Those of you who know me might recall that I decided to abandon digital audio a little over a year ago. I sold my DAC, unloaded my transport, and sold just about every CD boxed set that had any collector value. There were a number of reasons I made that decision, but it mostly came down to the fact that 95% of the time when I wanted to listen to music I was reaching for a vinyl record.
Why did I come back to digital? A fair question, to be sure. One thing I did not consider was the sizable collection of classical music recordings that I bought from High Definition Tape Transfers. Most of these are transcriptions of rare recordings from 4-track stereo tape to 24bit/192KHz PCM digital audio. I also have a number of classical recordings from HD Tracks in 24bit/176.4KHz digital audio. At the time I decided to go exclusively with vinyl I was on an extended jazz listening run, and I have jazz covered exceptionally well on vintage 50s and 60s pressings and many audiophile 180g and 200g reissues. However, now that I am back to listening to classical music I found that I missed not having access to the HDTT and HD Tracks high resolution digital recordings that I own.
So what I wanted was a transport and DAC rolled into one device. The Oppo BDP-105 sure seemed to have it all: a transport, a DAC with TOSLINK and Coaxial digital inputs, a network music player that could stream digital audio from a PC or connect to internet music services such as Pandora and Rhapsody. It struck me as a veritable Swiss Army knife of digital audio. The price is $1,199, and not unreasonable given all that it does.
So I placed an order for the BDP-105 with Audio Advisor and three days later FedEx was at my door with it. The player is well packaged in stiff foam. It includes a Wireless N USB adapter (that will also support wireless G networks), a remote control, a USB extender, a power cord, and a HDMI cable.
I purchased an inexpensive Samsung 24" 1080p TV to use with the Oppo. If you are going to use the media player features you will need a display for it. If you only want to use optical media and the outboard DAC features then you don't need a monitor. The menu system is elegantly designed from a navigation perspective. In terms of user interface, there are some pros and cons. On the plus side I found it very easy to use and set up with internet music services. Within minutes I was using Pandora and Rhapsody.
On the down side I found the UI rather inadequate for streaming files from my PC. There are a number of issues. For one, using Windows DLNA the Oppo was only able to see files that were encoded with lossy codecs over wireless. So I was only able to see and playback mp3 and m4a files. Since all of my classical music is encoded with FLAC this would not do for me. The Oppo also has 4 USB ports (two on the front and two on the rear panel). I first tested it with a USB thumb drive with some FLAC files loaded on it, and that worked great. So I attached a Western Digital external 1TB hard disk with a lot of music on it and sure enough I was able to browse the file system and play everything on it. But this revealed another glaring weakness of the Oppo as a network media player. The Oppo has to load the directory of every folder you open when browsing. So you will be staring at the hourglass for a few seconds every time you traverse a directory. This is not really that big a deal. The show stopper is that the Oppo is horrendously slow when you are scrolling through a directory that has a lot of folders in it. My drive had 890 folders, and it took me almost 4 minutes to scroll from the top to the bottom. In my view the Oppo is not very good as a network media player, and if you are buying with these features in mind then you should probably look elsewhere.
The Oppo can also be used as an outboard DAC, and this is mainly what I had in mind when I bought it. My plan was to use it primarily as an optical disc player (most of my hires content is on DVD-A and SACD media) and secondarily as an outboard DAC. One of the BDP-105's biggest selling points is that it uses the ESS Sabre32 DAC chip (in fact it has a pair of them). This was the main reason I bought it. So I plugged my M2-Tech HiFace USB to SPDIF media converter into my PC and then made a connection to the coaxial digital input of the Oppo BDP-105. After that I fired up J-River Media Center on my PC and was back in business. In retrospect it probably wasn't fair
to expect J-River Media Center like features from the integrated media player in the Oppo BDP-105. But it would have been great had Oppo Digital licensed the technology from JRiver. The software doesn't haVe a large footprint and could have been embedded in the Oppo firmware. Even if it added $50 to the price of the deck it would have been well worth it given Media Center's terrific feature set.
I'm sure the burning question on the minds of most is "How does it sound?" In short, it sounds plenty good enough. It reminds me a lot of the Eastern Electric Mini Max DAC that I used to own. This is probably no accident since the EE Mini Max DAC also uses the Sabre32 chip. Perhaps if I had them both here and compared them side by side I might notice some very minor differences, but I doubt it. The sound is certainly more than good enough to satisfy me with the highest quality digital content that I have. Here are the titles I have done some critical listening with so far:
24bit/176.4KHz from HD Tracks
24bit/192KHz from High Definition Tape Transfers
24bit/192KHz HDAD from Classic Records
I have not tried the Oppo BDP-105 with any Blu-Ray audio discs.
I did have occasion to try the headphone jack with my Sennheiser HD-598 phones. Volume is controled from the remote. I was able to get nice sound levels out of my cans with the volume set to 80 percent. But I have no plans to use the headphone jack on the Oppo with phones since I have a Woo Audio 2 that is much better.
The reasons to buy the Oppo BPD-105 are:
- Excellent two channel sound quality from SACD and DVD-A sources
- Works superbly as an outboard DAC. Up to 24bit/192KHz with USB
- Works well with internet music services
Some reasons to steer clear depending on your needs:
- Network Media Player function has issues with lossless formats
- Some issues connecting to SMB servers (though DLNA is ok)
- Unacceptably slow browsing with locally attached USB hard disks
- Outboard DAC function is limited to 24bit/96KHz with TOSLINK and Coaxial
That last item turned out to be the only real disappointment that I have had with the BDP-105. I read a number of reviews of this player before buying and not one of them mentioned this limitation. After searching the manual, it does state that TOSLINK and Coaxial inputs are limited to 24bit/96KHz...but the USB input will support up to 24bit/192KHz. Unfortunately I don't have a USB cable long enough so I will need to order one.
I'll also add that if you have a big buget and are looking for a statement piece then this isn't it. The Oppo BDP-105 is a no-frills univeral player that has excellent performance. But that really is all it is. The front panel display is spartan. You won't see any fancy DVD-A or SACD logos light up with the bit depth and sampling rate of your source. The build quality is good, but it is not massively overbuilt and is not likely to impress people who think players like the Denon DVD-5910CI are barely adequate (the thing is built like a tank if you have never seen one). Oppo Digital put the product development costs into the areas that matter the most, video and sound quality. They left the overengineering and stratospheric pricing to the boutique brands out there. Oppo has produced a high quality player for not a crazy amount of money.
--Jerome
