To Wes Marshall,
I read with interest your review of the new Oppo BDP-103 Blu-ray player. I listen to a wide variety of music, but especially jazz and vocals. I am considering buying fine bookshelf speakers such as the Dynaudio Confidence C1s or Harbeth M30.1s and amps of that quality such as Naim or LFD. A friend of mine told me he heard great things about Oppo. Do you think I would be happy with the new Oppo player or should I still consider a player at the $3500 level such as a Naim or an Ayre Acoustics to truly enjoy this system?
Best,
Charles
Well this is a conundrum for me. I have to make a few assumptions based on what you’ve sent me. First, based on the information in your signature regarding your address and occupation, I’ll assume you live in a city in an apartment. Therefore, your neighbors won’t allow enormous amounts of volume or pounding bass, which is why you are looking at quite expensive speakers with limited bottom-octave response. Since you say “amps” but don’t stipulate a preamp, I assume you are looking at one of Naim's or LFD’s integrated amps, both superb, but again, made to play anywhere from soft to loud, but not into dance land. It also appears that you will be using this system only for music and you have no interest in vinyl. If any of those are incorrect, then my answer will change.
To answer your question directly, I am a big believer in Naim products and doubt you could do much better than a full Naim system. Past that lies asymptotic improvements that cost ever more and return ever less. That being said, should you have unlimited amounts of money, feel free to pursue those improvements. On the other hand, if you are asking me whether I’d rather have the Oppo or the Naim, for my money it would be the Oppo. Then, with the money left over, I’d buy lots of downloads from Naim Label! Part of the ride when you get into these price levels is the importance of pride of ownership, so if you would feel a lot more pride in telling your fellow solicitors and barristers about your Ayre or Naim CD player, then you must advise yourself.
I can’t help but recommend a slightly different tact. Again, following the assumptions in the first paragraph, I would purchase the following system. Now, you have to understand, I am not a traditionalist and we have plenty of superb writers who are. They may be able to help you along the route of searching for every iota of “perfect sound.” I happen to believe that other than your speakers and your source components, nothing makes as big a difference as your room. So I would get a MacBook Pro with a Retina display and the largest flash drive possible, a killer DAC (see Jeff Fritz’s recommendations in Ultra Audio), and active speakers. You obviously like European gear, so look at one of the great monitors like ATC’s SCM25A, PMC's IB2S-A, or Neumann’s KH 310 A. All of these have surprisingly deep bass and will play beautifully clear music at volumes anywhere up to jet-engine levels. Add an Oppo for those times when you just have to listen to a silver disc; otherwise, get your ripped music from a Goodwin’s High End fanless music server and your streamed music from the Mac. Then take advantage of the free give-it-a-try program from Dirac Research and try out their room-management software. I believe that, within the frequency domain offered by each individual speaker, you will have some of the most amazing sound you will ever hear.
All that opinion stuff aside and back to your original question, I have a slight personal preference for Harbeth over Dynaudio (I’m an imaging freak), Naim over LFD (owing mainly to the company’s longevity), and Oppo over the other CD players mentioned (based on cost/quality ratio).
Let us know what you do. . . . Wes Marshall
