Hard to believe. I'm in Asia frequently and they have retail stores all over the place that are full of customers.
Oppo Ceasing production
Just visited Oppo's web site. They are ceasing production of all their products and will only do warranty work and firmware support for their products. They no longer have the resources to manufacture new products. Didn't see this one coming.
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I ordered a 203 yesterday. I use a 105 as a Digital transport into a Bryston DAC3 in my two channel system. The Oppo will output DSD from SACD into the Bryston over HDMI. I have two HT systems in my house and had been toying with the idea of moving the the 105 into one and replacing the 2 channel with a 203, since I am just using the 105 as a transport and am not benefiting from the DAC of the 105. The announcement made me pull the trigger. I will now replace several boxes in the HT system and send the Bluesound Node 2 in the HT system into the DAC of the 105. I also own the PM3 phones and consider them a great value. This has really bummed me out |
Everything that has been said here on the OPPO situation is on the mark. One additional comment. OPPO as with many companies actually assembles their equipment in China. Consider the tariffs that have been imposed recently and how they add to the cost of production. The uncertainty of our world economic situation would give any company pause in planning their future. Note that OPPO stayed in the Chinese market. Frankly OPPO could have charged more for their products and still sold them in the USA. However the failure of UHD (No discs) makes selling players difficult to non audiophiles. If the CD goes the route of vinyl ( it appears to be doing that) then shifting the focus of OPPO players to the audiophile market would be the right move. Which is exactly what they have been doing for the last several years. I agree with the members who said that just too many factors made it difficult for OPPO to make money. A real shame when we lose innovative USA company of this caliber. |
Since you old folk are feeling without hope for the future of high end audio because your Blue ray drives are becoming defunct, I wrote a post in Misc Audio about my (a millennial's) journey from low-end to high-end audio. https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/a-millennial-recounts-their-journey-from-low-end-to-high-end-... TLDR: Thanks to Hi-fi streaming, high-end audio won't be dead anytime soon. |
It really makes no sense. When you have a name and a product that has market respect... there is marketable value! Why isn’t the audio products business being sold to another respected brand who would probably like to have oppo??? Assuming they actually just walk away, what CD player or cd/dac combo can you buy for $1300 that is as good or better? |
Probably has nothing to with the "death " of physical media. If so, why wouldn't Oppo just release a streamer? More than likely has to with trade and tariffs. What the future holds; we don't know. But, probably forced with the decision to raise their prices or cease production. They chose the latter. |
genesis777 - That's a shame...I bought a Sonica Dac and was quite impressed with it. "Was", past tense? Just curious why your impression should change, when - IMO - it shouldn't. trelja - I can't even imagine 200 high-end audio dealers existing today across all the brands. Certain manufacturers, such as Oppo and Schiit, have already figured out that use of a dealer is often counter productive from a profitability perspective. This is the reason they sell direct to the end user/consumer. Win-win for both, and a big reason Oppo was successful. |
I agree with falconquest that physical media will survive, but it will become a thin market for new releases. As we all know there is a time period where no LPs were manufactured for most artists because the market was insufficient to support recording companies pressing vinyl and CD. The same will happen to Redbook; eventually we will have to download newly released music. My 17 year olds collect vinyl; they have one of my previous systems in their room. Their friends come over to our house sometimes to listen to music. They think it's cool that music is always playing at our house and that it sounds great...but, they also have never seen it happen anywhere else. FWIW these kids are buying video game soundtracks on vinyl and that might be where their generation decides to invest its audio dollars--they believe in headphones! |
Definitely sad news! Fantastic company making up to date, attractive, reliable products, and offering top notch service. Regarding some wondering there's more to the story, I think it's dead simple. A viable / sustainable business keeps going, and those that aren't drop out. Saw a post on this site from Michael Green a few days ago. He mentioned the high-end slowing down in a big way, and having something close to 625 dealers in his network in the 90s. That REALLY stopped me in my tracks. I can't even imagine 200 high-end audio dealers existing today across all the brands. Seems like the old adage of the way to make a small fortune in this business is to start with a large one has never rung more true |
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I'm going to be a contrarian here. People say physical media is dead but just look at the resurgence of vinyl. My sense is, that CD transports are the "digital turntables" of the future. I just traded my Ayre multi disc player for a dedicated transport. Of course, I type this as my 103D plays in the background and I just ordered a new disc from Amazon. I can stream as well but my sense is that physical media is not dead by any means. |
FYI, courtesy of RIAA:@david_ten Thank you! FWIW, "I’m so glad" my music of choice - Grateful Dead and "related configurations" - falls into a category not covered by the statistics in either of the articles - that would be "freely shared via peer-to-peer trading". :) |
There is no way to determine, absent more information, why they closed the business. Someone can make a really great product (great design, high performance, reliable, and reasonably priced) and be in a vibrant market and still fail because of business decisions made (e.g., taking on too much debt, critical parts supplier no longer making the parts available). What is more surprising to me is how some companies can make really crappy stuff and continue to thrive. |
Same situation here, I'm 58, have had 2-ch systems since putting together my first at age 15. None of my friends buy music. None of my kids have any interest in my current system. Even my wife (who's close enough to perfect for me), can't share my interest in JUST LISTENING TO MUSIC. My thoughts are: We can't be wrong, what's wrong with everybody else??? |
stereo5, your story is very telling of the state of the affairs in the 2-channel home audio interest. I’m about your age and with the exception of a handful of remaining friends from college, I don’t know of anyone else, at any age, who actually owns a decent stereo system at their homes, even the ones whose kids actually play various instruments. The weird thing is most of them know and track new music and bands but use nothing else except earbuds. When my buddy’s son graduated from high school I bought him a nice Creek integrated and a pair of Wharfdale speakers for his college. Later I heard he returned them and got a nice pair of earphones instead. Damn good pair I must admit. |
High end has always been a niche within a niche and it is shrinking, I do not believe that it is a dying hobby, there will always be high end, but as the market share shrinks manufacturers of high end keep on jacking up the already astronomical prices to make up for the lost sales, we will see more of them going bankrupt in the near future. Credit goes to home theater and also the young generation who listen to free music on their portable devices, the sound coming through these digital devices is like listening to music through high frequency drivers only, but kids grow up with this and will never know what quality is all about. Who knows maybe some of this will survive in the Far East, they seem to be more receptive to high end than the West, but we shall see. |
As someone who is relatively young (36), and a long time member of this forum, I have to say that yes, High End is doomed. None of my friends in my age range are into this hobby, and the high prices of gear are a definite turn off to younger people/millenials. Even I don't spend much money on gear, I tend to stick to budget components and have rarely spent over $300 on a single component. I tend to buy mainly on audiogon and other forums. I haven't so much as walked into a B&M audio dealer in 14 years. |
From August 2017 up to today, I bought 8 new pieces of equipment. This is a dying hobby and when all of us old geezers (I'm 64) go, the High End will die with us. Case in point: I offered to give my son (36 years old) a high end integrated amp, high end speakers, turntable and cd player (total cost of equipment over 10K) with the only stipulation he uses it and doesn't sell it. He didn't want it. He said all he needs is his phone and headphones. This is coming from a kid who grew up in a household with high end equipment and who used to sit and listen with me. The High End is doomed. |
I am very disappointed to hear this news but, I assume, the sales of physical media (CD's) is declining and probably their product sales are not good. OPPO is a great company and, I would have hoped, maybe, they could have started building other products. A noted above, I guess they could have also sold the business but, for some reason, decided not to do. The Audio Industry needs to step up to attract more customers. Time will tell what happens. Maybe everyone on Audiogon needs to buy at least one new audio product this year (I have). |
I think you are correct that Oppo units were used by a LOT of other manufacturers as they were just so good at such a fair price that the competition just could not justify the cost of trying to make their own to compete or be better. Of course then there was ONE infamous manufacturer who decided they would just put a complete Oppo inside their box and sell it under their own brand name at a massive mark up.....that did not end well for them..... |
This is indeed very sad news and for me a huge shock! I own three of their players bdp83...owned 6 years bdp 93....owned 3 years bdp105...owned 1 year not one of them have been touched at all and all still give faultless service maybe that's part of the problem? stuff that does not break or wear out and gives perfect service does not tend to be replaced or upgraded as often. Sad but maybe they were built too well? At least in todays throw away, flavour of the week society. But whatever if somebody like Oppo cannot make it work the $ numbers any longer could anybody else who take over the operation? |
The decline of physical media didn't happen suddenly last week. That has been brewing for years. Oppo developed and launched the 203/205 generation as a significant improvement on the already good 103/105 generation recently. Pulling the plug now rather than 2 years ago is just strange. I don't think we know the whole story yet. |
Well, my DV-970HD i still running. Hoping my UDP-205 runs for at least 5 years - purely based on the build quality. For folks who are planning to get an Oppo UDP-205 for audio only, I say, get one. Oppo has great https://www.oppodigital.com/farewell.aspx |
By far the best BD player I've owned. For a BD player, the 205 is expensive but worth it. For a CD/SACD player it is relatively inexpensive and very good value. Put them both together and you have a product that anyone should appreciate. BTW last might I A/B'd a 4K movie downloaded via Amazon Prime/Roku and compared it to a 4K Blue Ray disc played on my Oppo 205 using the same Anthem AVM-60 pre/pro. Same HDMI cable brand and model passing from the Roku and Oppo to the AVM-60. Video quality is similar. But the Oppo 205 player audio quality kills the Roku download audio quality. |
I would think Cambridge Audio would be in a position to buy the rights to build Oppo products under their own badge. I’m sure they’ve been talking with others as well. Marantz and others have stopped making Blu-ray players and soon it will be the CD player which Ayre and others have dropped as well. It’s all moving to the internet folks. Sad news nonetheless. |
