Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Oppo DV-970 HD

Thanks for your input John. I am also one of those that do not believe in all the hype about high end equipment but my original question remains. Why does a cheap player like the Oppo get such fantastic reviews?

Good video processing.

Thanks for the replies all. I would suspect it is a fixed 80hz crossover as well on the Oppos, but as I have heard nothing but positive reviews on the audio quality from the Oppos, whatever it is seems not to be a problem.

Well, as I have a new Pioneer 1080p plasma on preorder, I just might be in the market for the Oppo 980. While my Denon 2900 still has a great picture, reports seem pretty uniform that the Oppo upscaling should have a better picture. And it seems I shouldn't experience too much of a drop-off (if any) in sound quality from the Denon to the Oppo.

Then there's the side of me that wants to dabble in one of the HD formats, but that's a whole other ballgame. The cheap HD-DVD players from Toshiba sure are getting tempting at their price-points. Lots of choices to make.

Hi Asher,

JohnK answered your question (on upsampling) exactly as I would have (thanks, John). As to your question on possible problems with the Oppo's internal bass management, I've never tried it, so there may be some lack of flexibility on that score--it's not uncommon to find limitations in the internal bass management of SACD/DVD-Audio players.
(by the way, what does "RB" stand for....sorry, I'm not up on all the acronyms).

As far as "discernible improvements" go in the audio playback qualities of CD, DVD-A and SACD players, if you use music rather than test signals (in a lab bench test), it's impossible in my experience to detect any discernible or audible improvements between well-designed players, no matter what the price or how exotic the upsampling circuitry is--provided the comparisons are conducted as I've described previously with duplicate discs running in sync, etc.

Regards,

Hi Allen
RB=red book or standard cd's as opposed to SACD or DVD-A

Hello John,

With all due respect, in my experience, the ability of enthusiastic amateurs to set up and conduct a really scientifically controlled listening comparison (unless they are supervised by a person long experienced in double-blind comparisons) is dubious at best. (Yes, I once belonged to various audiophile groups and I'd include myself in the category of an enthusiastic amateur until, as an editor of various audio and AV magazines, I began professionally reviewing, testing and working with Dr. Floyd Toole at the National Research Council's Acoustics program.)

The vast majority of enthusiasts have so much of their personal ego (and money) invested in their cherished audiophile beliefs and in their equipment that they are unable to separate those and simply participate in an unbiased comparison. In past experiences, I've found enthusiasts claim that listening to one CD player, stopping it, putting the disc into the other player, then listening to it again, constitutes a valid comparison!

Such comparisons are worthless; I suspect that you and your audio buffs lapsed in some area, whether it was prior knowledge of the equipment being compared, the brands or the prices, slight differences in level between the two sources, and non-blind switching. As Dr. Toole recently remarked after the publication of a recent white paper "Blind vs. Sighted Listening Comparisons," if you can see it, you can't hear it!

You must understand that until I was able to participate in really controlled comparisons, I was a "believer" in high-end audiophilia, and that such differences that you allege to be audible--"DACs used in respective players"--I sincerely believed. That all changed more than 25 years ago.

Incidentally, my comments do not apply to other components you mentioned and don't extrapolate my views to those. Good heavens, phono cartridges, for example, are relatively crude tranducers with all sorts of nasty non-linearities and distortions that are readily audible and easily measured.

If you'd like to drop by Axiom's listening room at the plant on some future occasion, I'd be delighted to set up a properly controlled double-blind comparison of a modest but well-designed CD player with some high-end player that you think has "superior-sounding DACs".

Such a comparison would assume that the analog output sections are well-designed and linear. If an analog output section had serious design errors or frequency response aberrations, of course there would be an audible difference--and it would be measureable. However, that's rare these days.

Regards,

I have the oppo player. I only use it for DVD's for which it is very good. I have compared the sound of it with my other SACD player and it sounded really flat. But, I have to point out that my SACD player has had extensive modifications done to it.

Alan,

I'll take you up on your offer some time. Not that I don't believe you...I just think it would be a good way to down a mug of beer or a glass of wine .