DIGITAL HIGH-RES AUDIO SYSTEM -HELP PLEASE

Steve,Al and Willie-Steve,

Thank you all very much for your help and patience. I'm getting closer and will be ordering the Oppo and hard drive(s) later this week. I also found a local independent computer company that will help me set it all up. Only downside is they charge $100/hr. I figure a few hundred bucks to do this is just the price I pay for my ignorance and to stop my head from doing those painful 360 degree spins.
Once it's all operational and I use it for awhile, I'll consider the Off Ramp, iPad remote and other enhancements.

I'll also post a new thread on this forum detailing the particulars and impressions of how it all sounds for others' reference. I hope I can be as patient,knowledgeable and helpful to other newbies as all you guys were to me.

Talk with u all later,
Tim

Just wanted to give an update to all who are following this thread and are interested:

I ordered an Oppo BDP-105 from Crutchfields for $1,219 with no sales tax and free shipping(Amazon and Oppo-direct had it for $1,199 but charged $27 for shipping which made the Crutch a whopping $7 cheaper that I used to buy a 3ft HDMI cable used between my satellite client box and the HDMI input on the back of the Oppo).

It has all been setup in my system via the supplied wireless dongle in one of the Oppo's 2 back panel USB 3.0 inputs. It's now wirelessly connected to my network and updated with the latest firmware.

The Oppo 105's (8)7.1 channel analog outputs are connected into my 5.1 and 2-channel system in the following manner:

Connected 4 of the 8 analog outputs from the Oppo directly into 2 of my 3 amps: center channel out to the right channel input on an Adcom 545, sub out to one side of a Y-adapter attached to the left channel input on the Adcom 545 and the surround side l+r out (Note: the 'SBL' and 'SBR', Surround Back Left and Right, channels are not connected if using a 5.1 system, the 'SL' and 'SR' are used as the rear surrounds instead) to an Adcom 535.

Connected the front l+r outputs to the 'Processor In' l+r on my VTL 2.5 preamp with HT passthru.

Connected the 'Dedicated stereo' unbalanced l+r outputs to the VTL's 'CD' l+r inputs using my best analog cables. Then the VTL's l+r main 'A' outputs into the l+r inputs on my Class D Audio 440CS amp. The VTL's left channel 'B' output to the open side of the Y-adapter on the Adcom 545's left channel input. This Y-adapter allows the bass to be sent to my sub for both 5.1 surround and 2-channel stereo since I won't be listening to 5.1 surround and stereo at the same time. It'll be either one or the other in use, not both at the same time. Control of which is in use via the VTL's front panel 'HT Passthru'.

Sorry so detailed on connections but thought it might helpful to some readers. Plus it's also a good hookup guide if I ever relocate.

As expected, I was able to remove the "oldie but a goodie" Parasound AV2500 preamp/processor and the very good Cambridge DacMagic DAC from my system(both decided to retire to Miami, btw).

My plan is still to incorporate either a NAS (Network Attached Storage) or regular Hard Drives (Laptop or Oppo Attached Storage)into my system. I haven't decided which yet but I'm currently planning on using approx. 2 TBs of storage for my future WAV and FLAC audio files, maybe 3 TB or more if I decide to store video files, too.

I found a good local source, Matt from EZPC, to help me decide and setup my solution.

I'll update again once I have it completed and have listened to some 24/96&192 music downloads for awhile.

I'm very pleased with the performance of the 105 thus far and I'm glad I decided to buy it. I love this thing already and haven't even played a Bluray or hi-rez music file yet, just Directv in DTS/Dolby 5.1 surround

Later,
Tim

Tim - that's great - you are well on your way

Enjoy :-)

Willie/Steve,

Thank you.
Yes, I feel like I made some decent progress last week. I really wish there was a manual or tutorial on how this is all setup: laptop with JRiver v18, Oppo 105, Gateway router and NAS or external hard drives. I want to set this up, at least initially, wirelessly and only use Ethernet hard wire connections if sound quality or functionality is not high quality. My impression, thus far, is that wireless audio and video fidelity is very high.

I have the Oppo attached to my home network and the internet and have watched some Netflix movies streamed wirelessly in 1080p and they both looked and sounded great. I can also go into the Oppo's "Network" menu and see several files of CDs I ripped to my laptop, which means the Oppo has access to my laptop files and can 'Pull' these files and stream them wirelessly utilizing its internal Saber dacs to convert into analog outputs. All 3 of the CDs that were 'pulled' sounded great but, of course, they were only standard redbook resolution at 44.1khz/16 bit.

Once I figure out how to incorporate JRiver into this and 'Push' files to the Oppo wirelessly, then I'll be in a good position to add a Nas, or at least an external hard drive, to the system and start downloading some high-resolution WAV and FLAC files. At that point, I'll really be where I want to be and will be able to build a library of hi-res songs/albums to really take advantage of the Oppo's capabilities.

Once I get a better handle on all this, I'm currently thinking I'll add a NAS system consisting of the following:

Synology DS-112 or Qnap TS-119PII single -bay (diskless)NAS. For my needs, I didn't think a RAID multi-disk NAS was required. I love my music but I can get by without it for a few days if a drive conks out. I narrowed it down to one of these NASes due to their reasonable price ($170-180 without drives) and they both have USB 3.0 ports (much faster read and write than USB 2.0 ports) for attached external hard drive backups.

Western Digital 'Red' 2TB($99) or Seagate 'Barracuda' 2TB ($88) 3.5" internal hard drive.

Seagate 'Backup Plus' 2TB external hard drive ($99) connected via USB 3.0 NAS port for automatic and scheduled file backups.

As usual, please don't hesitate to offer your thoughts and advice. Until I gain more knowledge and experience in computer audio, I can use all the assistance and advice I can get.

Thanks,
Tim

Tim - not sure what your expectations are regarding quality of the different sample rates.

I've found it depends on the quality of the engineering and not the sample rate.

e.g. I downloaded a Melody Gardot album as MP3 - the engineering is superb and I do not find it any worse quality wise than my CD's or the 24/96 and 24/192 tracks I have downloaded

The 24/96-192 tracks are all superbly engineered so they can sound better than many CD's these days. But if you had the same album in all formats it would probably sound the same.

But this depends on your DAC and how it handles the different sample rates and whether it up-samples or not.

The Seagate Constellation line of drives are "enterprise drives" as I mentioned above
- yes, they are more suited to raid, but that's because RAID is hard on drives and they are a workhorse
- they will last much longer than other drives
- They may be a little more expensive and a little slower, but they are still the best drive for this application.
- I have friends with a computer store that only uses these in their servers (and the computers they sell me) because their failure rate is so low.

Question - do you know if the Oppo buffer the data before conversion?

That would be a bonus :-)

Regrds...