This is a review and detailed measurements of the Oppo UDP-205 UHD player's audio subsystem, specifically its DAC performance. It is on loan from a kind member. The retail price of UDP-205 used to be $1,300. Alas, Oppo has discontinued the unit so it is no longer for sale as a new unit. I see crazy prices like $4,000 now for them!
NOTE: My company is a dealer for Oppo. "Dealer" is a stretch of the term here as the discount for dealers will buy you a cup of tea and not the usual margins that exists for audio. But you should take this account in reading my review here.
There are probably hundreds of reviews of the Oppo UDP-205 out there. My focus here is only as a USB DAC to see how it compares to dedicated DACs. For this evaluation, I am testing its USB input and balanced analog outs. As a way of comparison, and as you see below, I also compared it to Schiit Yggdrasil DAC ($2,400), RME ADI-2 Pro (DAC version of which is $1,000), and Topping DX7s ($499).
The unit is quite heavy and massive in size. Easily three to four times larger and heavier than any other Blu-ray player.
The DAC portion sports the high-end ESS DAC chip, the ES9038PRO in dual configuration. The choice of DAC chip doesn't directly translate into good performance as it is abundantly easy to screw up its good performance. Let's get into measurements and see if that is the case here or not.
EDIT: for performance of unbalanced/RCA output, see: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ts-of-oppo-udp-205-uhd-player.3660/post-88142
EDIT #2: Headphone output results here: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ts-of-oppo-udp-205-uhd-player.3660/post-88149
Measurements
As usual, let's get a full snapshot of its performance in our dashboard:
Wow. These are exceedingly good numbers. 115 dB SINAD (signal over distortion and noise)? That is amazing.
As a way of reference, here is RME ADI-2 Pro with the same output level:
We see nearly 10 dB lower (SINAD) performance! The cause here is high third harmonic distortion. The suppression of harmonic distortion is quite significant in Oppo UDP-205.
On slightly negative side, we see sidebands around our main 1 kHz tone shows side-bands (spikes) around the 1 kHz tone in UDP-205. Fortunately these are heavily masked perceptually so not an audible concern.
Those distortion measurements directly translate to lower THD vs frequency for Oppo:
Just remarkable. Oppo UDP-205 easily beats all the others with ease.
IMD intermodulation distortion measurements mirror the same:
Jitter/Noise test shows the previously mentioned low-frequency components:
Absence of power supply components (all the way to the left) puts a smile on my face.
Alas, we see the same side-band spikes around our main tone. If we look back to our 1 kHz tone in our dashboard, we see the same tones at same amplitude. This means that they are NOT, let me repeat, NOT jitter. But rather, the reference voltage for the DAC is being modulated by that frequency. If this were jitter, its amplitude would be much reduced at 1 kHz versus 12 kHz. Translation: something is bleeding into the reference voltage of the DAC (which is used to create the output voltage). A bit of cleaning here would have rendered perfect output.
Finally let's look at our favorite graph, linearity:
As the notation says, the Oppo UDP-205 produces results that are at the threshold of what the measurement can show so it is perfect to 20 bits/120 bits. The RME ADI-2 Pro loses a bit here but its dedicated DAC version has this fixed. The Schiit Yggdrasil as mentioned in its review, remains non-competitive with tons of error here.
Conclusions
There is no getting around it: the Oppo UDP-205 nails the measurements and almost across the board beats its competitors. It delivered the best measured performance of any DAC I have tested to date! Of course it earns my strong recommendation.
With the exception of tiny bit of reference voltage modulation, the Oppo UDP-205 delivers performance that is quite a bit better than the next in line. This also demonstrates how good the ES9038Pro DAC chip is, when implemented correctly.
What a shame that Oppo is getting out of this business. I guess it is good and honorable to do so after produce such a superlative (audio) product.
As always, questions, comments, corrections, etc. are all welcome.
----
If you like this review, please consider donating funds for these types of hardware purchases using Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).
NOTE: My company is a dealer for Oppo. "Dealer" is a stretch of the term here as the discount for dealers will buy you a cup of tea and not the usual margins that exists for audio. But you should take this account in reading my review here.
There are probably hundreds of reviews of the Oppo UDP-205 out there. My focus here is only as a USB DAC to see how it compares to dedicated DACs. For this evaluation, I am testing its USB input and balanced analog outs. As a way of comparison, and as you see below, I also compared it to Schiit Yggdrasil DAC ($2,400), RME ADI-2 Pro (DAC version of which is $1,000), and Topping DX7s ($499).
The unit is quite heavy and massive in size. Easily three to four times larger and heavier than any other Blu-ray player.
The DAC portion sports the high-end ESS DAC chip, the ES9038PRO in dual configuration. The choice of DAC chip doesn't directly translate into good performance as it is abundantly easy to screw up its good performance. Let's get into measurements and see if that is the case here or not.
EDIT: for performance of unbalanced/RCA output, see: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ts-of-oppo-udp-205-uhd-player.3660/post-88142
EDIT #2: Headphone output results here: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ts-of-oppo-udp-205-uhd-player.3660/post-88149
Measurements
As usual, let's get a full snapshot of its performance in our dashboard:
Wow. These are exceedingly good numbers. 115 dB SINAD (signal over distortion and noise)? That is amazing.
As a way of reference, here is RME ADI-2 Pro with the same output level:
We see nearly 10 dB lower (SINAD) performance! The cause here is high third harmonic distortion. The suppression of harmonic distortion is quite significant in Oppo UDP-205.
On slightly negative side, we see sidebands around our main 1 kHz tone shows side-bands (spikes) around the 1 kHz tone in UDP-205. Fortunately these are heavily masked perceptually so not an audible concern.
Those distortion measurements directly translate to lower THD vs frequency for Oppo:
Just remarkable. Oppo UDP-205 easily beats all the others with ease.
IMD intermodulation distortion measurements mirror the same:
Jitter/Noise test shows the previously mentioned low-frequency components:
Absence of power supply components (all the way to the left) puts a smile on my face.
Alas, we see the same side-band spikes around our main tone. If we look back to our 1 kHz tone in our dashboard, we see the same tones at same amplitude. This means that they are NOT, let me repeat, NOT jitter. But rather, the reference voltage for the DAC is being modulated by that frequency. If this were jitter, its amplitude would be much reduced at 1 kHz versus 12 kHz. Translation: something is bleeding into the reference voltage of the DAC (which is used to create the output voltage). A bit of cleaning here would have rendered perfect output.
Finally let's look at our favorite graph, linearity:
As the notation says, the Oppo UDP-205 produces results that are at the threshold of what the measurement can show so it is perfect to 20 bits/120 bits. The RME ADI-2 Pro loses a bit here but its dedicated DAC version has this fixed. The Schiit Yggdrasil as mentioned in its review, remains non-competitive with tons of error here.
Conclusions
There is no getting around it: the Oppo UDP-205 nails the measurements and almost across the board beats its competitors. It delivered the best measured performance of any DAC I have tested to date! Of course it earns my strong recommendation.
With the exception of tiny bit of reference voltage modulation, the Oppo UDP-205 delivers performance that is quite a bit better than the next in line. This also demonstrates how good the ES9038Pro DAC chip is, when implemented correctly.
What a shame that Oppo is getting out of this business. I guess it is good and honorable to do so after produce such a superlative (audio) product.
As always, questions, comments, corrections, etc. are all welcome.
----
If you like this review, please consider donating funds for these types of hardware purchases using Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).
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