Oppo BDP-83SE
Blu-ray Player

Oppo BDP-83SE Universal Blu-Ray Player

Oppo BDP-83SE

OPPO's BDP-83 Universal Blu-ray Player has been very successful, as it is one of only a few players that will ouput all codecs (CD, DVD-A, SACD, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio) in digital format through an HDMI connection. Now, with the Special Edition of this player, analog audio performance is improved significantly, and in fact, performs like players costing much, much more.

I won't be going into a long discussion of the design and features of the SE version, as it is the same as the standard version except that the stereo analog output is now state of the art.

To quote from OPPO's website:
"The OPPO BDP-83 Special Edition uses the state-of-the-art Sabre32 family of Digital-to-Analog Converters (DAC) from ESS Technology. The Sabre32 family is known as one of the industry's highest performance audio DACs and are often found in high-end audiophile and professional equipments. The OPPO BDP-83 Special Edition uses an 8-channel Sabre Premier (ES9006) DAC chip for its 7.1 multi-channel output. The dedicated stereo output uses another 8-channel Sabre32 Ultra (ES9016) DAC chip by stacking 4 DACs for each of the Left and Right channels to achieve even greater audio performance."

The price of the BDP-83SE is $899, sold direct on their website.

I listened to a number of CDs, SACDs, and DVD-As, and the clarity of the sound (detail) was noticeably better than with the standard version. It wasn't a huge difference, because the standard version does pretty well with analog audio too, but it was definitely better. But, rather than go on and on with subjective impressions, let the graphs tell the story.

On the Bench

Tests were performed into a 100 kOhm load. Output ranged from 1.2 volts to 1.5 volts RMS.

At 1 kHz, THD+N was only 0.004% at 16/44.1 sampling, and 0.001% at 24/96 and 24/192. With SACD, the value was a bit higher because of the out-of-band noise, but you can see that the peaks within the audio band (20 Hz - 20 kHz) are at least as good as the other graphs.

At 10 kHz, distortion was still very low. Again, the value for SACD was higher due to the out-of-band noise that reaches its highest level at 40 kHz. This noise is typical of Delta-Sigma modulation and is one of the criticisms of SACD.

Using 19 kHz and 20 kHz sine waves as the test signal, the B-A peak at 1 kHz was nil. This is very impressive.

IMD was also extremely low. IMD is calculated by measuring the peaks within 250 Hz on either side of the 7 kHz fundamental, so the value for SACD does not include the noise peaks in the out-of-band region. Nevertheless, IMD for SACD was a bit higher than with the PCM signals (16/44.1, 24/96, 24/192).

The noise spikes in the above graphs are probably being picked up in the single-ended RCA cables Going to a balanced output design (XLR) would help to eliminate these (as long as your preamp true balanced XLR inputs). Maybe the next version?

Frequency response results are shown below. The response was down only 0.05 dB at 20 kHz, and 0.2 dB at 50 kHz. The SACD decoding includes a filter above 20 kHz. This reduces the impact of the out-of-band noise, which can interfere with the clarity of the audible frequencies ("beating" and IM).

Conclusions

OPPO has set another standard with the BDP-83 Special Edition Universal Blu-ray Player. Its analog audio output rivals players well into four figures ($$$$). Make no mistake, OPPO is becoming a major force in Blu-ray and audio players. The next generation will be even better than this one.