Playing Audio CD on Oppo BD-80, which output? HDMI or Stereo?

[KonfuSed]

Hi All,
I'm currently using the my Oppo BDP80 for playing CD's. I know it's nowhere as good as a CD player but I don't have any cash to buy one now. So gotta use the Oppo to it's best. But as of now I'm using the HDMI connection. So that means the Denon (AVR-1910) is doing the digital to analogue conversion, am I right? Would it be better if I use the Oppo's DAC and use the stereo output and feed it to the amplifier to just do the amplification? Please let me know if that will be a better option. If so then I'll get some IC's for the audio (would get MX, anything else will be better? Can't spend too much on them though, max 1-1.5k Rs). Please help me out here.
Regards,

 

[thekinge]

But as of now I'm using the HDMI connection. So that means the Denon is doing the digital to analogue conversion, am I right?

Yes

Would it be better if I use the Oppo's DAC and use the stereo output and feed it to the amplifier to just do the amplification? Please let me know if that will be a better option. If so then I'll get some IC's for the audio (would get MX, anything else will be better? Can't spend too much on them though, max 1-1.5k Rs). Please help me out here.
Regards,

Which Denon AVR are you using? Better performance depends on the DAC used in the Oppo and Denon and the implementation of the DAC by the manufacturers. In my case, I quite like my Emotiva ERC-1 to do the digital to analogue conversion over the Onkyo DACs. My Onkyo AVR just acts as an amplifier. I would suggest that you try both and select what you like.

My exposure to ICs is only with Blue Jeans Cable ICs (which cost around 2.5K INR shipped) so I'd leave it to other members to recommend a suitable IC for you

 

[madbullram]

Why dont you listen to a song that you are quite familiar with in both modes and decide? Once with HDMI, second with the direct L/R.

 

[spirovious]

I think he has Denon 1910?Oppo onbrd DAC may perform better than that of Denon.
Denon has AD dac & oppo Ciruss logic.

 

[KonfuSed]

Yes



Which Denon AVR are you using? Better performance depends on the DAC used in the Oppo and Denon and the implementation of the DAC by the manufacturers. In my case, I quite like my Emotiva ERC-1 to do the digital to analogue conversion over the Onkyo DACs. My Onkyo AVR just acts as an amplifier. I would suggest that you try both and select what you like.

My exposure to ICs is only with Blue Jeans Cable ICs (which cost around 2.5K INR shipped) so I'd leave it to other members to recommend a suitable IC for you

Using Denon 1910 AVR. I should've mentioned that in my first post itself, my bad. You are a lucky guy to have the Emotiva. I'm gonna get a CD player whenever I'm able to make any new purchase

Why dont you listen to a song that you are quite familiar with in both modes and decide? Once with HDMI, second with the direct L/R.

That means I'll have to buy the IC's. I wanted to avoid that as I';m running low on finance already in case the HDMI will sound better with Denon's DAC.

I think he has Denon 1910?Oppo onbrd DAC may perform better than that of Denon.
Denon has AD dac & oppo Ciruss logic.

And that almost seals the deal that I'm gonna need a pair of IC's. :sad: Can someone confirm this, I tried to google but only getting some rave reviews about the Oppo BDP83 and I think that uses a different circuitry/DAC for audio then BDP-80. Am I right?

 

[thekinge]

That means I'll have to buy the IC's. I wanted to avoid that as I';m running low on finance already in case the HDMI will sound better with Denon's DAC.


And that almost seals the deal that I'm gonna need a pair of IC's. :sad: Can someone confirm this, I tried to google but only getting some rave reviews about the Oppo BDP83 and I think that uses a different circuitry/DAC for audio then BDP-80. Am I right?

KonfuSed, you could ask local HFV members to lend you a pair of decent ICs and try both the Oppo & Denon DACs out before making a final decision. Although you have to specify the location in English for us non-cartographers

 

[KonfuSed]

KonfuSed, you could ask local HFV members to lend you a pair of decent ICs and try both the Oppo & Denon DACs out before making a final decision. Although you have to specify the location in English for us non-cartographers

Good idea, gonna trouble some Bangalorean HiFi'ers soon for lending me some IC's.

 

[gobble]

IMHO Oppo cd playback is nothing to sing about, both on the 80 and 83

Get a budget cdp or start saving for one

Sent from my iPod touch

 

[KonfuSed]

Yeah gobble, I'm aware of that. But as I said in my opening post, this is a stop gap arrangement till I can get one after the saving some money. So during this period I just want to get the Oppo's best possible performance.

 

[sud98]

I can lend you my bandridge interconnects for a few days if it helps you make the decision.

You can use the optical/coax/hdmi out of the bdp80 and the avr will do the processing. Only with analog will the bdp80 will be doing the dac work.

The 83 has a higher version of dac so would be better than the 80, however, would be lower than a good cd player.

 

[KonfuSed]

Hi friends,
Did some quickfire testing between Oppo and PS3. I just tried playing the same song thru PS3 and Oppo and to my ears the PS3 was sounding better (I'm very sure about it). Both were connected via HDMI but PS3 probably is upsampling (PS3 is set to 44.1/88.2/176.4 settings, but not sure if that's what it was doing) the tracks. But it was just one song which I played and it might sound different for different songs. Have anyone tried the PS3 for it's audio capabilities? Sorry for trying out so many things but just wanted to try and test whatever I've as of now.
Regards,
EDIT: Played few more songs and now I don't think I'm able to hear much difference now. Still PS3 felt kinda lil' better but not to a big extent. So I guess I can as of now just use any of these. So back to Oppo again to check the analogue output sometime soon. Time to go to sleep now, enough of this

 

[sud98]

Last weekend Konfused and I did a 2 hr A/B test between the Oppo BDP 83 and the Oppo BDP 80 to compare the audio capabilities. Below are the details of the tests and the conclusions. As we both are relative noob's to audio, do add your comments as we may not have done the tests correctly.

The Setup
Oppo BDP 80 connected to Denon 1910 via HDMI
Oppo BDP 83 connected via stereo via Bandridge i/c to Denon CD input (Direct mode)

Speakers Wharfedale 9.5

Remote BDP 80 (enabled us to operate both players simultaneously)

The Test

We played the following tracks
1. Dire Straits - Sultans of Swing/Walk of Life/Romeo and Juliet
2. Indian Ocean - Maa Rewa/Kandisa
3. Rang De Basanti - Title Song, Bhajan
4. Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms - SACD

Results
Both of us could not find any qualitative difference in CD's 1-3. The 80 sounded louder for all three CD's.
FOr the SACD, I did feel there was more clarity and I could hear more instruments in the 83 over 80, not sure if Konfused felt the same.

Conclusion
1. Both of us have poor ears and cant differentiate
2. There is no signficant quality difference between the Oppo 83 stereo circuitry and the Denon 1910 (as Gobble and others have commented earlier)
3. The bandridge interconnect is a low end one so could be a culprit.
4. The speakers WH 9.5 did not help in resolving the differences.

My conclusion is its point 2. KonfuSed you could add your points, if I have missed anything.
I would like the experts to comment on the same and give their feedback.

 

[audiodelic]

You should have also connected both via analog stereo ic's and tested then we could have determined the differences between both player dac's also.

 

[sud98]

We could have, but didnt have the additional i/c. Also, the point of buying the 80 is to use it as a transport and the 83 claims to have a better DAC than the avg AVR's which didnt appear so in our test.

 

[gobble]

I don't believe there is an appreciable difference between 80 and 83 worth its increased price for pure audio, although I did not listen to them on the same day or month in my setup. The 83SE may be better sounding though.

Cheers

 

[KonfuSed]

Hey Sud98, neat review. My observations were also same. Only one thing I want to add is that the volume level was slightly higher while playing through HDMI then the Stereo output and due to this I initially felt that the 80 was sounding better than 83. But after adjusting the volume I couldn't feel any difference. And as Sudhir mentioned I'm also a totally noob and so subtle differences never bother me.
Also, for the Oppo BDP80 we tried using both Stereo (Oppo doing decoding) and HDMI (Denon doing decoding) initially before we connected the BDP-83. To my ears except the volume level I couldn't find much difference. Actually initially due to the increased volume level I felt that music thru the HDMI was sounding better.
BTW, it was almost an mini meet as another HFV'ian Amitkeerti(he is not very active as per him) also joined after some time. We had a really nice time listening to music. And what added to the test that me and Sudhir had the same set of CD's and it was easy for us to do the A-B comparision with same CD's playing on both the players simultaneously.
Regards,