HDMI cable for I2S

I2s will give superior SQ to any other connection and using the Oppo Card above you'll get Native DSD into your DAC.

You could also get Native DSD over USB but the Oppo doesn't output USB.

I2S Card Upgrade - $220

This is add on card which extracts the I2S signal from OPPO's internal digital audio data and transfers via HDMI to the I2S input of DAC's such as the PS Audio DAC.

With this upgrade all digital audio signals, including SACD and DSD, can be transfered to the outside of the OPPO BD player (These signals can not be transmitted by a normal S/PDIF coaxial or optical output).

Currently, there are no standards for transmitting these I2S signals, but many manufacturers are following the PS Audio standard. This specification uses the HDMI terminal physically (not the HDMI transmission standard).

Currently PS Audio, Holo Audio and Javs DACs are confirmed for compatibility.

So, is an I2S signal different from a standard PCM signal?  I’m still not clear on this. 

I2s is another transmission method, an alternative to USB, SPDIF(AES & RCA COAX) or even TOSLINK.

Currently I2s is usually transmitted using HDMI or RJ45 cables.

PCM is a method of storing music and usually uses WAV or FLAC formats.

DSD is the King of the Hill and is usually stored in DFF files, unless DSD is on a SACD.

If your DAC cannot play DSD it will be converted to DOP, not quite as good but acceptable.

There are also Apple formats, MQA and MP3.

I don't know of any format or currently used frequency that I2s cannot transmit.

I2s is another transmission method

Yeah I know that. My question is if the the signal output for I2S via HDMI is different than that coming out of the SPDIF output?  I’m not sure if there’s a native signal difference or if the difference is all in the HDMI cable running into an I2S input. 

yes, there is a difference (that is if you are actually using a real i2s output board on the Oppo).  I2S is the native PCM bit information for each channel.  There are two separate channels that require two different connection. 

S/PDIF will take the 2 channels of i2s data and encode it all into a single bitstream.  It is clocked the same, but transmitted over a single wire.  At the receiving end, the device has to decode the bitstream and separate the data out into two i2s channels again.  This raw i2s data is what is sent to the DAC chip.

If you use the standard HDMI video output of the Oppo, you need to connect this to  an A/V pre/pro or receiver.  The Oppo will take the S/PDIF data and break it into HDMI data packets (essentiall de-clocking the S/PDIF signal because the data packets are merged into the HDMI audio/video data using HDMI clock signals).  This is what is called PCM-over-HDMI.  The pre/pro or receiver will have to extract the audio data packets and re-clock that into the proper PCM sampling rate before sending it to the DAC. 

If you compare PCM-over-HDMI with a normal S/PDIF coax connection, the S/PDIF coax will generally be superior and have much more dynamic range and better sound.