Modern technology allows us to do such great things. And yet, somehow, despite the amount of technology we have, mankind seems to be unable to actually build the perfect device. My experiences with the Oppo BDP-93 bluray/dvd/sacd/dvd-a player is a perfect example of this.
So, for a long time I've been half-assing my audio system. For quite a while, I didn't even own a dvd-audio player, and was just settling for dts or dolby digital playback of dvd-a discs. This was quite ironic given my status in the converting world for creating quality dvd-a home conversions, for backup purposes. I went through 3 half-assed methods of dvd-a playback before I finally did it right. First was trying to setup a computer to playback dvd-a, which is doable, but problematic at best. Then I picked up a panasonic bluray player, which never worked right with my 4.0 setup. Dvd-a is a fickle format that doesn't like it if you dare try to have a system that doesn't have a center speaker, downmixing to create a phantom center is problematic. Then I picked up a samsung sacd/dvd-a player. It downmixes properly, and will playback dvd/sacd/dvd-a, which is great, but....it doesn't actually play dvd-a and sacd properly consistently. It will do things like randomly skip to the next track before the first track is finished, or stop the disc partway into the first track or other annoying random things like that, piece of garbage.
So, doing dvd-a on the cheap was turning into an impossible nightmare.
So, ok then, maybe it's time to pick up a new player. And, when it comes to dvd-a, the best bang for your buck is the Oppo BPD-93. It does dvd-a and sacd, and does it through hdmi, and is a decent bluray player as well. Great, what doesn't this player do? Plus, I found out, it will playback .iso images of discs, including dvd-a discs, from external hard drives. Wow, that's an awesome feature.
However, the man is trying to keep us down, and doesn't like us being free to do what we want to do with our personal property at all. So, Oppo has been forced to phase out the .iso playback feature. Boo! So I ran out and purchased the player while I could still get it with this feature, and for that reason a firmware update will never be applied to this player.
So, ok, $499 later, I am happy with a kickass player that will play just about any disc you can throw at it, and will also let me play backed up images of dvd-a discs. So, of course, I had to take advantage of this feature, and I ripped my entire dvd-a collection to an external hard drive. And I found out, wow, this is awesome, I sit back, relax, and have all my dvd-a discs available to me without having to get up and stand in front of the rack, and pick what disc I want to listen to. I can easily go to a disc, listen to a few tracks, go to another, if I just want to kinda pick through and listen to a few songs. This is modern convenience. How could this get better?
Well...that's nice, but that's only dvd-a. Which is a minority of my music collection. So, I decided, ok, lets try ripping an .iso image of a CD, and do that.
*BUZZZZZ*
No go. The player won't playback .iso images of CDs. Or .bin images either. Which gets me to another confusing thing.....some CDs will rip to .iso, and some it forces me to do to .bin, and no one can explain why. This makes no sense to me. But, neither of them work with the Oppo, so that doesn't really matter.
Well, that's ok, because there is a great universal format out there called free lossless audio codec, flac. It's great, and will do multichannel, and various bitrates and samplerates, it does just about everything. So, using flac, I can easily get a bit for bit backup of my CD collection. And, the oppo player will playback flac from hard drive.
So, I get a nice, big, 2 TB hard drive, and I get all my dvd-a images onto it, and start ripping my CD collection to it. Finally, I have a backup of a large chunk of my music collection. So, I hook up my hard drive, sit down, thumb through my collection I spent much time ripping, and think....well, I should verify that this is gapless. I mean, it's got to be, certainly no developer in their right mind would make a device to playback flac files that isn't gapless. Who would waste our time with that?
Well, turns out the fine developers at Oppo are just those people that would waste our time with that. I cue up Abbey Road, start the medley on side 2, and sure enough, gaps.
Now, one at first might think, ok, rip DSOTM and Abbey Road to large flac files, and you're set.
And then you realize, wait a minute, what about live albums?
And then there's Todd Rundgren - A Wizard, A True Star.
And then theres........
You never really realize just how important gapless playback is until some dipshit develops a device that doesn't have it.
So, in discussions with this, someone pointed out that they have their computer setup as a media server, to play their music collection via networking, and that he thinks that might be gapless. But isn't sure. So, I decide, ok, lets see if I can get something via networking that is gapless. I'm not against getting techy and doing networking stuff for playback, but I figured if I can keep it simple and just connect a hard drive directly to the player, why not? But, hey, if this works, great.
My experiments found that, no, no gapless playback via networking either. I wasn't sure if this was still the fault of the player, the software, or both. So I decided, ok, lets check with Oppo, and Oppo confirmed that no, there is absolutely no way to get gapless flac playback at all with their players.
FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Apparently, the chip that they use for sacd/dvd-a/and all that disc playback just doesn't support it. So, there you go, the buck gets passed to the chip developer.
Now then, there are boxes that will do gapless flac playback. People have been recommending squeezebox to me. But, after spending $499 on one player, I don't fancy having to buy a 2nd box to do what you would think someone could build into the one box I already spent nearly 500 on. Plus, the squeezebox is a bit pricy.
So, ok, lets look at the roku. I have a friend that has been nagging me, suggesting I should've bought a roku instead of the Oppo. I had to force him to attempt to rip an SACD to demonstrate to him just why a roku box could never take the place of an Oppo. But, roku boxes are pretty cost efficient, maybe that can do it.
Well, right off the bat, you can't play flac at all directly from a hard drive to a roku box.
NEXT!
So, basically, yes, I got exactly what I paid for with the Oppo, the features I wanted from the Oppo all work as I want, so really I shouldn't complain. But, when I delve into the possibilities of what else it can do, it fell flat, and so now I'm left wanting to expand my capabilities further. And, I'm a bit frustrated that I can't find a 1 box solution to do all that you would think someone should be able to build 1 box to do. We can put a man on the moon, but we can't build 1 box that will playback bluray/dvd/dvd-a/sacd and do gapless flac playback? Seriously?
Why is it that, despite the great technology that exists, mankind can never really see and use it to the full potential? I just don't get it.
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