.
A subjective appreciation of the Oppo BDP-103
Intro: How I got into this boat.
SACD is not for everybody. Nor is everyone capable of fully appreciating good sound. I never thought this stuff was for me, until, one day, I unwittingly purchased a hybrid SACD/CD. The album was Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon" 30th Anniversary Edition. On day, looking at the case more carefully, I read the little white text on the bottom right. I was stumped. I had not noticed that for over a year... After that, I resisted the temptation to purchase a player for a while, and then, one day, just gave-in and picked-up the top model branded "Sony" which, according to the packaging, explicitly read SACDs. It was a big box store, and a minor miracle anything capable of reading an SACD was in there at all.
Even though PCM down-conversion was required for HDMI transport, ( my AVR doesn't support DSD) the difference in sound was still notable, and onl;y after a few hours of listening to my new contraption did I start to dig into what SACD was all about. I immediately started to fancy anything SACD, and it became a minor obsession to get certain albums on SACD. Then I read a post about the Oppo, then a few reviews, and then, when I saw it's rear-end on a big picture and noticed the Analog outs, I went to the Oppo website to read more about it, and learned it could output the DSD to analog, and my receiver had the required analog inputs. That's when I started to seriously lust for it, a few months ago.
Now. I finally pulled the trigger, and I got my new Oppo BDP-103 last week. Here's my thoughts after a rather lengthy, if somewhat incomplete battery of tests. Incomplete, mostly because I do no subscribe to any of the streaming services it can connect to. Lengthy, because I wanted to try everything else prior to coming here to yield just another bland post of acclaim regarding my new toy. I think my testing has now become sufficiently extensive to know the subject and talk about it. I have the HDMI connected to my AVR for video, and hooked-up the Analog links for sound.
Before you read the rest, though, take note that this is just my very
subjective opinion and appreciation of the device. It's not meant to be a professional review. I'm not claiming know-all expertise or anything like it. Take the information written here, and add it to whatever else you've read about it, and you may get a decent "picture" of what this device can and can't do for you.
Great stuff:
- Form factor that actually fits with the rest of the A/V gear. (I dislike small plasticky-looking devices.)
- One button switching of audio streams on SACDs. (Sony BDP-S5100 does not on SACD playback.)
- Networking with Ethernet is highly reliable.
- Fast and efficient SMB and DLNA browsing.
- DSF playback.
- UI is neat, clean and efficient. The OSD is a nice black won't blind you
- Playback over Ethernet of high bandwidth content, is flawless. Went up to peaks of 48 Mbps on certain M2TS files.
- Supports multi-channel FLACs.(ie: mirrored stereo files for a "clean" 4 speaker playback)
- Rather silent. My home is currently quite noisy because of AC, so take this with a grain of salt.
- Played my region-free import PAL DVD of Jean Michel Jarre's 5.1 DTS music album
"Aero"
Missing:
-
Gap-less playback option. Playback of a few albums digitized and saved to my SMB network made me discover this very annoying omission. Listening to a classical music concert or Pink Floyd album quickly gets seriously aggravating. I think this is an inexcusable lack of vision from the software engineers at Oppo. Not everyone wants/likes or can even use CUE sheets and single file WAVs/FLACs: Many other devices people use to playback their files do not support files of 300+ Mbytes.
-
Content information. I would have liked to have a say for my preferred source for media info. Sometimes locally stored information is better and more reliable/desirable. My previous player allowed me to resort to Gracenote only when data was unavailable locally. With the Oppo unit, it's all or nothing.
-
Support for more formats. ISO, IMG, OGG support would have been nice.
On SACD:
The following albums are what I used to audition SACD performance:
The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Time out,
Norah Jones - Come away with me,
Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the moon,
Diana Krall - The look of love,
Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No 2 & Paganini Rhapsody - Mariinsky theatre orchestra & Lang Lang. The difference in sound quality between a PCM re-encode and the real DSD output is stupendous. I did not expect the difference to be so notable.
On Blu Ray:
Oblivion, Tron Legacy both sounded fantastic, and Adele - Live at the Royal Albert Hall, were all a real treat. That said I haven't done much comparison between my Receiver's DAC vs the Oppo's for DTS HD master and Dolby True HD performance, but I know that if there is a difference at all, it is too subtle for me to have noticed it yet.
Given the time the HDCP handshake takes when switching from one HDMI channel to the other, a proper sound comparison can't really be done unless one has two identical systems in the same room, playing from the same source. I can't do that, can't afford it.
My verdict:
I'm a happy camper. No hum, no hiss. The audio performance of the BDP-103 connected with good quality analog cables is absolutely stellar on SACDs. It trumps the PCM down-conversion required when using HDMI transport to the receiver, and does so by a wide margin. The difference is so obvious, it can't be missed.
My receiver may be outdated, but it does a fantastic job. Purchasing a more modern equivalent with the added DSD bitstream playback capability would have cost me 3 times what the Oppo did. Sound improved, and money was saved while getting a new toy.
Acquiring the Oppo BDP-103 was a
sound decision.
