can anyone comment on how good the analog outputs sound when playing CDs or SACDs? Thanks.
     
  8. Brother_Rael

    Brother_Rael Senior Member

    My old BDP-S370 six years old and still going strong.
     
    mdm08033 and DrZhivago like this.
  9. High Fidelity

    High Fidelity Well-Known Member

    Location:
    London
    Buy the Sony UBP-X800
     
  10. High Fidelity

    High Fidelity Well-Known Member

    Location:
    London
    My Sony combo STR-DA5400ES AVR & DA5400ES player, 8 years old still excellent so is my Sony BDP-1000ES BD player
     
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  11. Classicrock

    Classicrock Senior Member

    Location:
    South West, UK.
    Pretty much impossible to get external DAC with HDMI which makes internal DACs only way of playing SACD. Therefore useless without analogue outputs.
     
  12. randy9700

    randy9700 Indian MC Rider!

    The only issue is that the UBP-X800 has no analog or optical output....
     
  13. raq0915

    raq0915 Forum Resident

    Location:
    \New Jersey
    Id probably go with that instead. I need a UHD Bluray player anyway
     
  14. Mike6565

    Mike6565 Hyperactive!

    Location:
    Long island, ny
    I bough the UHP-H1 for $198 at Amazon last week, this was the comfortable price point for me at this time, I don't need a 4K at this time, I really wanted a simple convenient player for my DVD, Blu-Ray and CD collection as well as the bluetooth, spotify, pandora and Netflix/Amazon video streaming options. I've only tried it for a few days, but so far so good. I bough the 4 year warranty on this for $25, I hope to get 5+ years and when I am ready to change my TV, I might consider another player, but this fits all my needs right now at my price point.
     
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  15. TVC15

    TVC15 Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Jersey
    So let's then spin those CD's in an error-prone format for 'best possible quality'. Makes total sense.
     
  16. Tartifless

    Tartifless Forum Resident

    Location:
    France
    Ligawo décodeur HDMI ® - sépare le signal audio de la prise HDMI en 2.1 / 5.1 Toslink, SPDIF coaxial prise:Amazon.fr:Image & Son Micro & Photo

    Of course, i use the ligawo of the link posted before the quote.
     
  17. ti-triodes

    ti-triodes Senior Member

    Location:
    Paz Chin-in
  18. BMWCCA

    BMWCCA Forum Resident

    Location:
    Central Virginia
    My main system uses a simple Sony 5-disc DVD player through an Emotiva DAC as its main source. I can't tell you how old this unit is but it has soldiered on without a glitch for well over a decade. Since I'm using its coax output, it's really just a transport. A while back I purchased a high-end Denon universal player in hopes of improving my CD source. Several days of A—B comparison with the Sony proved I couldn't tell the difference and, upon further investigation, I found the Denon and the Sony actually used the same DAC circuit. Luckily the Denon came from Crutchfield so back it went and my money was spent on the stand-alone DAC.

    I'd love to try one of these Sony units but I want to know how it interfaces with an iPod. Can it handle USB direct from an iPod or iPhone? Is there no one here who has both? I realize Sony and Apple aren't the best of buddies when it comes to cooperation on formats, but my TEAC CD plays so well with my iPod Classic that I've been a bit spoiled.
     
  19. scobb

    scobb Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    I find that comment absolute bizarre given that my own experience is exactly the opposite. I have 1000's of CD's and have only had a handful of errors (bad discs) where as in the 30 or 40 downloads I've done from i-tunes I had a similar number of errors (the Bowie 80's 12" downloads were riddled with them), steaming requires a good, consistent internet connection (+ in my experience there can be dropouts when I'm doing something else on the PC) and records have many pops/clicks etc.

    I'm going to bite! What do you mean?
     
  20. Bill Mac

    Bill Mac Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    I've got quite a large collection of CDs, SACDs, DVD-As and Blu-ray Audio discs. I can't recall any of them being "error-prone". The only playback issues I've had are from a few discs that are older and were not well cared for.
     
    scobb likes this.
  21. Blair G.

    Blair G. Senior Member

    Location:
    Delta, BC, Canada
    The Bryston BDA-3 has HDMI inputs, even for DSD, but costs $3500.
    I read somewhere that Essence will release a DAC with the same capability in the future
     
  22. patient_ot

    patient_ot Senior Member

    Location:
    USA
    Has anyone compared Redbook playback on this unit to a regular CD player like the Onkyo C-7030? Is the drive/transport on the Sony noisy and flimsy?
     
  23. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Yeah, CD is actually incredibly reliable - it's why they were able to deliver software on CD ROM. One error out of millions of bits and that wouldn't work - the software would be trashed.

    Software is actually waaaaay less forgiving than audio, where the occasional bum bit is inaudible.
     
  24. randy9700

    randy9700 Indian MC Rider!

    Well, I received my UHP-H1 yesterday from Amazon and after putting it through a battery of tests it is a mixed bag so far. I will try to give the good and the bad so far and will continue to update in this thread as I get more time with the unit.

    Let's start with the good:

    1. It plays DSF, FLAC and ALAC thru the USB input on the front of the unit. The files show up once you select the USB symbol from the home page. You must then select 'Music' and then move to the right to the folders where your music files are at. You will 'drill down' as needed depending on how you created the folder system on your PC or Mac. DSF was the important one for me. I wanted to be able to use this unit in my garage system over the summer and play files from a stick or Ipod...so far so good.
    2. It recognizes and plays from both my Ipod Video Gen 5.5 and Ipod Classic Gen 7. It will not recognize my earlier Ipods which is nothing unusual since my other equipment will not recognize the older Apple devices either. The ability to play from an Ipod was something I was really hoping for as well and Sony states that it will do that. More on this in the 'not so good'.
    3. It plays DVD-Audio. More on DVD-A below,
    4. It plays SACD's as we would fully expect from a Sony product.
    5. It has a good build quality and feels substantial. The remote is compact and like all Sony remotes works with other Sony devices. It has a shortcut button for Netflix. It is not 'backlit'.
    6. It has a dedicated HDMI output for 'Audio' which we are directed to use for the best sound quality. As discussed in the thread it has Coaxial, Optical, Analog and HDMI outputs and a LAN jack. I connected with my wireless internet with little effort and checked my firmware for an update. It was up to date out of the package which may mean that Sony has 'moved on' and there will likely be very few updates from this point on...
    7. It HAS a display on the front which you can control the brightness 3 ways; off, dim and bright. It also goes off in the pure audio mode which also shuts off the video to the monitor/TV. Many low budget players have NO display at all so this is a plus for me.
    Now for the not so good:

    1. It cannot play files gaplessly which is fine 90% of the time but quite annoying for albums and music meant to be played without pauses between tracks. This is annoying enough that I would never use this device for those titles. It would be great if Sony had a future firmware to solve this issue but that is highly unlikely at this point.
    2. Although it will play my Ipod 5.5 and 7 devices it does so without any organization to the music on the device. What I mean is that you get a screen where you must select 'Ipod control' and then from the next menu select 'Music'. This brings you to a page with lots of folders named F00, F01, F02 etc. Obviously I have no clue what is in F00 so I selected it and then it shows song titles as 4 character names such as 'HWUG', AKUT, ERZP etc. The name it shows has absolutely nothing to do with the title of the track it contains. What is worse is that each of the folders does not have an album in it but a random selection of songs so it isnt as if you can select a folder, identify the artist and album and play it through or scroll to song 5 which you know is that you want because it will go from Def Leppard to Frank Sinatra to Miles Davis in that folder. So, bottom line is that all of your music is there you just have no way to find it and unless this gets addressed with a firmware update I will not be using this unit for Ipod play. I did not try my Iphone 6S or SE but I will give that a whirl tonight although I do not expect anything different.
    3. It will NOT play DVD-A that I have authored using Cirlinca. I have created a number of DVD-A's from my Hi-Res. downloads (Pono, HDTracks, ProStudio Masters etc.) and it shows it as an unknown disc type! Frankly, had I known this I would not have bought this unit as all. This is a big issue for me. So much so that I am debating on returning the unit. I currently have both an Oppo 93 and 103 so I have this covered but I was hoping to be able to use this unit for this type of playback in my garage system. Sigh....
    4. As you would expect from any unit newer than 2012, it does not play SACD-r nor did I expect it to...
    5. The jury is still out on BD-R and BD-RE playback but it does not look promising. PM me if you want further details on what I have found so far. I will try to make my own BD-A from my Hi-Res. files to see if that works and would somewhat solve the lack of homemade DVD-A playback. I did not try CD-R or CD-RW but I have no reason to believe they will not play. It did play a DVD+R just fine.
    Again, had I known at the time I ordered what it's limitations were I would not have made the purchase. That said, the UBP-X800 is not an option for me either as the lack of analog and optical outputs is a non-starter for that unit. (This process has given me further reason to appreciate my Oppo's and what they can do.)

    I hope this information helps those folks who are on the fence about buying this unit.
     
    Last edited: Mar 22, 2017
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  25. SamS

    SamS Forum Legend

    Location:
    Texas
    Very good review @randy9700 !

    Looks like no big surprises. Except lack of BD-R/RE support, which is a bit odd. As you're coming to find out... it can be very hard to make a universal player. Throw those new 4K UHDs into the mix, and you've about doubled your complexity!
     
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