lloydviii - I have not yet used the OPPO as a transport, but I plan to run a comparison when I collect the components in a worthy playback system, later in the spring.
So far, so good in the quality of playback from the Oppo’s analog outputs. Best I’ve had; an obvious upgrade from the Sony S9000ES, which is my only prior reference.
My intent was to have Bill Thalmann of Music Technology to provide this signature piece. He believes in it and I believe in him. I recognize that perspective as out of the ordinary, but it’s how I roll. This deck is his final iteration and I am honored to have it.
He and I chose this platform among others. The 105 has more connectivity and a few internals that Bill preferred to the 205. And the Darbee stuff was expendable because his work removed all the existing analog circuitry. This particular unit came from The Music Room which re-sells the units that PS Audio takes on upgrade trade for their own units. BTW: this Oppo deck was used in PS’s decks until they stopped production.
Following is an excerpt from Bill’s correspondence describing what he has done to the unit. He has applied his life skills including his prior career and close involvement with Conrad Johnson toward making his version of digital done right.
I will report when I’ve done some comparisons between his DAC and the Benchmark DAC3.
Bill Thalmann says:
The Oppo 105 uses an ESS SABRE DAC chip, which was SOTA at the time. ESS has come out with a few newer DACs since then, but none are really different in performance. The sound of a disc player still depends primarily on the design of the analog output circuitry and the type and amount of digital jitter. My upgrade squarely addresses both issues.
I’ve never compared it directly to a Benchmark DAC. My primary reference when I did this was my Oracle Mk VI turntable with an SME Series 300 arm and a Soundsmith Aida cartridge through a CJ Premier 15 (all teflon upgraded) phono preamp. While I still think the all analog setup had a slight edge with regard to sound quality, the difference was, IMHO, very, very slight. I am very interested in getting feedback from you even though, at this point, it’s somewhat academic to me as I have no plans to build any more of these.
I don’t have specs on the upgrade beyond frequency response (flat to 50k – intentionally rolled off above that) and subjective testing for the most part with regards to noise and rise time.
and more:
Hope you get lots of good listening from the Oppo. Very interested in hearing what you think of it once it’s had a chance to burn in.
Basically, I built two discrete power supplies (each with their own power transformer). One provides regulated 35V to run the discrete JFET analog amp/filter and the other an EXTREMELY low noise 3.3v power supply to power an 80 MHz very low jitter clock module for the DAC section. The clock frequency is higher than Oppo used, but is optimized for audio. Oppo evidently optimized for video performance.
The 3.3V supply is as clean as a battery, and may be cleaner, and its output filter is a 1 Farad cap. It is highly regulated using IC’s from Maxxim designed specifically for clock supplies.
I take the signal directly from the DAC chip and feed it into my amp/filter board where the DAC output current is converted to voltage, amplified and filtered (at around 50 MHz) and fed directly to the 2-channel output jacks of the player
That’s it in a nutshell.
Bill
