I find it interesting that Mark Waldrep of AIX records has used a specially modified (by Oppo) Oppo BluRay player for his last 2 HiFi shows to get quality playback of his 5.1 surround recordings. I really would have loved the opportunity to listen to this system. Maybe time for Oppo (and others) to supply something like this as stock allowing critical listeners to use the DAC's of choice.
"Oppo Digital will be supplying one of their industrial strength players modified to allow 4 x S/P DIF outputs. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the generosity and care that the Oppo team takes in making sure that our signal path is digital all the way. Using S/P DIF digital signals between their player and a set of 3 Benchmark DAC2 HGCs guarantees that everything that is in the music is presented without coloration, amplitude changes, or filtering. The DH Labs digital interconnects that we’ll use to make the connections are relatively inexpensive because they don’t have extravagant marketing budgets like some of the other makers but they do the job. Getting a S/P DIF digital signal from a Blu-ray player to a high-end DAC is not difficult in stereo but digitally sending multichannel audio is a bit trickier.
Benchmark will be supplying three of their state-of-the-art DACs…the DAC2 HGC models AND connecting the balanced outputs to their highly regarded AHB2 power amplifiers. These amazing amplifiers will be operating in mono bridged mode once again and driving the Revel Salon 2 speakers that were so impressive last year (I know my friend at Harmon/Revel is currently working on securing the same 5 speakers as last year…I’m keeping my fingers crossed)."
Sal - I might be guessing, but I think that the Oppo player was likely modified by an Audiopraise Vanity board that supplies 4xcoax spdif out. I have heard this combo with an Oppo 93 in stereo, with Andy Quint, a close friend who reviewed the Vanity for TAS some time ago. Subjectively, in careful, but not totally bias-controlled listening, he and I both thought the Vanity made a positive (small but noticeable and repeatable as is typical of digital audio differences) improvement vs. the stock Oppo via either its standard spdif coax or HDMI output.
But, there is a lot more going on in the Vanity board than just the connector jack. For example, the Vanity performs DSD-PCM conversion itself at either 88k or 176k overriding that in the native Oppo fixed at 88k. The Oppo cannot output PCM converted from DSD via its spdif jack, although the Vanity can: licensing issues.
Andy was reasonably impressed, but he did not buy the Vanity, because he is a primarily Mch listener (like me) and Mch processors or DAC stacks supporting 4xspdif coax are relatively rare and expensive. They may also involve other tradeoffs or the loss of key features.
Andy still uses primarily HDMI into his Anthem D2V prepro, which I think has good HDMI jitter measurements, BTW. But, I felt it once again indicated circumstantially that HDMI might be very good and very listenable, but not quite the ultimate, all totally subjectively, of course.
Incidentally, Kal Rubinson was also using a custom modified Oppo via 4xspdif coax (not Vanity) into his Meridian prepro, his long term reference. Though, I think you will find that he has gravitated more recently to computer audio via Asynch USB into a Mch DAC, as have I.
