Oppo BDP 95 review Part II - a weekend of music

 

Audio:

The Oppo 95 comes with a nice Rotel toroidal power transformer feeds a full-wave bridge rectifier on the linear power supply. Four audio grade 3300uF/50V ELNA capacitors are used for bulk filtration before feeding a set of positive and negative linear voltage regulators. Another set of 470uF/25V ELNA capacitors are used for post-regulation filtration and current storage.

Now to put this into perspective: some Amps don’t even have that much capacitance!

A Weekend of Listening:

So I get some down time to sit down and listen to this player. Bear in mind, its only been in my system for about 2 weeks at this point, and I don’t really want to run it day and night just to run it in that much faster.

Instead, I let my dad play with it, watch his movies, listen to his CDs etc. Since there is no complaints (I took away his Nuforce Oppo 83), I guess that means the level of satisfaction remains…

I have a collection of discs with drums, which allows me to demo good bass, beats and I enjoy a nice solo instrumental guitar recording (Guitar Works – Mariah’s Watermill). I also keep handy some vocals, ranging from Faye Wong, Jack Cheung, to the Chesky Persuasions Acapella group and finally for large orchestral works, I like the Manuel and the Music of the Mountains, which was recorded in analogue, but offers excellent music separation and a lush vinyl like feel. For a final flourish, I like the solo violinist, to see how the setup sounds with Gavotte en Rondeau / Partita III BWV 1006 - Salvatore Accardo testing the highs in the system. This comes from a SACD from the Hong Kong AV 2010 show.

I let the player warm up a bit, switching it on right when I reach home and I begin in earnest after dinner.

First in are the drums, and the bass does not disappoint. There is very good timing, depth and dimension. The right amount of decay with each beat occurs, and even with my bookshelf 805s, the bass is both audible and palpable.

Guitar Works – Mariah’s Watermill

http://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Works-Various-Artists/dp/B000005OYI

is a piece meant for the quiet evenings, and with the fingerstyle guitar piece, you will hear the etch, the detail of the guitarist’s fingers as he plucks the strings. The reverberations in the room should sound natural, and carry forward in a wave of harmonics. At the same time, the system sound be rather quiet, and if there are other noises, from the system, the transport, or even the fan and the recording, it will be rather obvious.

There were no such noises and the recording was sweet, tight and the highs natural. You can get detail without having to bear with the treble. This is a change from the first few days, when the treble was rather dull.

 Moving onto the vocals and the unplugged versions of “Sky” from Faye Wong, plus “Sorry” from Jacky, the bass, is impressively deep, the vocals are rather nice, and clear, with a soundstage that sits nicely between my speakers, and the cohesion is better now than in the beginning when the instruments seem to be merely clear but with no timing and synergy.

In playing the acapella tracks (The Persuasions Sing U2 - I Still Haven't Found What I'm looking For) the soundstage is good, and you can easily make out voices and where each individual singer stands. This is a nice test of separation.

And to follow up on this, the orchestral piece “Spanish Harlem” played by Manuel and the Music of the Mountains offers you a chance to view a sonic landscape, with separation of individual instruments, which come together, and yet offers you the ability to pick up the drums, the strings etc, whilst sitting back as the music journeys from one speaker to the other. You can truly relax to this, and yet, its hard to do anything else but listen as the integration of the whole set of frequencies invites you to pay full attention.

So the SACD version of Gavotte en Rondeau was performed in a quiet but large hall, and even in a stereo system, you can appreciate the size of the hall, whilst deciding if the violin grates or simply offers detail. Thankfully the Oppo belongs to the latter and does a solid job of producing highs in a control yet exuberant fashion, which makes me think the Oppo is quite neutral – my 805s tends to go warm, whilst the MF amp is a more neutral beast.

Now since I had the 83 Nuforce, its hard to not think of that, but I am not ready to do a comparison yet. Suffice to say, it isn’t a massive improvement, and if you have either, you should be quite happy, but I will do a more detailed review and comparison in due course.

Now back to the music….

J

I have no financial interest or other interests in any of the items / events I write about.