SACD / DVD-A player recommendations and some related questions

I thought of and researched HDMI extractors and the Vanity mod before realising that the Oppo (which I didn't buy until this January) could be used for extracting SACDs. I tracked down a 103D with a multiregion/zone mod, extracted my SACDs and now use it attached to a portable hard drive with my music library on using the analogue outs into my amp. Now I have all of my music ripped in its native format it makes a good playback machine. I accept that the 105 has the better analogue stage but at the time the 103D suited my budget and I am a happy Oppo customer.

 

Yeah, I really can't see the bad here. If I wanted an equivalent player with a built-in DAC, it would easily cost twice as much. Actually, twice as much would be a bargain. This player allows me to play every digital format I own straight up, and I can do anything I want to it via the AVR should I choose to do anything to it. It streams movies and TV great too. Yeah, I'd prefer a $600 Oppo but I don't have $600. I like my receiver and this player allows me to get everything I can out of it. Crap? No way.

 

Wow. I got my UDP-203 and set it up last night. (I didn't get the 5.1 switch yet so just wired it directly to my Genelec system for now.) Holy crap, it sounds freakin' amazing! I can honestly say it is the best 5.1 home system I've ever heard, and I can't believe it's in my home. What a listening experience, playing 5.1 audio discs. I am totally thrilled, and my wife was pretty blown away too. I'm really going to enjoy listening to music over this system. A few comments and observations:

To me, Gaucho is still the gold standard for 5.1 audio. Elliot Scheiner did a fantastic job...it just sounds totally 100% perfect to me. Love is next, at least in terms of the 5.1 mix. (Musically, it would be at the very top of course.)

I am learning that some "5.1" discs are not really mixed in 5.1. At least one of mine has no center channel content (I guess some come from old quad mixes or 3-track masters?) And I believe that some have no discrete subwoofer content. (On my system it's a little hard to tell because the 5 speaker feeds all pass through my sub -- it filters and sums all the sub content which is routed through the sub amp, so the sub is almost always "doing something".) I don't have an issue with this and understand the reasons for it, but I wish the disc jackets and booklets clearly stated what was going on with the format presentation, since some differ so greatly. Oh well.

Similarly, it seems that 5.1 mix engineers have very different philosophies about how the center channel should be used, and how loud it should be compared to front left and right. I found myself often going into the Oppo menu and tweaking the center trim to make the 3 fronts sound "balanced" to me...and also found that when playing a Blu Ray, I often had to re-tweak all over again. I'm thinking that when I get my 5.1 switch I might add a front panel attenuator pot for the center channel, and then trim down the other 5 feeds in the Oppo menu by say 6 db. This would give me 6 db of range with the center channel attenuator, which I could adjust when going from disc to disc. Have others noticed a lot of center channel level variation among 5.1 SACD's and DVD-A's?

All discs seem to play fine on the Oppo in their native formats, except The McCartney Years, which doesn't play at all. It takes a long time to load, then I get a message "This is a data disc" or "no disc" or just a black screen. This happens with all 3 discs in the set. Also, my Audio Fidelity Blood Sweat & Tears Greatest Hits is labeled as a hybrid disc, but I can't find a way to switch between layers on that one. I'm going to phone Oppo or Crutchfield to ask about this, but any thoughts from you guys?

Thanks again for setting me on the right track with the Oppo and using analog outputs. I feel like I have a lot of great listening to look forward to.

 

There is no way to switch on the fly between the CD and SACD layers on a hybrid SACD. To play the CD layer you have to set the SACD Priority to CD Mode. The SACD Priority setting is in the Audio Output Setup in the Setup Menu (page 57 in the 203 manual). Enjoy the 203 !

http://download.oppodigital.com/UDP203/UDP-203_USER_MANUAL_ENGLISH_V1.0.pdf