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Neutral and transparent DAC – SMSL VMV D1 or Oppo Sonica?

oivavoi

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I think we all feel your pain here, every man has had his shit thrown out by their mum, girlfriend, wife or in your case fiancée ( don’t belive the whole “ mum did it “ story they cooked up),, they all do this and pretend like it was a accident or just plain deny it but don’t believe a word it’s all part of their ‘plans ‘ for you.

You need to nip this behaviour in the bud before she becomes Mrs oivavoi , so next time you go on holiday put the wrong label on her bag .. she will soon learn how bad it is when your stuff just goes missing.

Agony uncle savage is here to help any time you need.

Thomas, You’re delivering the inconvenient truth I’d rather not face, but which I’d probably better come to terms with! Definitely time to come up with some devious revenge.
 

Thomas savage

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Thomas, You’re delivering the inconvenient truth I’d rather not face, but which I’d probably better come to terms with! Definitely time to come up with some devious revenge.
On the bright side mother and wife in waiting are getting on it seems , this is generally preferable to them being at war so some indulgence wrt their shenanigans might serve you. However if they become thick as thief’s then you might be in for a rough ride.

Stay vigilant and report back any future concerns .
 

JJB70

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Did Oppo sort out gapless play on the Sonica? In many respects it seems to be an almost perfect product but initially it seems to have not provided gapless play, and since a lot of the music I listen to is classical that is a big problem for me.
 

gvl

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Lack of gapless is only an issue when Sonica used as a streamer, if driven externally this is up to the source to implement gapless properly.
 

shoden

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Sonica isnt dual mono, so depending on the quality of their analog stage you could have bad crosstalk.. and also no femtoclock
 
OP
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chairephon

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Sonica isnt dual mono, so depending on the quality of their analog stage you could have bad crosstalk.. and also no femtoclock

That has absolutely nothing to with the topic of the thread. I also don't have bad crosstalk. Stereo crosstalk is -107,8 dB. Nothing that one (!) can hear. So what's your point?

The Oppo support confirms that the DAC Performance of the Sonica and the UDP-205 is identical and the analog audio stage and power supply is nearly identical. And the UDP-205 is one of best DACs measured and reviewed here so far.
 
OP
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chairephon

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Lack of gapless is only an issue when Sonica used as a streamer, if driven externally this is up to the source to implement gapless properly.

That's right! I can confirm this. With Roon no issues.
 

envydd

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Interesting. Would be good to get one to measure at some point!

This would be a good one. I listened to one at my friends house and it the sound was very rich, feeding a nc502mp power amp and driving kef reference floorstandefs.
 

Soniclife

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How these Swedes do it, is basically to compare the output from the most transparent and best-measuring dac they know of (can’t remember which one, only that it was hideously expensive)
If you ever do remember it would be interesting. Do you know how they do the measurements?
 

trl

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Perhaps you should start by defining those somewhat nebulous terms for us?

I am seeing 'transparent' as being the latest, un-defined, unmeasurable, and meaningless adjective infecting audio ramblings. Clearly, it is a kissing cousin of 'veiled', another of my personal favorites...

'Neutrality' is no better and basically says nothing of use.

D/A converters do not possess these magical qualities.

I think Ray said it well here: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...m-versions-of-ess-sabre-dacs.3805/#post-91623. Also, Benchmark guys explain very well the term euphonic and non-euphonic here: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0321/7609/files/DAC3_Series_Manual_Rev_B.pdf.

By neutral and transparent I understand a DAC/headamp that is producing the exact bits and music as the producing studio intended too, without any coloration or warmth added to the output sound (usually these are reflected in 2nd and 3rd higher harmonics and square-wave tests, but sometimes a 0.5dB channel imbalance could change the sound-scene and our subjectivism will interpret this in different ways.
 

BeepPeep_61

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Good evening to all from Italy
I am the happy owner of an OPPO Sonica DAC for over a year and I wanted to point out to "chairephon", that the performances of Sonica have improved considerably since (following a discussion on the changes to OPPO 203/205), I made the following changes :
Replaced the Rectifier Bridges with Schottky Diodes. Replaced in the 12V dual power stage the 6800uF capacitors with 22000uF and 1000uF capacitors with 4700uF, 100nF bypasses were all provided. Replaced +/- 12V regulators with very low noise modules. Removed original 100MHz Oscillator with module CRYSTEK CCHD-950, thanks to an air desoldering station (purchased on Amazon at 117 €) in 30 seconds with a temperature of 280 ° C, it is very easy to remove the metal screen, it is recommended to have it not to make disasters !! Previously performed, change to decoupling capacitors by replacing the original 100uF with PANASONIC OS-CON with parallel WIMA from 1uF type MKP1 Remove the 3.6 uH inductors in series to the output signal after the relays and bridged with tin drop. Placed with mini heat sink pad on the ESS9038 chip.
I understand that they are NOT changes for everyone, but I assure you that the different and better final sonic result is easily perceptible!
I enclose some photos of the changes
If the distance from "amirm" was not "stellar", I would have liked to let him have my OPPO for a series of measures !!
Nuovi Ponti Diodi_01.jpg
 

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Keltere

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Good evening to all from Italy
Daje!
About those changes it could be just placebo, like the usual pasta plate that taste better after a day of work.
Just curious, what soldering station did you use?
 

BeepPeep_61

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Good evening Keltere,
I have always considered that a clean and optimized power supply is the basis of any audio circuit and given that the Sonica can be improved under this profile I decided to commit € 100 (cost of all changes) to feel the effect that they would have made to listen , I'm not here to convince anyone and as I wrote I would have liked to submit my modified OPPO to the Amirm tests !!
Returning to your question, this is the purchase link of the soldering / desoldering station:
https://www.amazon.it/Stazione-sald...ords=stazione+saldante&refinements=p_89:YIHUA
Greetings
Gigi
 

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gvl

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Good evening Keltere,
I have always considered that a clean and optimized power supply is the basis of any audio circuit

Have you considered that this fact may be known to Oppo engineers as well?
 

BeepPeep_61

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I worked for 25 years in the field of industrial electronic design and I saw things that you humans ..... :) :)
When the maximum spending budget that your commercial office imposes on you, does not allow you or rather compels you not to perfect the components you can slip on the classic "banana peel" !!
In any case, OPPO decided to leave the Audio-Video sector, and I decided to make the proposed changes on "diyaudio.com" and my ears are super-happy.
Good night to all
 

gvl

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Oppo 205 test results leave some room for healthy skepticism that the improvements, if any, can be audible.
 

trl

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It might worth comparing with a scope AC RMS & noise of each power rail before vs. after (as close to DAC pins too, if possible), then...of course, to have the audio outputs measured.

Existing measurements with the non-modded Sonica seem very good, but interesting to see if jitter or noise got improved after your mods:
- http://archimago.blogspot.com/2017/06/measurements-oppo-sonica-dac-ess-sabre.html
- http://archimago.blogspot.com/2017/12/measurements-oppo-sonica-dac-and.html
- https://hometheaterhifi.com/reviews/dac/oppo-digital-sonica-dac-review/

"If the distance from "amirm" was not "stellar", I would have liked to let him have my OPPO for a series of measures !!" let's see what @amirm has to say. :)

Changing the diodes bridge may not improve anything (https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/te...ndard-schottky-selecting-the-right-rectifier/) and increasing smoothing caps with 4-times their initial capacitance might affect PCB traces in a long-run (difficult to say without knowing traces size and thickness), but it would be interesting to see how the new crystal changed things in outputs.

Also, https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?forums/diy-audio-forum.39/ could be a good place to upload your mods and perhaps measurements too. Thank you!
 
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