New Oppo player for late 2012

[HiWire]

A strangely late review of the Oppo BDP-105D: http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/oppo-bdp-105d-audiophile-blu-ray-disc-player/

They probably should have reviewed it before it went out of production. 

[purk]

Has anyone tried their new Sonica DAC with the dual 9028pro on board?

[morphsci]

Yep, have one at home that replaced my HA-1. I like it a lot, but I also liked the HA-1. I have always liked the Sabre DACs so keep that in mind. I have not done a side by side comparison but I will be keeping the Sonica. It is feeding the BHSE with Omega, 007-1 or 009.

Edited March 13, 2017 by morphsci

[luvdunhill]

Yep, have one at home that replaced my HA-1. I like it a lot, but I also liked the HA-1. I have always liked the Sabre DACs so keep that in mind. I have not done a side by side comparison but I will be keeping the Sonica. It is feeding the BHSE with Omega, 007-1 or 009.

That reminds me - I need to sell my Audiolab CD player. It has easily the best Sabre implementation I have heard. I would be willing to let you try it out if you are interested - it's been sitting in a closet for years now.

[morphsci]

1 hour ago, luvdunhill said:

That reminds me - I need to sell my Audiolab CD player. It has easily the best Sabre implementation I have heard. I would be willing to let you try it out if you are interested - it's been sitting in a closet for years now.

 

Which model is it? I may be interested.

[luvdunhill]

It's this one:

http://www.audiolab.co.uk/product-detail.php?pid=9

I will cover shipping - just need to get this out of my closet

It's worth trying, even as just a preamp or DAC - not to mention the disc spinner. It is a John Westlake design (Peachtree Audio and other companies).

[morphsci]

Don't have many CDs left laying around but it does seem interesting. Drop me a PM when you get a chance and let me know how much you want. Thanks.

[luvdunhill]

Don't have many CDs left laying around but it does seem interesting. Drop me a PM when you get a chance and let me know how much you want. Thanks.

That old tech. Okay, let me think about it and will PM.

[HiWire]

Oppo added some details to the UDP-205 page: http://oppodigital.com/blu-ray-udp-205/blu-ray-udp-205-Overview.aspx

[TMoney]

RIP Oppo?

https://www.oppodigital.com/farewell.aspx

[Dusty Chalk]

Sucks.  They deliberately announced it on the second so it wouldn't be construed as an April Fools joke.

[Hopstretch]

Wow. Wonder what the full story is? Great products, great brand equity and they're just ... folding the tent. It doesn't make sense. 

[TMoney]

I don’t get it either. Solidly engineered products at reasonable prices. They weren’t competing in the general consumer marketplace, but their prices were too high for that. 

I will be sad to see them go. 

[skullguise]

Definitely a bit odd, and sad.  I assume they will keep their other markets (phones, etc.) in China domestic market (?)......

As good as they were, maybe they NEEDED the volume they didn't have to best maintain their operating model.  They certainly packed a lot into a decent-priced device.

[Laowei]

I think they could see the writing on the wall for playback of physical media. The outlook could not support their margins while maintaining their desired best in class product philosophy. Instead of the long spiral downward of cheapening their designs to fit into a commodity class mentality, they are now simply bowing out having done an admirable job of owning their market. Rare to see such a corporate display of integrity and pride in work done these days. 

Edited April 3, 2018 by Laowei

[Hopstretch]

That's certainly possible. But shareholders generally prefer it when you instead unload the business onto someone less farsighted and scrupulous for a few hundred million smackeroos, which they can put into their pockets.

[purk]

Sad to see.  Oppo was somewhat responsible for killing off Sony ES & Pioneer Elite video players...only to witness its own slow dead.  I owned the 105 & HA-1 and though that they were quite good for the price.  The HA-1 was a beast but the sound was a little bit dry for my taste. 

[recstar24]

The 103 has been such a centerpiece for everything in my rig audio visual. I give oppo much respect and wish them the best in future endeavors. 

[Dusty Chalk]

12 hours ago, Laowei said:

I think they could see the writing on the wall for playback of physical media. The outlook could not support their margins while maintaining their desired best in class product philosophy. Instead of the long spiral downward of cheapening their designs to fit into a commodity class mentality, they are now simply bowing out having done an admirable job of owning their market. Rare to see such a corporate display of integrity and pride in work done these days. 

But they were adapting -- didn't they have a DAC/preamp at one point, oriented towards people like me who played everything either streamed or cached?  Oh, yeah, the aforementioned HA-1.

And what about that whole Lexicon debacle?  Isn't that the ultimate sign that they had achieved their best-in-class mark, possibly even best-in-all-classes?

Also, did they ever get the whole 105-as-USB-DAC thing working more smoothly?  I could never get it to work for me.

[Laowei]

11 hours ago, Dusty Chalk said:

But they were adapting -- didn't they have a DAC/preamp at one point, oriented towards people like me who played everything either streamed or cached?  Oh, yeah, the aforementioned HA-1.

And what about that whole Lexicon debacle?  Isn't that the ultimate sign that they had achieved their best-in-class mark, possibly even best-in-all-classes?

Also, did they ever get the whole 105-as-USB-DAC thing working more smoothly?  I could never get it to work for me.

Sure, all valid points.

Just writing of my perspective of their quiting the home entertainment business they successfully built up. Thought it was pretty classy the way they handled the PR of going out on top and not selling out. Also offering continuing software updates, fixes and service to its existing customer base and not just waiting and let the whole business model implode and leave everyone stranded. Their exit will leave a big hole in the audio community. that hopefully another company sees as an opportunity to fill. 

I never got around to owning a new OPPO product. I would not hesitate to buy used. 

[ironbut]

I bought the 205 and I've been happy with it.

Their announcement was pretty surprising to me but I thought that maybe the audiophile community/echo chamber was making Oppo seem like a much more important brand than it really was.

I've been following a discussion on one of the mailing lists I subscribe to and one of the guys who writes for HiFi News was saying that "the guy on the street" in the UK (and he included folks who work at places like Best Buy) have probably never even heard of Oppo. 

Still, I'm sad to see that a company who was producing "high value" audio gear couldn't make a go of it.

[Grahame]

Maybe that's just the reality of the consumer market dichotomy. A race to the bottom for commodity goods where (lowest) price is everything, and the remaining non-price sensitive, cost no object 1%.

Where do high quality, value for money goods fit in that world?

[justin]

can't be easy to make a competitive disc player with how fast the technology moves. 

a few years ago i was looking at home theater stuff and saw Emotiva was working on a HT processor. But it kept getting pushed back because by the time they had it almost ready, the tech was obsolete and they had to update it. Did that thing ever get released?

[robm321]

What Grahame said. 

[HiWire]

I'm sad about this. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get a UDP-205 (or whether I should buy one) before they're gone. It's the last of the reasonable-priced SACD players with analog outputs. Sony quickly discontinued their $350 UHP-H1 player after the HDMI-only UBP-X800 4K player was released last year. Marantz hasn't updated their mainstream player (the audio-only SA2005) since 2014 and Pioneer's Elite BDP-88FD Blu-ray player is almost twice the price. Marantz's flagship SA-10 SACD player is about $7,000. Esoteric, Luxman, and Accuphase players are somewhere in that stratosphere.

I wrote a CD player comparison from a listening session at a local audio store a long time ago when I was shopping for my CD player (I'd love to do an updated one with new hardware and older ears): https://www.head-fi.org/threads/5-players-enter-1-player-leaves-nad-m5-simaudio-supernova-accuphase-dp-75-audio-research-cd7-arcam-cd36.277933/

I have a small DVD collection and I've upgraded to Blu-ray in the last few years, playing them on my Super Slim Sony PlayStation 3 (its Blu-ray video and analog audio output are impressive, but its DVD upsampling quality is average at best) to my Panasonic plasma TV and Arcam stereo. The Oppo UDP-205 seems to be the magic bullet. To get analog output out of HDMI-only players, you can use the $40 boxes you find on Amazon or you can try one of these: http://www.essenceelectrostatic.com/product/hdacc-ii-4k/

But I find the idea of HDMI-analog conversion dodgy at best – my preference goes to manufacturers who are capable of putting together a top-level analog output stage in their digital source along with a quality transport and DAC. It leads to fewer boxes and cables and a reasonable budget that doesn't include power supplies that cost thousands of dollars (Naim, I'm looking at you). I was also disappointed to read that Oppo dropped HDCD support in the UDP players. Some of my favorite albums are on HDCD (the entire Roxy Music CD catalog) or SACD hybrid discs – I'm invested in nearly-defunct silver disc media, although I recently started ripping my discs to Apple Lossless files as a backup strategy.

My Arcam FMJ CD36 broke down last month and I had a moment of panic (I've owned it since 2007). I wrote Arcam (now owned by Harman, which it turns out is now owned by Samsung!) and they told me that they were unable to repair this "long obsolete" mechanism. I really didn't want to get rid of my beloved player and I am against disposable products in general. After about a week of inquiries, I was able to find a local shop who repaired its loader mechanism and replaced its belt – crisis averted. Arcam has been heading towards a mass-market product range for over a decade and this was the final confirmation for me. They pointed me towards their new product, the upcoming $1,000 HDA CDS10 SACD player/network streamer: http://www.audioaffair.co.uk/arcam-cds50-sacd-cd-player-with-network-streaming. Their refusal to service my CD36 left a bad taste in my mouth.

I invested in an all-Arcam system a few years after getting my CD player (Arcam C31 preamp + P1 power amps) and I think they were the last statement audiophile products from the company. Changes in the market have caught some of the major players out, but I still think there is room in the middle for people with modest budgets. My recent experiences with the Chord Mojo, the Beyerdyamic Amiron, the Focal Elear headphones, and even the Schiit Fulla 2 amp/DAC proved that it's still possible to get audiophile value for money. Additionally, I enjoyed listening to the Focal Utopias and I'll have to try them again.

I still believe there is and will be a demand for high end CD and SACD players, though not a large one, and the recent cassette revival proves that obsolete audio formats can return from the junk shops. High-end cassette decks are going for quite a bit of money now, and it's possible that the same could happen to disc players (provided there is a viable parts supply, particularly their transports and loading mechanisms, as I found out firsthand).

The refurbished Sony UHP-H1 is selling for cheap on eBay, so I took a chance and ordered one today... I'll let you guys know if it is any good after it shows up.

Edited April 6, 2018 by HiWire