To Roger Kanno,
I have been copying my CD collection to an external drive attached to my network. I have been using iTunes to copy the CDs (AIFF or Apple Lossless; I don't really know the difference). I was going to use an older MacBook to stream to a DAC, but after reading about the Oppo BDP-105 I am not so sure. I used Bryston's pre- and power amp in a setup that is also used for TV viewing (cable box and Sony Blu-ray player). The Oppo solution seemed so simple, but would the sound quality equal a good DAC like Bryston or Simaudio Moon? The saving would buy lots of downloads. Also, would the use of a different media player such as JRiver make much difference?
Thanks in advance,
René
I have not compared the Oppo BDP-105 directly to the Bryston BDA-1 or BDA-2 DACs, or one of Simaudio's many DACs, so I cannot comment directly on this comparison. And, admittedly, I have not used many external DACs recently in my system. However, the Oppo does use the highly regarded ESS Sabre DAC chipset that is used in several relatively high-end DACs and has a very high-quality, 32-bit digital volume control built in. I found that its sound quality was similar to that of my Anthem D2 A/V processor, which I use as my reference two-channel DAC/preamp.
The main drawback of using the BDP-105 as both a DAC and preamp is that it has relatively few digital inputs -- one each for HDMI, USB, coaxial, and TosLink. If you can live with this, then it is an extremely cost-effective way of adding an optical-disc player (with video and multichannel-audio processing), DAC, and preamp into your system.
When streaming digital audio to a DAC, it is important to ensure that you are sending bit-perfect information (i.e., the information exactly as it is stored in the digital file without changing the word length, sampling frequency, or adding any digital signal processing). This is relatively simple in most PC-based media players when using Windows Vista or later by selecting WASAPI output and turning off any DSP functions. If you are using iTunes, I would suggest using something like Amarra to ensure that the sampling rate is not being altered by Apple's Core Audio engine. . . . Roger Kanno
