OPPO BDP-103 and BDP-105 Networking Universal 3D Blu-ray Players (part2)

I agree that zero universal disc players support streaming audio. BUT and it is one big but, this particular universal disc player does purport to support streaming audio as opposed to a dedicated universal disc player which is limited to playing discs and does not support streaming audio. The OPPO is designed to play discs AND to stream audio, albeit in a flawed fashion. So your point is not well-taken. Perhaps you are satisfied with the poor implementation of streaming via the new iterations of OPPO, but many are not.

I agree that maybe the architecture of the next player will support it, but that is no excuse for the current implementation not supporting it.

In addition, your example of gapless FLAC and the original iPad is inappropriate because the technology for gapless playback DOES exist but OPPO obviously made the choice not to implement it.

 

The OPPO does play disc and stream audio. Because it doesn't stream audio as well as some dedicated media players does not mean it's "flawed". It means it's not the right tool for the (your) job. You characterize something as a poor implementation, when (again) there is nothing on the market that does what you're asking for.

Lack of availability of appropriate chipsets? Lack of decoding architecture by the chip designer? You assume so many things are as easy as pushing a button, but have no frame of reference for the chip design.

Again, how do you know it was a "choice" that was as easy to overcome as someone at OPPO saying "OK, let's include that now"?

BTW, I'm done here with this discussion topic. You are welcome to have the last word. No one is telling you that should buy this player, or even agree that it is OK that the feature you'd like is not available. I welcome you to find a player on the market as of March 2013 that does exactly what you want. Maybe send an email to the head of Pioneer Electronics with your requested list of features? Dunno. When you get a more complete frame of reference as to how a consumer electronics product (i.e. BD player) is designed from the ground up, with many vendors, limitations, costs and timelines, then maybe we'll continue in additional dialog. Right now, we appear to be talking past each other.

 

Sam your last response is the epitome of a big-time fanboy. Based upon your response, which is patently ridiculous, I can fully understand why you are done with the discussion.

 

I can't agree with that last comparison, Sam. We are in 2013 and gapless playback has been a part of file playback for years. You are arguing that supporting gapless over TCP/IP is not simple and offering up the anology of 1080 on an iPad. The fact remains, however, that OPPO, Onkyo, and whomever, cannot do gapless playback even from USB, which has nothing whatsoever to do with TCP/IP. This is a flaw. Besides, from my conversations with an engineer, gapless via DLNA is not that complicated, it's a simple task of buffering ahead properly and memory management, at least that was my understanding of what he told me (I'm no engineer ). This is poor implementation, plain and simple.

 

You are out of line. SamS has been helpful and responsive throughout this thread. You? Not so much.

 

I believe if you will take some time to read the thread you will find your conclusion is erroneous. I have my opinion regarding the issue and others have their opinion. Ther is nothing "out of line" about it. Thanks for the post and your opinion.

 

Hear Hear!

We obviously have differing needs.

In my humble but seemingly flawed opinion the Oppo BDP-105 is a remarkable machine with excellent performance on playing virtually everything, including all manner of files on an external hard drive.

 

I like the 105 too which is why I purchased it.

 

I spoke with Oppo about this a few days ago and this is what they told me. "The ability to support gapless audio will be supported through CUE file playback in a future firmware release for all sources played back by the player." This capability is in the new beta firmware that was recently released. Has anybody tried this yet ?

 

No but others who have say it works. The firmware is a public beta at the present time and has introduced some other glitches. It is not installable via the internet but is available as a download for installation via a disc or USB drive. https://www.oppodigital.com/blu-ray-bdp-103/BDP103-firmware-50-0323B.aspx

 

All bickering and name calling aside (I have to side with the folks defending Sam here), I think if Oppo is going to market a player as a "Networking Universal" player, and offer streaming media playback, they should implement it properly. Gapless is something that numerous other manufacturers making network media players have been doing for years so, I really can't see what difference it should make if suddenly that player should have a DISC player in it. Olive can do this on their music servers with built-in disc-players, why can't they? Oppo can manage to add DSD, DSD 5.1, cue sheet playback, etc. but not gapless? This, IMHO, is a design flaw, poor implementation, and has been a flaw since they decided to start offering the feature. That said, it by no means makes the Oppo a bad player, it's just not as good as it should be at handling file playback. It is in fact still miles ahead of other components claiming to do some of the same things, like my Onkyo TX-NR818, for example, which has horrendous networking, though the 818 is better at finding devices on the network than the Oppo, so go figure.

 

Cue file playback is a workaround and in no way the same thing. It requires one to either rip or combine files into one large file. The cue sheet/file contains separate data with track timings, breaks, etc. that then allows one to still skip through tracks. Good luck playing back or transferring just ONE song if you want to to a separate device, though.

 

Just curious, what glitches have showed up in the Beta Firmware Release. I would like to install it and try the cue playback, but I will not do it if there serious problems with the beta.

 

Are you saying that a cue file can not be made with multiple music files. The reason I ask is that I want to rip all my Multi-Channel discs such as the 4.0 and 5.1 Dark Side Of The Moon & Wish You Were Here discs to Multi-channel WAV or FLAC. The problem is this, Dark Side Of The Moon in Multi-Channel created as one large file exceeds the 4.0GB max file size alowable by the WAV Format and 2GB allowed by FLAC. It is not possible to rip Dark Side Of The Moon in Multi-Channel as one file. I used a program called CUE Tools to create a cue file based on individual track files. The Cue Sheet it created looks like this:

REM COMMENT "CUETools generated dummy CUE sheet"
FILE "01 - Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of The Moon (5.1-96K) - Speak To Me.flac" WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "02 - Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of The Moon (5.1-96K) - Breathe.flac" WAVE
TRACK 02 AUDIO
INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "03 - Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of The Moon (5.1-96K) - On The Run.flac" WAVE
TRACK 03 AUDIO
INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "04 - Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of The Moon (5.1-96K) - Time.flac" WAVE
TRACK 04 AUDIO
INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "05 - Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of The Moon (5.1-96K) - The Great Gig In The Sky.flac" WAVE
TRACK 05 AUDIO
INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "06 - Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of The Moon (5.1-96K) - Money.flac" WAVE
TRACK 06 AUDIO
INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "07 - Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of The Moon (5.1-96K) - Us And Them.flac" WAVE
TRACK 07 AUDIO
INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "08 - Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of The Moon (5.1-96K) - Any Colour You Like.flac" WAVE
TRACK 08 AUDIO
INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "09 - Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of The Moon (5.1-96K) - Brain Damage.flac" WAVE
TRACK 09 AUDIO
INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "10 - Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of The Moon (5.1-96K) - Eclipse.flac" WAVE
TRACK 10 AUDIO
INDEX 01 00:00:00

Is this going to play back gapless on the Oppo if I play it from this Cue Sheet ? or will this only work from one single large file of the whole album. If not, than even Cue will not solve my problem. I have not tried this yet as I have not yet updated to the Beta Firmware.

 

This thread is always interesting.

 

I guess I am stopping firmware updates with the current beta as this is one of the additions. I have converted a ton of my BR's to BR images on my hard-drive which I guess won't play now with the following change:

The new decoder firmware supplied by our chip vendor tightens the validation check for AVCHD file format. If the files in the BDMV folder do not fully comply with the AVCHD specification, the folder will not play. (For example, if the files are from a disc backup instead of an original AVCHD recording, the player will reject it.)

 

As I understand it, the Oppo can only load one file into memory at a time, so the transition between two files will always provoke an audible gap, which is longer the larger the following file (longer track or higher resolution).

Cue-file support means one can achieve gapless playback with direct access to individual tracks by ripping CDs as one large file with a cue-file. If you have already ripped CDs as individual track files or you buy downloads (which are almost always individual files, it will not solve the gap problem, unless you take the effort of stitching the files together and creating cue files.

 

In order to have gapless play you have to rip your CD to one continuous file. By doing so you lose track titles and can't navigate between tracks. The new public beta firmware now supports a cue file. You can now play the cue file which preserves track titles and allows navigation between tracks as stored in the continuous file. According to the firmware notes there is cue support for FLAC, WAV, APE and MP3 audio files. It is a workaround for lack of true gapless playback, but better than nothing.

 

Sam's always been helpful to me when I have questions. He's a fan but for good reasons I think.

 

Thanks fr the info on using Cue Files. I guess I will never be able to play my Multi-Channel Hi-Rez Files gapless. It is not possible to rip an entire album with out exceeding the 4GB limitation of the WAV format or the 2GB limitation of the FLAC format. I hope Oppo can figure out a way to deal with this because I would really like to keep and play back my multi-channel music from a hard drive.

 

I can understand why some are not satisfied with the quality of the streaming of the Oppo 103/105. I'm just getting into music streaming thanks to a friend loading up a 2TB HD with some excellent music. I found out of the limitations of the 103's streaming when I played Quadrophenia as it does not play without gaps. I to would prefer that the 103 play streamed music without gaps. But I bought the 103 as a universal disc player not a music streaming device.

It is a great that the 103/105 streams music although it might not do this as well as a dedicated music streaming device. I'm not sure if the limitations are hardware or software related but I'm happy to have the option of streaming music with my 103. No it isn't perfect but I look at it from the point of view that it is better than not having the streaming feature at all. So for those that are not happy with the quality of streaming music from the 103/105 maybe adding a dedicated music streaming device would be the better option.

Bill

 

I'm sure these messages from customers regarding streaming issues are not being lost on the folks at oppo.

 

Yes, but the missing gapless support was already a significant issue in the user community with the 93/95 models, so it was expected that the 103/105 players would address it (completely, not the image/cue semi-solution).

It's the most important flaw of the players in terms of audio features (maybe the only one). On the other hand, the new DSD file support is more of a "nice to have" feature, with limited use currently.

 

I don't see why they can't address the gap situation. Shouldn't it be as easy as just buffering the music stream slightly?