Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion HiFi & HT Chat Tried an Oppo 105 last night

The 105 has been the subject of the usual level of online hyperbole, to the point that I couldn't resist getting a home dem on one last night.

Clearly, the 105 is very well specced and as it can not only be a BD player, but also:
- Play FLAC files from a USB HDD, it could replace a Squeezebox
- Includes digital inputs, so is a kind of DAC
- Includes variable outputs, meaning that it can act as a pre-amp (within that, it has balanced stereo for the fronts, RCAs for the rest)
So in theory, if it was upto scratch, it could replace a streamer, BD player and AV processor.
In my case, I have a cheap Pioneer BD player, Squeezebox, 568.2mm and HD621. Given that I could probably sell that lot for twice the price of a new 105, had to be worth a try.

The test I ran was purely with music. For me that's always been more important that AV capabilities. If my system can do great music, and "ok" AV, I'm happy.
So in a direct comparison, with the 105 acting as source, thus:
1. Oppo via analogue balanced outputs directly to my power amp
2. Oppo via HDMI into the HD621/568.2mm, then onto my power amp
The result was actually really straight forward. The 105 was fine, nothing wrong with it at all. However, the HD621/568.2mm got substantially closer to the music and simply sounded a lot more realistic. I'm still struggling to think of appropriate terminology to describe the difference. The most obvious that comes to mind is that the 105 was looking at the same onion, but the Meridian kit had peeled 2-3 more layers off it on the way to viewing the core.

One thing that most certainly did confused me though was the comparison between the Oppo 105 as a source and my laptop (running foobar2000/wasapi), both using HDMI. The Oppo 105 had substantially more depth and bass weight. I couldn't understand how there could be THAT much difference, bearing in mind that in theory both were bit-perfect signals.

There is so much more to digital audio than "bit perfect audio".
It's good your finding that out from real world experience.

Thoughts, Chris

Chris,
I've learned only too well to take ALL audio comments with a pinch of salt. Hence the home dem.
If it sounds good in my system, then I'm happy to fork up the cash. The reality is that there's a lot of stuff out there that simply gets nowhere near it's hype.

Went many times north, south, east, west... still surprises me every time I re-plug the 568 and listen.
After discovering how he manages with two (stereo) subs, more so, btw.
Very good stuff!
Regards
Josep

More confusion reigns...
My day to day laptop died last Thurs, so I took home a "loan" laptop from work on Friday.
Both are Dells, but the loan unit is a bigger/heavier piece of kit. Both use the same PSU.

Rather bizarely, it sounds worse than the other Dell laptop when connected by HDMI into my HD621. I have absolutely no idea why that would be...

Are you using the laptops to play CDs? I have found that there are major differences between laptops when loading MDMS in terms of their ability to read discs. This is showing in ratios of up to 5:1 for load time. This may manifest itself in differntial sound quality.

Nope, both laptops were reading from the same (not at the same time clearly) external USB HDD. The HDD contains several hundred albums in FLAC format.
Both laptops had the latest version of Foobar2000 installed, each addressing the WASAPI "component".
So in theory, there should have been no difference, yet there was.

Believe it or not but I have experienced that motherboards can also sound different from each other...

btw: Foobar is the leanest sounding app that I know of, which might explain to an extent why the Oppo sounded fuller.