You have my sympathy. Was it because of a divorce, or did somebody leave it in your car?Originally Posted by R_burke
You have my sympathy. Was it because of a divorce, or did somebody leave it in your car?
Issued by my company and I see no reason to carry and pay for two phones
My understanding is that the 105 is preferable if you are going analog out to your receiver, utilizing the analog stage of the 105. I go digital out directly to my receiver, so not sure I woudl utilize that.
Amazon currently lists the 103 non-Darabee edition for$499.
Last edited by strawberrybrick; 01-30-2015 at 01:36 PM.
"Always ready with the ray of sunshine"
Huh, $499 was the price for the 103 non-darbee. Using digital out on the 105 is a waste, since you used so much money to pay for those DACs.
Better read that again, Amazon has the 103 for $499, the 105 for $1399.
Sounds like they're trying to get you to quit. Are you embezzling funds? Blackmailing the CEO?
[QUOTE=BobM;364287]
- CD players have come a long way. A $200 player today will sound better than a $1000 player 5 years ago. Definitely replace it.
- An old amp may still sound damn good, however the capacitors inside have absolutely degraded and are not working up to spec anymore. You could have it recapped if you like the sound of it, or you could replace it. Again, budget is king.
/QUOTE]
not necessarily true
But probably pretty close.
You've got to go through a DAC (digital to analog converter) at some stage -- unless your receiver has a better one than the $1400 CD player why go digital out?
Actually I quoted the FINAL PARAGRAPH of the article in my last post; tell me where it intimates that 'Darbee Edition sucks'?
Of course I read about 4k...and that Darbee will not replace it. But nowhere in the article does it suggest Darbee sucks; if anything it is conditionally praised (read below).
The germane parts of the paragraph, to reduce it to its main points:
Hmmm...'Darbee is making believers of us all', 'Darbee Visual Presence is something you need to see' and 'makes the player a must-demo'?I think most of us first greeted Darbee Visual Presence with skepticism. Darbee is making believers out of us all, though.
......
For the serious videophile who is looking to eke out that last bit of depth and detail from the image, Darbee Visual Presence is something you need to see, and its inclusion in the Oppo BDP-103D makes the player a must-demo...
That sure sounds like an endorsement to me - and a pretty damn strong one.
Since I am quoting from the article to prove my point ... why don't you do the same to prove yours? But don't just clip out the one negative, which has to do with noise when Darbee is cranked too high. Because, in the article wrap up and in the article itself, the issue is addressed....
I again quote from the article to which YOU linked. At the end there are four 'pros' to one 'con,' and the con is something easily mitigated, as this quote suggests:
again, please tel me where you've drawn your conclusion and I'll happily reconsider...but based on the article, until Oppo comes out with a native 4k player, Darbee Edition seems a great stepping stone.At its higher settings, DVP can accentuate noise, add edge blurring, and create an unnaturally harsh look with facial close-ups. However, you can easily dial it back to remove those issues and still enjoy the improved detail and depth.
I was not planning to buy a Darbee Edition Oppo, but in Canada there was no choice (and electronics is something I'll not buy across borders as often doing so goods the warrantee). So I got the 105D and am thrilled with it for sound.will try out Darbee when my home reno is over and I have my new 55" 4k tv to connect my Oppo to. When a native 4k player comes and there is sufficient media to justify, I'll certainly consider upgrading to the next generation Oppo.
In the meantime, you've in no way supported your argument that Darbee "sucks." You've not responded to my quotes pulled directly from the article to which you inked.
Sorry, man; you're gonna have to do better than that to prove to me that the article comes even close to suggesting so.
Last edited by jkelman; 01-31-2015 at 08:20 AM.
I'm not going to prove it, there is nothing such as proof here. Just read the comments too. There is enough to doubt the article and check it out for yourself. At the level at which Darbee doesn't create artifacts, is it an enhancement. If one has money to burn go for it. I myself will not buy an Oppo period until I get a 4k TV because I am happy with my Bluray, audio player, Plasma TV set up. Another question is whether turning Darbee off is as good as Marvell processing. My receiver upconverts all video to 1024p using Marvell (in the Oppo 103 and 105).
Read my post, you really don't want to go through a DAC before your calibration. There isn't enough difference between DACs to warrant going through 2 conversions. Now if you have a classic 2 channel system it's good. But who has only 1 digital source. It doesn't make sense to architect the high end DAC in a player. But some people have money to burn, so more high end DACs the merrier.
These two statements seem mutually contradictory.
1 DAC + 1 ADC + 1 DAC are not better than having digital out from all sources and one modern DAC.
I beleive that people are splitting hairs about DACs. That DAC in the Oppo BDP 105 maybe great for headphones. I have 32 bit 192 kHZ DACs in my receiver which are likely to be equivalent to the Oppo one. Any HDMI source streaming into my receiver can be selected and output to headphones via this DAC.
Last edited by Firth; 01-31-2015 at 05:28 PM.
Like I said, I didn't actually want to buy the Darbee edition....I had no choice in canada if I wanted the oppo 105 (with which I am supremely happy, even though not using the video portion yet). All I was forced to spend was an extra $100 for a feature that, if I don't like, can turn off entirely. I can live with that if it turns out that way.
My issue with your argument, and you have still not addressed it, is you posted a link to an article, followed by your editorial comment 'Darbee sucks." I read it and, far from saying it sucked, it was far more an endorsement.
It may well suck....I'll make that determination myself when I get the tv at the end of March. In the meantime, I was responding to your post, asking a reasonable question. You refuse to answer the question?
Okdoke.
But I bought an oppo because I plan to buy a 4k tv...,and soon. So it sounds like we're actually kinda on the same page. The only reason I bought the oppo before the tv by a few months had to do with timing of a renovation; pre-Reno I've space for new amp, player and speakers....but not room for a 55" tv. The Reno starts Monday, with expected completion between April 1& 15, at which time the tv will be installed. And the oppo up converts to 4k, with or without Darbee, so that was another reason for buying it.
So I'll let ta know then, 'k?
I saw the BDP 105 on Amazon (non Darbee ). Read the article and the comments at the end too.
Will do. But again: could not buy non-Darbee in Canada....at least at the time I was buying, and nobody - not the Canadian distributor nor Oppo - said they would be restocking non-Darbee.
But will check it at Amazon. Like I said before, I'll judge it for myself when I get the tv. If it sucks, I'll have wasted $100. In the overall scheme of things with this home renovation (once in a lifetime, been saving for years and we'll never be able to do something of this scale again), $100 is a drop in the bucket.
Thanks,
John
Sounds great. Another way to look at it, is that you will likely be buying another Oppo soon which will play 4k source material. That's not just an extra 100. I was thinking hard about the 103, but the 4k capability is ultimately what I want. TVs have gotten good at upcoversion to 4k, they have to because artifacts will show up at close distance and they want to sell these TVs to people that have no 4k source material.
Yes, I likely will....but not for awhile. I know I'll be laying out what I laid out for the current model. When I upgraded my system, the understanding was that the amp and speakers will hopefully be the last ones I buy in my lifetime (certainly the speakers, at least). It was always a given that the player would be upgraded periodically. Given what I had before, to match the quality of he amp and speakers I need to upgrade my player..and now.
I"m not an audiophile from the perspective that I am always looking for the next buy. As with our entire renovation, the goal was to spend the good money on certain products that will not have to be replaced. Example: while we might have to recover the sofa we have purchased for the living room, we'll never have to replace the actual sofa as the structure is such that it will last as long as we live (or more!). That was my objective with speakers and amplifier. Players I exper to have to change if for no other reason than with moving parts, thy are far more likely to break than anything else. Tetra, on the other hand, hasn't had a single return for repair in its nearly 20 years.
So the big bucks were spent on things of (hopefully!) permanence. Things like the Tv and player we expect to periodically upgrade. But I don't see myself upgrading the Oppo for at least a few years. Blu rays are being sold "mastered at 4k," but just like 24 bit remastered CDs, they're still downsampled/down-res'd. They say we'll be seeing 4k media hit the market by the end of 2015 but how long it takes to really catch on - plus the fact that I don't intend to upgrade my blu ray collection to 4k anytime soon - means my current Oppo will suit me just fine for a few years.
Was having a new phono cart installed this weekend and the subject came up saying that there are reasonable priced stereo componants out there, just badly mismatched. Most people can't afford the process of changing one for another so, you just have to live with what you have. Has to be a better way?
The older I get, the better I was.
In my opinion, what makes one digital player better than another comes down to a few things:
- better power supplies
- better analogue output section
- better board layouts (engineering)
- better vibration control
Now those things are not necessarily cheaply done, hence the difference between a $300 and a $3000 player. Though much of those high end players (@$5000+) have about $1500+ worth of heavy aluminum casework and fancy machining and sometimes feature sets that you may never use, though they might give you additional configuration/implementation choices.
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A gentleman is defined as someone who knows how to play the accordion, and doesn't.
In my opinion, only two things matter: sound and user interface.
I don't care about the circuit board layout. Vibration control only matters on turntables, not CD players. A power supply is only a problem if it affects the sound quality, which (IMO again) is very very rare.
I second the emotion - sound and user interface are what I am looking for in a high rez media server/player, of course price comes into play as well (I'm a cheap...)
Methinks you don't know what it takes in engineering terms to improve the sonics of a player then beyond what the generic DAC chip specs out.
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A gentleman is defined as someone who knows how to play the accordion, and doesn't.
No, methinks he doesn't care about these things...only about the end result.
He is echoing what I've been saying about the Tetra Speakere...I don't care about specs, I don't care about design. I just care about how they sound. At the end of the day - and, in the case of the components that drive them, how easy the user interface is - these are all I care about; there may be great design behind them, but all that matters to me is the result.
Save the spec comparisons, manufacturing etc to the audiophiles. I just want something that sounds great and is easy to use.
God, Schmod, I want my monkey man!!!
(Sorry, dunno how that slipped in, but it felt momentarily relevant...)
Doesn't mean these aren't important things that go into how and why a setup sounds good and is easy to use...hut reading and comparing those specs is, for me, like watching paint dry. I just want good - no, scratch that, great sound and an intuitive interface. That's it, that's all.
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