For the past three years I have been using a Denon 5910CI as my SACD and DVD-A player. I've been extremely happy with its performance and have no complaints. But lately I have been thinking about buying a universal Blu-Ray player to replace it. Blu-ray audio titles are starting to trickle into the market, but that by itself is not reason enough for me. It would also be nice to be able to watch the occasional Blu-Ray movie on the 42" set in my home office, or better yet get Blu-Ray concerts and be able to enjoy the audio through my main listening system.
The models that are currently on my radar are:
Denon DBP-4010UDCI Universal Blu-Ray Player MSRP $1,999
Marantz UD8004 Universal Blu-Ray Player MSRP $2,299
Oppo BDP-95 Universal Blu-Ray Player MSRP $999
I have had some experience with Oppo in the past. I had an Oppo DVD Player that got fairly heavy use for about 2 years before it broke. I was favorably impressed with its performance and very underwhelmed by the build quality.
The Denon 5910CI is massive, built like a tank, and features stellar DVD-A and SACD playback. I am inclined to rule out the Oppo just on my experience with their build quality, but don't want to exclude a potentially great player. At this point I am merely kicking the idea around and am not even close to a decision. If there was enough room in my rack I would probably buy a universal Blu-Ray player and keep the Denon 5930CI.
What say you? Are their other players I should be looking at? My budget is up to $3,500 -- but no higher.
--Jerome
Hello Jerome - as an Oppo BDP-83 owner, using it primarily for Blu-Ray movie playback, I can simultaneously agree with your concerns about build quality while still feeling confident that if I was in your shoes, I wouldn't be inclined to write-off the BDP-95 as a candidate. The BDP-95 looks to have a substantially "beefier" chassis than the somewhat flimsy BDP-83 version. Also, at the comparatively reasonable asking price it'd be a fine candidate for one of Dan Wright's upgrade paths for that model. While his tube package is a hefty $1,750, the solid-state package is "only" $500. I'm confident enough in Dan and his work to trust that he wouldn't involve himself with a product that didn't represent a good "platform" for his upgrades. In the time with my much more modest BDP-83 I have found it to be a solid performer for its intended movie playback duties, while also being favorably impressed with it audio capabilities via coax output to an external DAC. It faithfully plays back Redbook CD's, HDCD's, and the handful of SACD's friends have brought by. My only gripe with my unit, and it may have been resolved with the later models, is an awkwardness with remote-control CD playback as I was accustomed to being able to pre-select tracks for playback BEFORE initiating play mode. It may be there's a way I haven't discovered but I've had to begin play and THEN enter a different track number. - String
Or perhaps I should consider pulling the Denon and my Slim Devices Transporter and replacing both with a PC...
http://www.bricelucas.com/bricelucas/?p=260#more-260
I doubt I'll go in that direction but I was struck by the computer case (and its whopping $599 price tag). Still, with solid state drives and the right sound damping materials you can build a very quiet computer these days, and there are a number of high end sound cards on the market. Hmmm....nahh.
--Jerome
I was hoping for more replies but that's ok. This can be a space where I just think out loud and if anyone wants to jump in and tell me how crazy this all sounds then that's fine.
The computer idea is getting a bit more traction. I would give up SACD compatibility unless I wanted to buy something like an Oppo BPD-93 (which sort of defeats the purpose of this exercise). Then again I only have about 50 SACDs and most of those are hybrids, so the investment in SACD that I have is not huge. I have much more content in the DVD-A format and 24bit FLAC downloads.
The computer can be used as my main PC rather than a dedicated audio device. The computer on my desk is about 30 months old, and will be due for replacement soon. Might as well kill two birds with one stone.
The cost for what I have in mind, however, is high and comes in at about $2,900. That much dough would buy a screamin' fast computer with a six core i7 processor, 24GB of memory, Nvidia GTX 570 video card, audiophile sound card, Blu-Ray burner, 200GB solid state system drive, and a 2TB 6G SATA hard disk for application data and music. I think I would get much more value out of the computer than I would a universal Blu-Ray player (which I have already said I would go as high as $3,500 for).
I could sell the Denon 5910CI and Transporter, perhaps recouping a sizable portion of the cost.
--Jerome
If you're going to dump the player all together and go with straight computer out, I'd check into either a PC or a Mac Mini running out to an Empirical DAC. Some of the cleanest, most dynamic digital I've ever heard. Lived with it for 4 days during last RMAF and was stunned at what could be had from that combo.
Bryan
I was thinking of a high-end RME or Lynx audio card. The goal is to get three boxes out of my rack (Transporter, Denon 5910, and Oppo DVD Player) and replace them with a PC.
Spending $4K on a DAC isn't what I had in mind, but I appreciate the suggestion.
--Jerome
I can;t speak for the current crop of universal players but in the past the universals were known for doing one part of the whole very well, but falling down on the others. I think it takes a bit of coin to get one that does each of them good.
The Oppo's always had a great picture, but the sound was usually a bit hard and not quite up to par for similarly priced single format players. I agree that if you can go PC based for your music it might be worth your while to explore that, and get a decent unit that does the picture well for your home theater.
I to have had a similar experience with Oppo. I have a 981 DVD player that I used in my living room primarily for video.Great performance on all fronts (The audio was just OK on the main system in the mancave but was more than adequate for the Paradigm/Sony HT receiver based system in the living room. Just like you, after about two years of heavy use one of the caps in the power supply bought the farm and the machine went down for the count. I called Oppo and they told me that they have a $49 flat service fee that would cover whatever was needed to get the machine back on its feet. They also said that turn around time was usually right around 3 days. Now this just happened last week and I haven't had the time to search the garage for the original Oppo box to ship it in so I can't verify that things will go exactly as they claim, but it does sound like a good service program. That at least takes a little bit of the sting out of the lower build quality. Hey, of course it would be better if the Oppo was a more solidly built machine, but heck , it is also half the price of the machines that are. Once again, everything in this hobby always come down to some kind of trade-off.
As for a computer based system I would add two suggestions, which are based on my experience with computers in general since I have not taken the plunge into PC based audio yet (although at the rate that I am running out of space I may be forced to soon. :duh) First I would plan on equipping the machine with two 2Tb drives one to be used as primary storage and one for backup. One of the biggest investments you will make in this type of system will be the time it takes you to load all the music.If that storage drive goes down, you don't want to have to go through all that work again. A second drive is cheap insurance. And no, I would not want to set them up in a RAID array. If you get a virus or file corruption problem on your primary storage drive, the last thing you want is for that same problem to replicated on the backup drive in realtime. The second thing I would do is put in another small drive for just OS and application and keep them separate from your data files. Windows has this nasty habit of corrupting drives the fix for which often involves repartitioning and reformatting the affected drive. If it was me I would feel much better knowing that my data was in a safe and secure place. In the grand scheme of thing hard drives are cheap and spending a little more up front on the machine can save you a whole lot of headaches later on.
Thanks Tom. I probably should have mentioned that I am an IT systems engineer with 30 years of technical experience. Trust me when I say that backup is well in hand. I have a dedicated 6TB NAS backup solution and make archival duplicate backup sets of critical stuff (including music) to LTO tape.
As I mentioned in a prior post the OS and applications will run from a 200GB solid state system disk. Application data, user data, and music will live on a 2TB 6G SATA drive.
The more I think about this solution the more I like it. I just need to settle on a sound card.
--Jerome
I like the way you're thinking. With a computer you'll have access to internet radio.
For audio hardware, you want to reduce jitter to lowest level possible, get the 24/192 conversion you want, and have an audiophile quality output stage. Such a DAC with USB input would be ideal, but a USB>SPDIF converter is available from M2Tech. http://www.m2tech.biz/
Quote from: jsaliga on May 02, 2011, 07:43:21 AM
I have a dedicated 6TB NAS backup solution and make archival duplicate backup sets of critical stuff (including music) to LTO tape.
A man after my own heart. :thumb:
this one is right up my alley having used PCs as transport for going on 10 years now... will try to write more later... just passing through at the moment...
Quote from: hometheaterdoc on May 02, 2011, 09:11:30 AM
this one is right up my alley having used PCs as transport for going on 10 years now... will try to write more later... just passing through at the moment...
Can't wait Shane, as I'm computer DUMB!!! but am interested in eventually setting up a single, simple, full featured computer/TV/audio system.
Well I'm not computer dumb, and this won't be my first foray into multimedia PCs. But there is always something to learn.
I have decided to run with the idea. This will also give me an opportunity to move some other gear out that I am not really using. I'd rather see it go to a good home than sit in my rack collecting dust.
I think it's time for an audio gear yard sale.
--Jerome
I have been doing some reading up on the PS Audio PerfectWave DAC. Looks like an interesting product but at $3K I would imagine that sales aren't exactly brisk. There does seem to be some discounting going on through a few dealers, though not much. Anyway, still kicking the idea of a DAC around.
The PC configuration is pretty much set and written in stone. I have settled on the RME HDSPe AIO PCI Express sound card.
This should be a fun project.
--Jerome
RME is among the best cards, along with Lynx and CardDeluxe. The opamp analog output on these is good enough for pro audio but not as good as a discreet circuit designed for audiophile use. This is where pro audio guys laugh because there is no difference on the oscilloscope, and they are extremely price and spec aware. But the sound differences are obvious in comparison. An external DAC allows a discreet output stage, which is capable of preserving the sense of space and life better than the opamp sound cards. The only thing more misleading to an audiophile than an audiophile review is a pro audio review.
Wow, since my first post this thread has certainly morphed - "universal" players to computer-based media servers. As a guy who has made that jump a couple of years ago I can definitely make some recommendations.
1. Make pretty darn sure what SOFTWARE you are likely to want to utilize in a computer-based system BEFORE deciding on the age-old MAC vs PC hardware issue. There is a whole lot of differing opinion being posted on audio forums with regards to what constitutes the "optimal" playback software, with pretty much universal agreement that many, or most, of the available stuff is sonically superior to "straight" iTunes playback. While PC-based software seemed to hold an early advantage in computer audio, it is now an "open field" with several Mac-centric players gaining sonic ground.
2. The Mac/PC thing tends to inflame some folks, and I have no vested interest in championing one over the other. I have used both platforms, both for professional and personal use, and am therefore somewhat more qualified to comment than some who seem to base their rather STRONG opinions entirely on hearsay and rumor. An important reality to keep in mind is that whatever computer platform is chosen, it should for the sake of "optimal" audio quality be used for NOTHING BUT audio playback. So if like a whole lot of folks you are biased towards a particular platform, do to familiarity borne of other forms of usage, throw your conceptions out the window and realize this is a very different type of application which will entail new software "learning curves" irregardless of hardware choices. You should entertain the notion of running a "clean" machine, optimized solely for audio quality and determined to be the best choice as a dedicated music server. In my particular case, after weeks of intensive online research, I chose the Mac Mini as my music server. I replaced the "spin drive" with an SSD, maxed-out the amount of RAM, optimized OS settings for audio playback, established my music "library" on an external/Firewire 800 connected/mirrored RAID drive system, and am only now preparing to begin the "audition" of Apple Core Audio compatible players. Amarra, Pure Music, and Audirvana are the top candidates with others available.
3. Computer-based playback is not yet a "mature" solution for quality audio. All you have to do is to read the huge number of posts on sites like Computer Audiophile, Audio Asylum, and Audio Circle to understand that it is a VERY FLUID environment with little consensus yet reached in any area, either hardware or software. Computer-based playback is not an ideal strategy, yet, for those plagued by extreme symptoms of Nervosa.
This is just off the top of my head. There's LOTS MORE where this came from, I'm sorry to say. In many ways, I wish I was still spinning CD's on my trusty, old, modified-Raysonic CDP-128. Those days were simpler - String
Doing D/A conversion in the computer itself has never been totally successful for me, no matter the price of the sound card I tried. It can sound ok, don't get me wrong, but not as good as using an external DAC that is outside the computer itself.. plus it is easier to swap the DAC to get a new sound or make the system work in a new config. Using a PC as the file store and means of getting digital information to a DAC (be it AES/EBU, RCA SPDIF, Firewire or USB?)... That's what a PC based solution excels at..... and some of the USB based DACs out there are really quite good right now... so using something like the Lynx Two sound card with a custom JPS Labs dongle to get AES/EBU digital out doesn't actually really make as much sense anymore as it once did... especially from a cost perspective... using that money on a better USB cable or using it to help fund the purchase of a better external USB based ore Firewire based DAC is a better use of the funds, imo.
There are several "how to" threads over at audio circle and other sites where you can rip your DVD-A discs in full rez 24/192 and SACD converted to 24/88.2 or 24/176.4 with minimal effort and a few cheap devices. Worth checking out so you could potentially rid yourself of the discs forever and play them back via the PC. I think I only own about 10 SACDs, several of which are hybrids anyways... but I may do the ripping just to get rid of the discs all together. I never listen to them as the only universal player I now have here is the Oppo 83SE.
The PS Audio piece has some perks to it in the form of the network bridge being a great player for DNLA based music repository on your network. It connects and communicates via I2S to the DAC itself. It's the best sounding connection I've made to the DAC so far, even more so than spinning a disc with the Perfect Wave Transport via I2S connected HDMI... the software is buggy as crap and I hate apple devices with a passion that's difficult to express in words (I use an Apple Ipod4 to install the PS Audio control software). But when it does work, it's a neat interface and remote control option to have your music at your fingertips, see cover art, etc., control the unit much better than it's included remote control's volume buttons, and eliminate the computer from the music room all together. It's almost the exact opposite of what the original poster is going for with the computer solution.... Not to say that you can't still use the computer with the PWD by outputting AES/EBU or spdif from a good pro sound card or using one of the USB to spdif dongles like the M2Tech and then treat the PS Audio like an ordinary DAC being fed from a disc spinning transport... I do both all the time... The other perk of the DAC is that it has plenty of drive to power an amp directly and use it's digital remote volume control capabilities. I only run the PWD straight to amps without a preamp. I found that putting a preamp in front of it always hurts the transparency and overall sound quality. So as long as you don't need analog volume inputs to integrate it with a home theater solution or to feed it analog sources like vinyl, the PS Audio PWD is a music player, DAC, and preamp all rolled into one unit. It is a very neutral DAC though with a leaner and slightly more forward upper midrange compared to others. So if you are looking for warm and syrupy, it has to come in the form of the cables and amplifier you use after the DAC.... cause the DAC itself won't add any of that....
back to the computer stuff...
For those people out there that like Macs and their interface, buying a Mac Mini, Pure Music (or whatever expensive software for Mac that is hot and good right now) and follow the various online web pages that detail how to config them for optimum digital output. That is a very viable solution that will work for lots of folks. Bigfish has done that locally here in the area and it works quite well. There are a number of manufacturers out there that cater to the Mac world... in fact, their stuff seems to only work ideally on a Mac. Some features are only available via Mac... for example, the 384K input resolution capability via USB of the Antelope Zodiac Gold DAC is Mac only at the moment. Long story short, as long as you can live with the way the software works for the Mac, it's a pretty straight forward setup and config with the Mac machines as Pure Music runs on top of Itunes... so it's an interface that a lot of the mass unwashed are familiar with. Personally, I hate paying good money for something if I can get equivalent or better performance for less or free. So I shy away from the Mac solutions.
To playback high rez files, you need very little computer processing power. It doesn't need a lot of memory or CPU. In fact, the smaller or less power hungry the better as, like the Mac Mini form factor, less power usually equates to less heat which equates to less fan noise to cool the thing. I've found that it's almost mandatory for above 24/96 files to have a hardwired connection as my wireless can be a bit flaky for that much data transfer across the network from my office machine where my media files are stored to the computer in the audio room. I like to have a PC in the audio room with a bare bones hard drive installed. Lately that's a 60GB solid state disk (SSD) or even smaller as that is plenty big to install operating system and program files. The perk is that the SSD hard drive is completely silent. My current audio PC uses a big case that is very open for airflow. I have all case fans removed and use an oversized heatsink CPU cooler with a huge variable RPM speed fan on it. That's the only fan in the system besides the power supply fan (which is also variable speed). I run a low power Intel CPU chip on an Asus motherboard... cheap package deal from newegg.com that came with memory/motherboard/cpu as a package for almost nothing... so even running multiple remote desktop sessions to the other computers in the house, all the apps I can ever use, plus playing music, the PC is almost dead silent and never gets hot enough to spin up the CPU fan much at all. I have a separate machine in my office across the network where I have tons of TB worth of data storage, including my music collection. I've tried it a number of ways and this method works just as well for me as dedicated large SSDs in the audio PC case in the room.
I built a couple crazy computers where I did a linear low noise power supply with all kinds of shielding and other tweaks like EMI/RFI shielding and power conditioning... it made a minor difference, but never enough for me to justify the cost and effort differential. Same with all the crazy operating system configuration changes you can make to make the PC sound better... were there minor changes by going to that extreme? Sometimes, but not really worth the extra effort. Current WASAPI drivers in windoze 7 or ASIO or kernel streaming will work great. My current audio PC, aside from the Lynx Two professional sound card and the windows operating system, cost under $300 total in parts.... with 70%+ of that being the case that I removed all the fancy fans from :) and the SSD drive (and they've gotten cheaper since I bought that one). It works great. I've used cheap desktops from Dell in the past to great effect. My HTPC in the theater room is a pre-built HP desktop computer that works fine for that purpose.
A couple hundred should get you a plenty good PC that can be used as the basis for an audio PC. The only time you need the crazy performance is if you plan to do computer games with it. Even then, you'd be surprised what games will run on these days. You don't even need the network connected office machine. Lots of places are running crazy cheap sales for external hard drives that you can attach via USB, firewire, e-SATA, etc. Buy two, make exact copies of your music repository to them both. Disconnect and put one of them off to the side as your backup. Force yourself to connect it every once in a while to copy over the new music you buy so you have an updated backup.... while you can certainly get a better backup solution, it's not always completely necessary. I always buy new hard drives in multiples of two. Whatever I copy to one hard drive, I make a backup of it to the second hard drive and have it stored unpowered and ready to replace the active one for when the hard drive fails. I do windows operating system backups as well... but for media disks, this system has been working well for me for years....
I love Foobar as my music player software. I use it almost exclusively. It's free and all the drivers and component add-on's are free. It's not as pretty as software like Media Monkey and J River Media center. So if you want the album art and prettier interface, those can be had for free or up to a few bucks. there are tons of free rippers out there to take your music off disks and into a .flac saved file with tags, etc.
An audio PC feeding an external DAC has been my main setups for going on a decade. It used to be that the PC was good, but a great external transport would still be a bit better... with the advances in the past couple years with USB or firewire based dacs (or the USB or firewire to SPDIF dongles and boxes), that gap has significantly closed. you get the convenience of a full blown PC to do more than just music and it's easy to swap pieces and parts and future improvements without having to try to sell a crazy expensive all in one player or transport that's now worth 1/10 it's original price... I never have to get up to change a disc again... or figure out which audio room the disc I want to play is located.... no more stacks of discs piled up everywhere. Everything on one machine in teh office... no clutter, easy access....
sorry... people posting while I was typing... will edit later...
Thanks for all of the suggestions. Some of my decisions are already made. For instance, the platform will be a PC because that is the platform that I know and have worked with for the last 30 years. The operating system will be Windows 7 Ultimate. I could share further details but would prefer not to.
Understand that this isn't my first BBQ. I come from an electrical engineering and computer science background. I work as a professional in the IT field as a systems engineer and solution architect. I have done fairly extensive work as a hobbyist with multimedia PCs for about the last 11 years or so. I know my way around PC hardware and software. I say these things not to discourage input, which I value, but to let you know that I am not a audio or computer rookie. I have been at this for a while and am operating from a fairly strong base of knowledge and experience. But as I said before, there is always something new to learn.
I will also say that I am an audiophile with some rather unaudiophile-like thoughts about what equipment can and cannot do, where the points of diminishing returns are, and other (usually controversial) topics. You won't see me too often in the equipment threads because rather than engage people in debate I choose not to participate out of respect for other members. My thing is the music, and that is really what I am all about and what brings me here to AN.
The reason things morphed is because when I started this thread I was thinking forward. Then I had to look backwards at my rack space and decide where I was going to put this universal Blu-Ray player. This got me thinking about equipment sprawl, and how every time I add a new feature or capability I end up buying a new box to stick in my rack. Space is not unlimited in my man cave, so I have decided to consolidate components and functions into a single box (using a PC), and to clear the deck of unused audio hardware. This is probably a decision whose time has come.
--Jerome