OPPO BDP-95 Review (Blu-ray/DVD/SACD/CD Player)

[dreipass]

No, they are digital outputs.

View attachment 501776

It's typical for digital disc players of the era—15 years ago—to only have digital outs. Note, however, that there is a slot for USB, another for "External Storage". From the Manual for the BDP-95:

"The OPPO BDP-95 Blu-Ray Disc Player has significantly improved its internet exploration capabilities
compared to its predecessors. Currently it supports both Netflix and Blockbuster for instant online media
streaming, as well as in-home network media sharing via My Network which is functionally equivalent to DLNA.
Additional network applications may be added with future firmware updates."

Thanks for clearing up.

 

[PristineSound]

Was it Lexicon that rebadged an Oppo player and charged exponentially more for it?

The part that consumers are upset about isn't how Lexicon rebadged the Oppo. For instance, for many years, the Lexus, Acura and Infiniti brand would do the same thing with Toyota, Honda and Nissan models. But consumers are upset about is that the literally took the Oppo and covered it up with a different shell and charged A LOT more money for it and somehow didn't think consumers would find out, the back was so obvious that there was another chassis underneath. It was just insulting. Had they invested just a little bit more to move the guts into a brand-new premium chassis, maybe upgrade few parts here and there and change up the UI quite a bit, then it would have been OK.

 

[Descartes]

When Oppo announced they were going to stop making disc players, I decided it was worth investing in the top of the line 205 model. I thought $1500 was a lot of money at the time, but that's nothing compared to the new Magnetar releases. It's my go to player for international movie discs and when playing music discs. It sometimes has a bit of problems with 100G disc layers, but outside of that it's fantastic.

I did the same thing, I wished I had bought two of them especially since I have over 300 multichannel SACDs!
Also I purchased a Panasonic DP-UB9000P1K to play 4K and Blu Ray movies, keeping the OPPO 205 for music only!

 

[Descartes]

There's also the less famous $289 Oppo BDP-80 Blu-ray player - sort of a 'LaSalle' to the higher-priced 'Cadillac' in the Oppo line-up.

Oppo Announces Inexpensive, Full-Function BDP-80 Universal/Blu-ray Player

At the time of its release in Fall of 2009, Oppo Digital’s award-winning BDP-83 ($499) was, hands down, the world’s most affordable, full-featured

www.theabsolutesound.com

As I recall, Oppo discontinued the BDP-80 within a year of its introduction, saying they could no longer source a key part.

My sample BDP-80 from 2010 sees regular use.

That makes me fell good 15 years old and still going, I hope my 205 last that long!

 

[Descartes]

Update, yes they are active.

So I can test the "STEREO OUDIO OUT" and the FL & FR outputs, and I did that with my test CD (16bits, obviously).

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The below is from the RCA main stereo output (Left Channel):

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And now the same from the "FL" outpout:

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9dB less distortion!!!

@Rja4000 Since I'm here, this is the J-Test, from RCA outputs, with the vertical scale that goes down to -160dBr, so you can see the noise floor:

View attachment 477364

The two outputs are identical.

EDIT: I could not resist to test 24bits PCM from the USB input.
This is the very standardized SINAD test of @amirm, that is 1kHz sine @0dBFS (2Vrms output), at 44.1kHz, with FFT length of 32k and 4 averages (3 for Amir, but I can't do only 3):

View attachment 477366

SINAD of 113.3dB (113.8dB for Right Channel).

And the same from FL output:

View attachment 477367

Now we get a SINAD of 118.3dB! (116.5 for right channel). So that's actually a little better than XLR too

We see two small PS related spikes at 50Hz and 100Hz (around -140dBr).

Funny to see a Swiss Flag on a Chinese product

 

[Descartes]

So it lives up to it's fame. Why did they go out of business?

They didn’t they chose to concentrate on the cell phone business

 

[m8o]

Legendary player has legendary performance. ... who'da thunk?

 

[Eric Larson]

> used prices for these devices

You will have to pry mine out of my cold dead hands.

 

[Chester]

> used prices for these devices

You will have to pry mine out of my cold dead hands.

That’s exactly what I would say if I was trying to sell mine

 

[windhoek]

OPPO BDP-95 Measurements (SACD)

Unfortunately, I can't create an SACD test disc, so I used the one from Denon.

To start with, when I first tested the SACD mode, I saw on the screen that it was displaying "PCM", but why? Because, and thanks to the very good documentation, if we set HDMI to output DSD data, then analog output will get a DSD to PCM digital conversion before being converted to analog. Go figure. So it is necessary to disable HDMI bitstream output to get the DSD data to be directly converted. The setup is this one (HDMI Off, SACD Output DSD, rest does not matter):

View attachment 477128

Is there an audible improvement to be gained by removing the PCM step as outlined above? And is this quirk likely to be present in other universal players? Having seen your OPPO 105 review it seems to be a thing with OPPO players, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same in a number of other universal disc players.

 

[Scytales]

Is there an audible improvement to be gained by removing the PCM step as outlined above? And is this quirk likely to be present in other universal players? Having seen your OPPO 105 review it seems to be a thing with OPPO players, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same in a number of other universal disc players.

As for your first question, only properly conducted listening tests would tell, provided all others things are kept equal (notably the BDP95's DAC analogue output levels with both modulations).

As for your second question, only on the spot testing of other universal players would tell.

A am afraid nobody has done this tests to date.

 

[windhoek]

As for your first question, only properly conducted listening tests would tell, provided all others things are kept equal (notably the BDP95's DAC analogue output levels with both modulations).

As for your second question, only on the spot testing of other universal players would tell.

A am afraid nobody has done this tests to date.

Thanks, I've got an OPPO 103D here and although I use it as a blu ray and DVD player only, I should be able to get it hooked up to my amp for stereo SACD playback, whereupon I'll try and do some on the fly comparisons: DSD converted straight to analogue versus DSD converted to analogue via PCM. I'm hoping the results will be clear either way i.e. essentially no different or noticeably different. I normally use a Bluesound Node 2i to stream local files (via an attached SSD), including SACD rips converted to FLAC, and depending on how I get on I might revert to spinning the SACDs in my collection should playing SACDs converted straight to analoue offer something more than both SACDs converted to analogue via DSD by my OPPO and playing the SACD rips that have been converted to FLAC through my Bluesound Node 2i.

I've also got an old Pioneer DV-600 here which supports SACDs and in the absence of prior testing, I'll go ahead and disable audio via HDMI and ensure that SACD playback is set to DSD just in case is suffers the same quirk as the OPPO players whereby you have to be specific with the relevant settings.

Derek

EDIT: toggling the HDMI settings on the fly whilst playing an SACD didn't appear to have any effect on the end sound. I even tried stopping playback and then making changes and I did likewise by ejecting and re-inserting the SACD and then making changes but it made no ostensible difference. With regard to the SACD output setting, DSD or PCM, selecting PCM caused no audio to be passed through the analogue outputs. I suppose this makes sense as this relates to the digital out and by selecting PCM, the player is essentially being set to output PCM and that's it.

As far as the OPPO 103D is concerned, then, if there is a difference or consequence, rather to having HDMI audio set to anything other than off then it's certainly negligible. That said, I'm happy to set it to off for SACD playback and then set it to auto again whenever I'm going to watch a film or something. I only use the analogue outputs on the Pioneer DV-600 so as I noted above, I'll go ahead and disable audio via HDMI and ensure that SACD playback is set to DSD just in case is suffers the same quirk as the OPPO players whereby you have to be specific with the relevant settings in order to convert DSD straight to analogue whenever an SACD is being played.

 

[Scytales]

The Pioneer DV-600 uses Burr Brown PCM1742 DAC chips. This DAC has no DSD input. Therefor, in any case when the analogue outputs are used, DSD is decimated into PCM (24 bits @ 88.2 kHz) by a Mediatek MT1389 system on chip (SoC) that incorporates the SACD decoder.

On the other hand, the Oppo BDP103 uses a multichannel Cirrus Logic CS4382A DAC chip that can deal with both PCM and DSD input signals. Moreover, this DAC is designed to put out the same output voltage with both types of signal, so it is a player of choice if you want to experiment by comparing PCM and DSD.

 

[windhoek]

The Pioneer DV-600 uses Burr Brown PCM1742 DAC chips. This DAC has no DSD input. Therefor, in any case when the analogue outputs are used, DSD is decimated into PCM (24 bits @ 88.2 kHz) by a Mediatek MT1389 system on chip (SoC) that incorporates the SACD decoder.

On the other hand, the Oppo BDP103 uses a multichannel Cirrus Logic CS4382A DAC chip that can deal with both PCM and DSD input signals. Moreover, this DAC is designed to put out the same output voltage with both types of signal, so it is a player of choice if you want to experiment by comparing PCM and DSD.

That's excellent information to share, thank you. It just so happens I was listening to the hybrid SACD of Gaucho by Steely Dan earlier and it sounded superb, much better I thought than the 24/88.2 FLAC version I normally listen to, the one that's a conversion of the SACD rip. It would seem that the Pioneer converts DSD to FLAC and then analogue in more enjoyable fashion than the more involved process of ripping an SACD, converting the DSD to FLAC and then playing it back through my Bluesound Node and Chord DAC. Interesting!

I appreciate there may be some expectation bias at work so I wouldn't hang my hat on it. But knowing the Pioneer doesn't convert DSD to analogue directly is good to know all the same. Thank you.