Review and Measurements of Oppo UDP-205 UHD Player

[tmtomh]

Meanwhile, on a related topic, how about using a UDP-203 as a preamp? My understanding is it has the same outputs and crossover functions as the 205? Is that correct? The difference being the analog circuitry is not as nice? Or is the DAC itself lesser?
A friend's Denon AVR-2312Ci got wiggy for a day, that's now triggered a kind of excuse to upgrade, maybe direct to power amps...

different DAC, different analogue output section. Wide consensus that it doesn’t sound quite as good as the 203, which is subjective but I suspect would be at least somewhat corroborated by measurements. Also lacks a USB DAC input and I believe optical and coax digital inputs too.

It certainly can be used as a digital preamp. But it lacks the multiple digital inputs that make the 205 a more capable control center for external sources like streamers - the HDMI input is the only input for an external device like that.

 

[Casepro]

Do you need the preamp with the Oppo? Why not drive the JBLs directly?

sorry somehow I missed your question. sorry for the late response. I had been thinking about trying to run the Oppo directly to the amps and using the volume control on the oppo. However, most of the usage of the system is for Dolby Atmos movie watching so I couldn't give up the processing of the Anthem. I ended up purchasing a 3-in-1-out balanced switcher and now have the best of both worlds. The Oppo direct to the amps and then on to the M2's sounds fantastic. There may be something out there that is better, but I certainly have not heard it.

 

[Casepro]

sorry somehow I missed your question. sorry for the late response. I had been thinking about trying to run the Oppo directly to the amps and using the volume control on the oppo. However, most of the usage of the system is for Dolby Atmos movie watching so I couldn't give up the processing of the Anthem. I ended up purchasing a 3-in-1-out balanced switcher and now have the best of both worlds. The Oppo direct to the amps and then on to the M2's sounds fantastic. There may be something out there that is better, but I certainly have not heard it.

BTW, I ended up having some issues with the Anthem and decided to "upgrade" to the new Marantz. No idea if it sounds any different than the Anthem honestly, but I like the way it functions more than the Anthem.

 

[Milt]

It is a fact that you prefer A over B

It is NOT a FACT that A sounds better than B - got it?

BTW, I have some sand that needs to be pounded for the pavers on a new stair landing I'm building - anybody want to help?

I never said I liked A over B.
I said I liked source players with a preamp vs. no preamp.
Although it flies somewhat in the face of my simple signal chain as possible tenet, ime, a preamp is as important any any other system component other than speakers

 

[amin]

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).

View attachment 13709

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:
View attachment 13710

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:

View attachment 13713

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:
View attachment 13714

Just remarkable. Oppo UDP-205 easily beats all the others with ease.

IMD intermodulation distortion measurements mirror the same:
View attachment 13715

Jitter/Noise test shows the previously mentioned low-frequency components:
View attachment 13718


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:

View attachment 13717

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.

----
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Hi Amir,

thanks for complete and detailed information you shared about OPPO205 ,welldone
I'm new in this forum, my system is ASR Emitter exclusive + battery and speaker are Scansonic mb6, do you have any experience regarding these two gears specially on Scansonic mb6 , I would like to have more details information on these components.

Hope could be interesting to you as well

 

[Count De Money]

The Sinad of 114 over Stereo RCA outs....

would it be the same Or similar over the 7. 1 multichannel RCA outs?

 

[AudioExplorer]

@amirm nice set of measures. Archimago also measured the device in a trilogy, part1, part2 and part3 and was equally impressed. Great to see good correlation of measurements using different tools and techniques, performed independently - the audio industry could use more of this. This device is about as transparent as it gets... astonishing from a Blu-ray disc player!

Looking at the measurements made by Archimago, they don't seem to have the side-band spikes around the main tone in the jitter spectrum plot as observed by Amir which he speculated could be due to reference voltage modulation. Could this be because some units have it and some don't, or something with the test set up? Curious why this is observed in one set of measurements but not in the other.

 

[AudioExplorer]

Looking at the measurements made by Archimago for the Oppo UDP-205, they don't seem to have the side-band spikes around the main tone in the jitter spectrum plot as observed by Amir which he speculated could be due to reference voltage modulation. Could this be because some units have it and some don't, or something with the test set up? Also, would something like this be fixable in a firmware update or would it be something that needs some change in hardware? Curious why this is observed in one set of measurements but not in the other and if anyone has insight into this, it would be much appreciated.

 

[HpW]

Looking at the measurements made by Archimago for the Oppo UDP-205, they don't seem to have the side-band spikes around the main tone in the jitter spectrum plot as observed by Amir which he speculated could be due to reference voltage modulation. Could this be because some units have it and some don't, or something with the test set up? Also, would something like this be fixable in a firmware update or would it be something that needs some change in hardware? Curious why this is observed in one set of measurements but not in the other and if anyone has insight into this, it would be much appreciated.

The jitter/spurious are hum related (EU = 50 Hz)..

Are clearly visible by CD/DVDA/USBStick/USB & fs/4 & 24/32 bit sine and only visible if the measurement chico uses large FFT & good FFT Window zooming into the related mHz to 500Hz display range...

Some provide power & oscillator upgrades, but have not seen any measurements with any updates. Will not upgrade my 205 nor like to destroy with the 100MHz oscillator tweaks. Look at dyaudio turtles forum..

 

[HpW]

Look about related measurements with other gear

 

[Deleted member 26908]

@Head_Unit, Meanwhile, on a related topic, how about using a UDP- 203 as a preamp?

I want to touch upon this subject.
Can the 203 be used as a perfectly fine preamplifier connected straight to a power amplifier?
I use a 5.2 (2 subwoofers) and no Atmos/DTS:X.
Is one to get away this such solution vs. purchasing a $2000 A/V receiver for decent amplification, room correction aside?

 

[AudioExplorer]

I am not sure about the 203, but I recently bit the bullet and secured a UDP-205. I have a 5-channel system that was previously anchored by a Oppo BDP-105 going straight to amplifiers and with no height speakers for Atmos. I have been experimenting with 2-channel DACs and was considering a good receiver/pre-pro to be able to handle 4K video in addition to audio for the 5-channel system. But, it kept bugging me that the 5-channel options were so poor relative to the 2-channel options from an audio perspective. The UDP-205 is an amazing player that just checked all the boxes for my needs. It seems significantly better to me than the BDP-105 (subjective impressions) all around. It is excellent as a 2-channel DAC, a multi-channel DAC, as a home theater receiver with its HDMI input (no Atmos), a renderer for music served over Ethernet. Kills many birds with one stone. And all this just for audio. It is quite excellent on the video front as well. There simply isn't anything like it for a multi-channel system that also is used for music.

 

[Wes]

My UDP-205 is extremely unreliable and needs to be reset with a power off/on or even unplugging the power cord. Happens all the time too.

 

[linger63]

My UDP-205 is extremely unreliable and needs to be reset with a power off/on or even unplugging the power cord. Happens all the time too.

Send it in for a service then.
AFAIK they are still doing them.
I think it's a flat fee of around $100 or so

https://www.oppodigital.com/ContactUs.aspx?CatID=3

Well worth doing for a UDP-205........I love mine.

 

[tmtomh]

Send it in for a service then.
AFAIK they are still doing them.
I think it's a flat fee of around $100 or so

https://www.oppodigital.com/ContactUs.aspx?CatID=3

Well worth doing for a UDP-205........I love mine.

Yes, my 205 has been rock solid as well, and I love it.

 

[Deleted member 26908]

I am not sure about the 203, but I recently bit the bullet and secured a UDP-205. I have a 5-channel system that was previously anchored by a Oppo BDP-105 going straight to amplifiers and with no height speakers for Atmos. I have been experimenting with 2-channel DACs and was considering a good receiver/pre-pro to be able to handle 4K video in addition to audio for the 5-channel system. But, it kept bugging me that the 5-channel options were so poor relative to the 2-channel options from an audio perspective. The UDP-205 is an amazing player that just checked all the boxes for my needs. It seems significantly better to me than the BDP-105 (subjective impressions) all around. It is excellent as a 2-channel DAC, a multi-channel DAC, as a home theater receiver with its HDMI input (no Atmos), a renderer for music served over Ethernet. Kills many birds with one stone. And all this just for audio. It is quite excellent on the video front as well. There simply isn't anything like it for a multi-channel system that also is used for music.

I just found this, seems like a dealbraker, I was very sadden to find it...

Source: https://audiovision.de/oppo-udp-203-test/

This must apply to the 205 as well, and for all previous Oppo's, 103, 105 too.
There is lip sync function, but according to the review it only affects the HDMI output.
There's also a bit of a letdown in regards of volume control, the Oppo has it, no problem, but it is a digital control.
The digital control is meant to be output at 100%, anything below that value, you will compress the signal, leaving less S/N ratios and dynamics.

All this is what I've managed to gather lately.
I have yet to find an answer to why Oppo's digital volume control would be any inferior to an A/V receivers digital volume control.
An analogue volume control is the best possible, and can be easily distinguished by a 'start and stop' i.e. you cannot turn it several turns around.
The remote would also move the volume knob if it was analogue, compared to a digital where it doesn't.

Let me know what you think guys, finding out the above, all my seemingly awesome plans just went completely crushed...

 

[esm]

My UDP-205 is extremely unreliable and needs to be reset with a power off/on or even unplugging the power cord. Happens all the time too.

This happens from time to time with mine. In my case, it seems to be related to using HDMI bypass (so it passes through dolby vision) with a particularly sketchy HDMI switch. (I use my UDP-205 as a replacement for a typical A/V receiver.)

Only happens once a month or so, but when it does, the whole device locks up and it usually requires pulling power (sometimes it manages to power itself off, I assume there's a watchdog timer that trips eventually).

 

[tmtomh]

I just found this, seems like a dealbraker, I was very sadden to find it...

View attachment 113674

Source: https://audiovision.de/oppo-udp-203-test/

This must apply to the 205 as well, and for all previous Oppo's, 103, 105 too.
There is lip sync function, but according to the review it only affects the HDMI output.
There's also a bit of a letdown in regards of volume control, the Oppo has it, no problem, but it is a digital control.
The digital control is meant to be output at 100%, anything below that value, you will compress the signal, leaving less S/N ratios and dynamics.

All this is what I've managed to gather lately.
I have yet to find an answer to why Oppo's digital volume control would be any inferior to an A/V receivers digital volume control.
An analogue volume control is the best possible, and can be easily distinguished by a 'start and stop' i.e. you cannot turn it several turns around.
The remote would also move the volume knob if it was analogue, compared to a digital where it doesn't.

Let me know what you think guys, finding out the above, all my seemingly awesome plans just went completely crushed...

Can’t help with the lip sync issue, but the digital volume control is nothing to be concerned about - done internally in the DAC at 32- or 64-bit precision if memory serves.

 

[Wes]

This happens from time to time with mine. In my case, it seems to be related to using HDMI bypass (so it passes through dolby vision) with a particularly sketchy HDMI switch. (I use my UDP-205 as a replacement for a typical A/V receiver.)

Only happens once a month or so, but when it does, the whole device locks up and it usually requires pulling power (sometimes it manages to power itself off, I assume there's a watchdog timer that trips eventually).

My Oppo is connected to the TV via HDMI. Dunno if that could be an issue - since that is exactly what the unit is designed for.

 

[tmtomh]

My Oppo is connected to the TV via HDMI. Dunno if that could be an issue - since that is exactly what the unit is designed for.

Is your firmware up to date?