OPPO 203 I2S Mod

Mikey081057

It's called I SQUARED S and I have no idea what it stands for.

But apparently it is the native internal digital bus in cd player or dac.

Paul explains it better than I.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrRV7hAKiIQ

Now for a few years I have scratched my head wondering why I couldn't connect my cd player to an external dac via a digital interface cable. You can play it analog into line level inputs in your pre or integrated all day long and it sounds pretty good if your CD player had a decent DAC in it.

Is it copy protection? Is it bandwidth restricted? Is it both?

It is my humble opinion that nothing sounds better than SACD. But I couldn't see having a dedicated player just for SACD, So I sold my Marantz SA 8004.

Well anyways... my research led me to I2S... My pre/dac has an I2S interface but in researching the OPPO 203 I discovered that their HDMI audio output didn't support I2S.

Enter WWW.OPPOMOD.COM




This gent over in S Korea manufactures a mod that you can install in you OPPO yourself and with an HDMI Cable you can you can send SACD to your I2S interface if your DAC has one. The PSAudio Stellar Gain Cell DAC does have one such interface.

So I ordered this OPPO 203 mod from SOKO and it arrived today. I took about 15 minutes to install (you have to cut an HDMI size hole with a dremel tool in the back panel) patched it in with the existing and cables provided at a few minutes later I am listening to SACD on an external dac.

I have listened to a couple of SACD's now and love the sound of sacd in my little system. I think you can forget how good SACD SOUNDS.

The chain is OPPO 203 I2S/HDMI to PSAudio Stellar GCD I2S Balanced ouputs to Parasound A21 balanced inputs to Usher Mini Diamond X.

So far a worthwhile expenditure. Still a little tweaking to do...

Anybody interested?

verb

Nice mod Mikey! Gotta say, took some stones to dremel out a hole in the back of the Oppo! Well done sir!

Mikey081057

So the back is vented and you just have to cut 3 little slats of the vent out.... tape it off and just one minute ....

Mr_Hz

Back in the day I did some mods on my Oppo 105D with OppoMods out of S Korea. The guy is legit. There was a tad bit of ESL dissemination in emails back and forth, but I saw video improvements in his mods, but couldn't quantify musical improvements in the better timing provided. I chose him as a 'cost savings alternative' to Modwright, tho Modwright is on an entirely different plain as far as musical improvements with their tube mods.

Mike Reeter

Yes, I'm interested in this Mod. I have the OPPO 203 and a PS Audio DAC. I will be making the transition one day...

Mikey081057

I spent some time with this Friday evening and decided to throw a 4K Blu ray disk in and test the rest of the system.

A strange issue came about whereas when playing a video... the video out put would blank out any time the screen changed from a menu to the movie part of the the vid. The only way to recover from this to continue viewing was to turn off the AVP and restart it. once the vid was playing everything was fine. The tv would tell me that their was nothing connected but you heard the audio thru the AVP but there seemed to be no video being sent to the tv.

Now I didn't change anything except add the new board and an HDMI connection to the PSA SGCD. Everything audio wise was fine. So first thing I did was remove the cover and checked and re-seated the ribbon cables. I reconnected and still the same no video.

After checking all the settings between the AVP, TV and the UDP I decided to change the hdmi input on the tv. I was plugged into HDMI 3 which on this set was actually ARC HDMI port. After re-configuring to HDMI 1... everything works fine. I don't need ARC anyway.

Scratch my head and back to enjoying.

honestaquarian

The ARC port on the tv would be for sending audio from one of the apps on the smart tv or from it’s tuner back through the hdmi cable to your ave. Is the Oppo hdmi cable carrying the video signal going to the avr and then out to the tv? Or is it going straight to the tv?

Mikey081057

All hdmi sources go to the AVP.... except for the oppo I2S output that goes to the 2 channel pre. all is resolved now as I don't use tv sources on this setup.

SCompRacer

https://forum.polkaudio.com/discussion/169370/sonore-usb-to-i2s-interface

The basics, SPDIF, clock is integrated in signal and DAC must sort it out. Some DAC chips do a better job than others. ESS Sabre has patent for the way they did it.

I2S, clock separate. Some DAC chips sound much better with I2S. Must keep circuits short for best results.

DSD uses same circuit as I2S, except instead of word clock, bit clock and data, you have right channel, left channel and clock.