New Oppo 105D

zane77

OK picked this up at FedEx this morning. Just lifting the box off the counter brought a smile to my face, this thing really has some weight to it not like my former Sony that felt like I was getting an empty box.

Took the box in the house and opened it up and was amazed at the quality of the packing they had done. Pulled it out and got everything hooked up. Balanced interconnects to the BAT, optical from the Squeezebox. and HDMI for the Dish Hopper and the Apple TV with a remote controlled HDMI switch between the last two.

My first listening test was Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here Limited Edition SACD. First song was Welcome to the Machine, OMG this unit really made the music stand out. A lot more deep and punchy bass, vocals were clean and crisp and the high just sparkled and this only has about 5 minutes on it! At the end of this track is some crowd noise and I though I was sitting in the middle of it. All I could do was start pulling out CD's and SACD to check out this superb music. The 105 is dead silent between tracks no hiss or any noise even with my ear right next to the speakers, I'm in audio heaven.

So I threw a Blu-ray disc in for a few minutes just see how it look and to plat with the Darbee adjustment to see how that works. Not much time with the video portion but the Darbee really can improve the image as long as you don't over do it, it can start looking cartoonish if you go overboard. If you are conservative with this adjustment it can really improve the image.

Now for the issues. I used an HDMI switch to change between the Apple TV and the Dish Hopper plugged into the rear HDMI input. Switched on the Hopper and it was dropping the audio for just a quick blip every 8 to 10 seconds. I'm thinking that's not good so I switched to the Apple TV and the sound was dropping out so much it was unlistenable. So I started playing with HDMI cables, bypassing the switch and trying different cables. None of this solved the problem.

So I called Oppo customer service and talked to them. They answered the phone right off and were very nice and knowledgeable. The upshot was if I plugged any of the HDMI stuff into the front panel port it worked just fine. Apperantly this is a known problem and it is an HDMI handshake issue that is only a problem on the rear port. He said engineering is working on this problem for the next firmware update and the firmware on these very new systems is a "beta" version.

All in all this was a huge improvement to my two channel system and it will be staying for a long time. For now I wish i didn't have to have the HDMI cable sticking out of the front of the system but I am still very, very happy with my new audio bliss. I can only imagine this will only get better as it breaks in.

Hope this makes it look better and a little easier to read

AsSiMiLaTeD

Paragraphs man, paragraphs...

txcoastal1

AsSiMiLaTeD wrote: »

Paragraphs man, paragraphs...

Thats why I didn't read it

Congrats on your new toy

zane77

I was too excited and couldn't wait to get back to listening and not typing. LOL

gudnoyez

Glad to hear it Steve mine shows up at work tomorrow. I hear you don't want to go full pop on the Darbee I read you should run it about 30% that's what is suggested. Enjoy I will report in when mine arrives.

heartystatue

Congrats on the new Oppo. I am curious to know if they have given you any time frame on the fix for the HDMI issue? I was going to order one soon and now might hold off a little longer.

zane77

All they said is it is a priority for engineering and they are working on it. Can't believe the front port works perfectly and the rear port has issues, can't be a huge problem to solve.