OPPO BDP-103 and BDP-105 Networking Universal 3D Blu-ray Players (part4)

That's when you call in sick!

 

Ralph,

The thought did enter my mind . I work in Somerville for commuter rail and taking a day off with such limited notice is frowned upon. I'll have all tomorrow morning to set the 105D up and then hopefully a few hours of listening time. It's all good .

Bill

 

Nice place - great history. Alan Hovhaness, the composer, was from Somerville.

 

I got the 105D all setup and I'm listening to Steve Davis' Quality of Silence SACD. The 105D direct to a pair of W4S SX-500s sounds outstanding ! This refurbished 105D is flawless with no sign that it was ever even used and it is dead quiet. I'm very happy I stuck it out and let Oppo do what they do which is to provide outstanding service .

Bill

 

Enjoy your new toy. The 105/105D are great players. I'm on my fourth Oppo player, and you can't beat their customer service.

 

Thank you, I most certainly will . Just need a few days of nothing but endless music listening. In my opinion Oppo has the best customer service in the A/V industry.

Bill

 

Well, maybe. I find Richer Sounds in the UK to be well up there too. Very customer focused, 14-day in store return, no quibble money back deal, very fairly priced five year guarantees, etc.

My Cambridge Audio 752BD which I'd bought I think a week or two before Christmas last year was sold in the basis that I could return up to the end of January this year. That's pretty decent.

Then again, it's one of the best universal players out there, so maybe they were just very confident! It applied to all their festive sales online however and probably ran for some weeks before I bought my gear. That's service and their complaint handling is excellent.

John Clayton, one of their senior management, would often turn up on the old What Hifi forum and personally deal with issues that were brought to his attention on there.

Kudos.

 

I was speaking more from a manufacturer stand point than that of a local A/V shop. There are I'm sure many local independent A/V shops that offer outstanding service like Richer Sounds. But try to find a manufacturer such as Oppo that responds to emails quickly even on weekends .

Bill

 

Good service definitely makes proselytizers.

 

Geoff,

In all honesty I had to look up the definition of proselytizers . Once I found out what it meant I agree.

Bill

 

Just a twist on the usual - "fan boi" is considered derogatory.

 

AVI.

 

I'd be more inclined to suggest it makes for satisfied customers...

 

Did they repair your original refurb unit or provide a different one?

 

I believe they repaired the original refurbished unit. I requested a different refurbished unit if one was available. There was another one available so I chose to buy that one instead of getting the repaired one back.

Bill

 

Received 105D yesterday. For a refurb, it was absolutely flawless, and set up and configuring with the Ipad app and network devices was an absolute breeze. My wife already hates it because between last night and this morning she's had to endure about 9 hours of music.

I noticed the Sabre DAC sounds a little brighter than the AudioEngine/AKM DAC I was using previously.

 

The Sabre is a little bright for my tastes, too (or is poorly matched to the rest of my system). For this reason, I think I'll stick with the _3 units from Oppo and invest in an external DAC. The trick is finding a good multichannel DAC that can do PCM and DSD. They seem to just... Not exist outside of the mastering market. There is the e28, but it uses the Sabre, too.

 

What about the Cambridge Audio 752BD Universal?

http://www.cambridgeaudio.com/products/hifi-and-home-cinema/azur-752bd

Uses Wolfson DAC's.

Brother_Rael has one and could tell you all about it!!

Cheers

 

I was just about to say...!

The Wolfson WM8740 is/was one of the company's to of the line DACs. It's been around a while and I have it in both the Cambridge 752BD, but also my older AVI Lab Series CD player.

The AVI before and now the Cambridge are used for hours on end. Lovely sound quality that's detailed without being bright and full bodied eight being bloomy. You'd need to try it out with your own gear obviously.

Just one thing though, is the brightness you find just now maybe partly down to speaker positioning? Maybe a slight adjustment could bring the change you need?

 

Let it burn in a while. You can also download some burn-in files.
I also found the Shunyata Venom power cord to improve the weight and solidity of the sound.

 

Hi,

After researching your system I have another option you could try.

As you are listening in the nearfield with active monitors I believe it's worth playing around with some different XLR I/C's.

I also run actives and have found that I/C's can make quite a difference. YMMV.

Lastly.......maybe the HF resolution of the OPPO is letting you hear your ribbon tweeters properly
and THEY are responsible for the brightness........just a thought!!!


Cheers

 

Eight ball in the side pocket.

 

No, the Oppo's not hooked up to the ADAMs; those are my home studio monitors, and they're hooked up to the RME FireFace, which runs only off my computer (and I like the sound of this combination for active pleasure listening, too, not just mixing and monitoring). In the previous home theater configuration (for a small apartment with thin walls), the Oppo fed three Mogami 1-meter stereo RCA-to-2.5mm TRS jack cables plugged into the Creative DDTS-100's switchbox for direct connection to the Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 5.1s, plus a short top-end Monster optical cable into the DDTS for using its digital functions. In that setup, I much preferred the sound of the Creative's DAC for the formats it could handle. The Klipschs are small, 2-way satellites with horn tweeters, though, so they do have somewhat of a bright bias. They sound fine running off the DDTS, though. (This used to be my computer speaker setup, with the computer optical out feeding the DDTS.)

The current setup is not in my profile, because it's not really mine. The Oppo feeds mid-level (from what I can tell) Monster RCAs connected to the 5.1 analog inputs of a Sony STR-GA8ES integrated amp powering Rogers LS4a FL & FR, ProAc C (unknown model, horizontal with dual 4" woofers and a 1" dome tweeter), and Paradigm SL & SR (unknown side-firing model, 4" woofers and 1" done tweeters) fed by generic speaker wire, and feeding a powered Velodyne subwoofer (unknown front-firing model, 7" with sympathetic down-firing diaphragm). The speakers are not ideally positioned and the room is far from acoustically perfect; it was set up many years ago with an early Sony DVD player (pre-progressive scan, no DTS decoding or passthrough, no DVD-A playback). I never had any issues with the sound of that player on the system, but I was less critical then. I do remember preferring the dedicated stereo out from that player as well as the Oppo BDP83 that followed hooked up to the CD input of the amplifier, but I think that was more down to additional amp processing on the CD input (there is no user configurable processing on the 5.1 input). The 103D, of course, has no dedicated stereo output, but I did briefly have the FL & FR split to two cables (one each for the 5.1 and the CD input), and I did prefer stereo music on the amp's CD input.

 

I can relate. Billy/Eric

 

To clarify and elaborate: 3" woofers with MicroTractrix Klipschorn tweeters in the satellites, dual side-firing 8" woofers in the sub with a rear slot-port. They were also not ideally positioned in the apartment, which was so very far from acoustically perfect. Treatment was not possible there and is not possible in the current system, either.