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

I am searching for a new SACD player and have heard from a number of people about an Oppo DV-970 HD universal player that sells for 150.00 and has garnered some excellent reviews. Being a sceptic by nature I am somewhat dubious about the audio quality of a player in this price range. Since my prime interest is audio rather then HT,is there anyone that has had any experience with the Oppo? Any help would be appreciated.

Arthur, although it's good to be skeptical about things, there's no need for it these days with respect to the audio quality of digital disc players. At this and even lower prices players have for quite some time been outputting the data contained on the discs without audible flaws, i.e., with audibly flat frequency response and inaudibly low noise and distortion. Look to video processing features, but don't worry about the audio.

Be aware of this issue:

"Careful with the channel calibration. If you are using the analog outputs, the Oppo time delay algorithm can only support surround speakers that are installed closer or equal to the listener than the fronts.

Since we're on the topic, I was really not thrilled with Oppo's response on this issue (see below):

Me: Hello, a few weeks ago I cancelled my order for the 971H. I cancelled the order because your time delay algorithm can only support surround speakers that are installed closer or equal to the listener than the fronts. When do you plan on
changing the algorithm? I feel like I am being penalized for
installing my surrounds further from me than the fronts.

Oppo: The algorithm for the delay is based on the Dolby Digital specifications. For this reason, we have no plans on changing the delay functionality of our players. For most applications you will not be using the channel delay functions on the DVD player, as you will be using these functions on your receiver.

Me: I have used three different integrated receivers and they all support surround speakers that are further away from the listener than the fronts. So I very much doubt that your implementation is a limitation of the DD standard but rather an over-sight on your part. I don't have HDMI on my current receiver. I therefore have to use the analog inputs for 5.1 surround to enjoy SACDs. My receiver, as with the majority of receivers on the market now, cannot apply time delays to analog inputs. I am very disappointed that you would not even consider this request for future corrective action.

Oppo: Our engineers worked closely with Dolby Labs on the design of the channel delay circuitry. The way it is integrated into the system is based on their recommendations. We have no plans on altering this implementation as our engineers are not familiar with the algorithms used by receiver manufacturers to add delays in the positive direction.
Our engineer team is quite small, and we do not have the resources to train an engineer specifically for this function."

Arthur, the Oppos (970, 981, and the new 980) are generally held in high regard. All are universal players handling both SACD and DVD-A. At the price, they are difficult to beat.

Here is a Comparison Chart of the currently available three models, their features, and their recommended usage (see the "Oppo Recommendations" section of the chart)

I have been contentedly using the old 971 (DVD-A only) for a number of years. But, since I have a 1080p DLP display, my new 980 will be arriving Saturday.

Hello Asher,

The Oppo DV-970HD, which I use for DVD-A, SACD and DVD video, sounds spectacularly good with the two almost moribund hi-rez audio formats--as good as anything I've heard. Even Wes Phillips, the reviewer for the tweaky Stereophile magazine (I know him), was hard-pressed to acknowledge any differences between the Oppo 970 and his very costly high-end player. Knowing full-well the huge influences of psycho-acoustic bias, I suspect if Wes had to distinguish in a double-blind test between the Oppo and his high-end player, with both players loaded and synced with duplicate discs, he would find it impossible to do so. (Given that Stereophile magazine is supported by high-end advertisers, it's entirely understandable why the magazine won't conduct such rigorous comparisons.)

I use the Oppo's analog outputs to my H/K, but it lets me run them through the H/K's bass management and setup delays so the issue Mojo raises isn't relevant for my purposes.

Regards,

Yeah, I'm glad I'm not the only one for whom this was a revelation.

Welcome to the land of Harman/Kardon--when things work right (sorry, Mike...), they've got some pretty sweet features. Sure, you have to wait 2 seconds for it to catch up on audio streams when they switch, and sure, the lights are going out on the front of my 4 year old receiver, but I just couldn't live without the independent crossovers.

Mind you, I believe Alan must have the H/K 525, which allowed the full bass management on the analog inputs. I bought the next year's model, the H/K 635, assuming it to have the same feature, but H/K unceremoniously removed it after one model year.

My 635 did add the room EQ, which I find to be pretty good, and it still has the variable crossovers for each speaker (which is great). But I would have loved to have the full bass management on the analog inputs, as I have a ton of SACD's and DVD-A's. But as it stands, my Denon 2900 has a fixed 80hz crossover, which works ok.

That actually leads me to a question about the Oppo. I have a new Pioneer 1080p plasma on preorder, so I was looking at the Oppo 980. How do the Oppos handle crossing over for the analog outputs? If you set the speakers to "small", does it have a fixed crossover? Thanks.

I had to do some digging to find the bass management on analog ports. Are you sure it's gone?

Hi Allen
I am presently using a stereo setup with a Sony Scd- c2000ES SACD player feeding a HK 3489 stereo receiver into a set of Axiom M80's. I don't have any problems with bass management with my present equipment but feel that the Sony is not giving me the HD sound I am looking for in SACD stereo.I was hoping that the Oppo would show a descernable improvement over the Sony.I realize that there are some high end players out there but I cannot justify or afford the prices that there asking for their players . Therefore the question about the Oppo. Will I have any problems with bass management using the Oppo in my setup and how is the RB playback quality with it?
Many thanks to those who have given me some input on the Oppo.

PS to the previous post. The Oppo home page mentions that the 970 can be set for upsampling in audio stereo mode on initial setup.Does this really improve the sound?

Sure…. Rub it in Ken..

All my ‘cough’ HK’s have had bass management on the analogue channels. Pretty cool feature. They convert the analogue to digital; do their magic, than back to analogue. Whether this degrades the SQ or not, I have no clue but I didn’t notice it if it did. Not sure what models have this feature and which ones don’t. My 7200, 7300 and 745 all had it.

HK’s definitely have a whole slue of features that you don’t realize how handy they are until you don’t have them. Too bad their QC has gone out the window. But I’m beginning to wonder if any of the receivers manufactures care about QC anymore.

I’m real interested in hearing how the 980 does with SACD and multi channel music. I like the up-sampling that my PS3 does with the latest firmware upgrade and bet the 980 will do as well.

I’m half tempted to buy a 980 seeing how I have all of its siblings. I sure wish Oppo would change the IR commands though. It can be irritating when more than one is on the rack.

I've had the 970 for about 4 months now and find it a vast improvement over the Denon I had. More I have had no problems with compatibility issues (as with the Denon). The picture quality blows away the Denon by far - no digital blocking problems, no combing. It up converts beautifully on my 60in Sony SXRD with spectacular results. I also find the sound an improvement over the Denon - lighter, more open.
I had the Denon as part of my reference system for evaluating DVDs on my site (that’s a lot of viewing) and dropped them due to several issues. The OPPO simply is incredible and if I had paid full price for the Denon (retailing for $1200.) I would be swinging from rope after writing this.
I don't think you will disapointed.

Yeah, Ken, that feature, which can be useful at times, was dropped on the 635. Other than cost cutting, I can only guess that the horror some misinformed audiophiles expressed at the "degradation" supposedly caused by the extra ADC/DAC conversions was a factor.

Counselor, on your question about the crossover on the 980, undoubtedly it does have it at a fixed frequency, but what that is apparently is a secret. A look at the manual reveals only that "bass frequencies" aren't sent to "small" speakers. You might contact Oppo directly and(hopefully)receive a more informative description.

I'd be very surprised if it were anything other than 80Hz. But, I've been mistaken once or twice in my life.

Arthur, "upsampling" is simply a minor variation on the "oversampling" technology that all players have used for over 20 years. Neither of them can create real samples that aren't present on the discs. By inserting mathematically calculated extra samples in between the real ones a more gentle filter can be used on the output, and this is almost universally done, but the sound itself can't be improved in resolution by this.

More generally, despite what Alan and I reported, you still clearly are under the impression that a "high end" player can somehow extract more of the data from digital discs. You should be confident(although obviously you're not)that your Sony player, unless it's damaged, is getting everything out of your SACDs that's actually in them and no amount of money can work some audio miracle. The SACDs themselves might not be as good as you hoped, and your speakers and listening room of course are affecting the results.

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 .

Let's just say the Oppo's frequency response curve isn't something a skateboarder would use much if it were scaled up and added as part of a skate park.