Oppos do not have an analog volume control. My experience with the 103 straight to amp was mixed. Oppo has said that the unit is designed to have an avr or preamp between it and the amp.
My experience with the Oppo 95, which IS designed to run straight to an amp, was much better. I do prefer a preamp in the mix, however. Others may prefer it straight to amp, it depends on your preferences and speaker characteristics I'd say. |
The clicks and popping only starting occurring after the Oppo was connected as preamp for about a week. Which reminds me, I started experiencing hiss as well. It's hard to say how long the above quoted reviewers had their Oppos set up in preamp operation, but the Oppo threads at AVS have repeated complaints of this.
It has been my experience that separate preamps typically have nothing to do with "tonal/colouration" changes in a system. |
To be more specific to my above comments, lots of Oppo 103 owners have reported pops and clicking when using the 103 as preamp. The 105, and 95 don't do this. The pop or click will occur when the Oppo is given a disc related command and stops, scans, pauses, etc. I experienced this myself and could find no solution.
Also, I found limitations in the SQ that my Oppo 95 does not have. Some have suggested that the clicks or pops occur because of DC bias that may be occurring in the IC's or coax cable connected to the Oppo. The shielding can build up DC bias, apparently. If I had the spare IC's(the kind that drain to one end only) I'd try draining away from the Oppo and then draining to the Oppo to see if that made a difference.
One of the Oppo gurus on the AVS forum thread has said the 103 is not intended to be used direct to preamp as the 105 is. Maybe someone interested can contact Oppo to see what the official word is. |
The odd noises were with the Oppo 103, not 105 or 95. I'm not sure if you looked up the noises owners of the 103 have been having when the 103 is connected directly to amp, but several owners have gotten the same result as they try to use their Oppo 103 as a preamp. Oppo themselves say not to connect some of their players like this, and I think they may know something.
As I've repeated, I did not have any such noises with the Oppo 95 as preamp. It was without issue. But the sound when a preamp(parasound P7) is in the chain is superior. More holographic, better imaging and more realistic. The Oppo direct sounds clinical by comparison.
Perhaps you prefer a clinical or analytical sound, George, and that would be fine. But I think the jury is out on which alternative is superior. Just because one of us likes one option over the other, it doesn't make either one of us wrong. Your speakers and mine may have vary different characteristics. Your hearing talent/skill may be different than mine. I don't think there is a one-size-fits-all solution here. |
Again George, OPPO says not to use the 103 without a preamp, I suggest you phone them directly and they will set you straight. Here's part of an email a reader shared in which Oppo tells him to use a preamp.
Erin,
If you will be using the player as the pre-amplifier, then you will want to use the BDP-105. The BDP-103 has 24-bit DACs and has a low signal to noise floor, so it will likely produce audio truncations if you use the player's built-in volume controls and a hum will always be present as the amplifier will always be amplifying the noise floor.
If you are running through a pre-amplifier, or another device which will be doing the volume controls, then the BDP-103 will work in your configuration.
Best Regards,
Customer Service
OPPO Digital, Inc.
2629B Terminal Blvd.
Mountain View, CA 94043
Service@oppodigital.com
Tel: 650-961-1118
Fax: 650-961-1119
It's kind of funny how you insist that preamps add "colouration" when such a blanket statement is obviously off base. I will leave you to your notions, I don't think I can help you further, it appears that your preferences are quirky.
Cheers,
Runnin' |
Oh, I see you are making more assumptions on my gear. Read this carefully, I get no noises on my Oppo 103 now. That's right, it's all good, I only had the issue after running it after a week using the analog jacks, but it hasn't been hooked up that way for 6 months or so. I use it for movies, Roku and streaming music to occasionally and it's flawless in all situations. It really made me an Oppo fan for life after the stellar performance of the 95 I have in the 2 channel system with the P7.
I'm not sure what you are on about regarding the P7, a well known characteristic about Parasound products is that there are no caps in the signal path but since you wrongly guessed that the Oppo's had analog volumes in your first post, and also thought Oppo output impedance is under 200 ohms(way off according to my Oppo 95 manual), I submit to you that you might want to ensure you get your facts and details sorted before posting.
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Yeah, I just looked up your track record on this forum, George. Seems you hate preamps, and have posted again and again on how bad they are, and don't seem to realize you're getting a bad reputation around here.
You were wrong about Oppo's having an analog volume, wrong about Oppo's having output impedance under 200 ohms and wrong about the P7 having caps in the signal path. I'm not going to do any more research on your claims George. When called out about the above, you simply ignore the facts as if they don't matter since they disagree with your world view. That's kind of weird.
The thing is, I no longer can trust you know what you're talking about or that you aren't a 19 yr old kid sitting at his mom's computer trying to get other posters worked up. Go see Godzilla or something, kid. |
Another update, so you're on this forum, it seems you market some kind of preamp like device that's like a straight wire with gain. Good for you, but you, as representing a company, you shouldn't come on forums and slag other companies. That's bad form.
And it's odd that you'd make posts about Oppo's volume and output impedance when you were so flatly wrong. So the P7 has such and such at 5 Hz. Can't trust it means anything just because you say so, as a guy trying to sell something, and as a guy so wrong about the Oppos. You haven't even taken the top off the P7, just going by the spec sheet.
At the end of the day, I'm REALLY not interested in what you have to sell. |
With the volume issue, how are you connecting the Oppo, XLR or RCA's? Hopefully it's XLR because you'll get about 6 db less using the RCA's which might help your volume issue. I tried anntenuators too but I was concerned that another item in the signal chain wasn't a great idea, although I don't remember detecting anything bad. My results using the Oppo 95 direct to amp were decent, just not as good as with a preamp in the mix. |
That's the fun of this hobby, there are so many options to tinker with! That Rega looks like quite the unit, please update us with your findings. |
thanks for that, everyone has their preferences but what I don't get are those who insist that theirs are right and any other is wrong. But I agree, to each their own. |
Just an update on the clicks I was experiencing several months ago when using the 103 direct to amp. I was doing some reading on firmware updates for the unit since a new update was just released on the weekend.
Oppo addressed the issue in a previous update, but since I hadn't been using the 7.1 outputs I was not aware of the fix. It seems Oppo really stays on top of things! |
