I’m not interested in listening to everything that people have created. I don’t want to have a million recordings on my hard disk or 10,000 CDs.
The music I like is on 500-600 SACD / Blu-Ray Audio / CDs on my shelves. I get rid of music that I don’t enjoy listening to. I have never regretted these decisions.
DMP provides great sound. I equipped myself with 2 spare lasers. Because there is quite a lot of good music on Blu-Ray Audio, I appeal to colleagues from PS Audio to solve the problem of playing these discs by DMP.
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That’s my one wish as well: improved playback of Blu-ray audio in the DMP. I have a dozen wonderful sounding Japanese jazz Blu-ray Audio discs the DMP won’t read. I’d get more if it could read them! They sound great in my second system via the Oppo UDP-205. I just know they (and others that the DMP won’t navigate such as the Yes Steven Wilson remasters and more) would sound even better via the DMP/DSD.
That’s the only functional issue I have with the DMP.
I’m glad I got the DMP when I could afford it. For the near future I can not imagine affording the next PA Audio transport (or DAC or streamer).
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From what I understand Blu-Ray (not previously heard of it) was just another method to get more than 16/44 PCM onto the CD format. I understand that it is 24/96 PCM and was mainly aimed at HD 5:1 for movie playback, so originally was not even designed as an audio format, just an AV format adopted for audio. You can now stream in 5:1. 24/96 is now the standard format for classical and jazz HD downloads and streaming.
Why on earth would any manufacturer fix a discontinued machine (I understand the DMP is discontinued as the Oppo drives are no longer available) for a redundant format?
Why on earth would any manufacturer include a redundant format in the specification for a new machine?
dCS, who arguably make the best consumer digital equipment in the world, saw the benefit of SACD and were the first people external to Sony to decode SACD into native DSD, long before PS Audio. However, when they made their Rossini transport in 2016 it did not play SACD because they could not get a good enough drive. Fortunately that has been fixed in their 2019 model. Their commitment to SACD is probably only because they pioneered use of upsampling and DSD processing in consumer units and dCS units are expected to play SACDs.
Marantz continue to support discs, hardly surprising. Their SA-10 is apparently fabulous, but is a serious streaming DAC transport. It supports SACD but not Blu-Ray.
Ironically, my DVD machine that can play Blu-Ray audio. I only found out 10 minutes ago. It costs $400.
“The Denon Professional DN-500BDMKII will play virtually every Blu-ray, DVD, and audio CD format, making it easy to utilize multiple disc formats within a system. Supported formats include BD25, BD50, BD-RE, DVD, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW and Audio CD (CD-R, CD-RW), DTS Music Disc, and HDCD.”
I wonder if Paul will change his mind about the DMP when his Octave streamer is available. I hope and expect so. Most people have already reached that conclusion with existing products.
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p.s. Paul mentioned he’d sourced a new Japanese drive unit. If that makes the DMP serviceable, it makes perfect sense to make a DMP Mk2. The cost I presume would be minimal, the main issue being if there is a market sufficient to justify a $5,000 CD/SACD transport.
The other issue is whether the new drive can be retro-fitted. I believe this is the case with the dCS Rossini, and there was a lot of criticism in 2016/7 when it was released unable to play SACDs.
https://audiophilereview.com/cd-dac-digital/why-super-audio-cd-failed.html
An easy to answer question; many have significant collections of various physical formats - all of which they would like to play.
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I’m guessing you are spot on, Paul will come to the conclusion, PSAs streamer sounds better than DMP.
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I’m sure there are far more people with collections of 78’s than there are people with collections of Blu-Ray Audio discs, but I doubt anyone makes a 78 speed turntable, let alone an audiophile one.
Blu-Ray Audio disc owners are fortunate that you can at least get Blu-Ray players, if not a Blu-Ray transport.
The obvious reason is because it is primarily a video format.
Maybe 78 owners, Blu-Ray Audio and DVD-A disc owners should form a little club of the dispossessed.
Just a little market research on AcousticSounds shows there are precious few BR-A titles available - a total of 65 titles compared to tens of thousands of CDs etc.
Perhaps someone could enlighten me as to the commercial potential for making a Blu-Ray Audio transport? PS Audio is not a charity. Meanwhile, I’ll look into some more viable businesses, like Rent-A-Horse or a camel dealership aimed at the spice trade (next day delivery not guaranteed). Maybe there’s a market for jousting lances. I could go the whole way and bring out a new Betamax machine.
Format wars have winners and losers. Blu-Ray Audio was clearly a loser. It doesn’t matter how good it was, or if there are some hardy souls with a pile of them stacked on top of their Betamax tapes, they are history.
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concert playback (and movies) via Blu-Ray is driving new releases…and most are 24/48
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I don’t want to argue with anyone, especially someone who would rather stream than spin as that’s a world I don’t know or particularly care about. My only beef with the DMP is that it was advertised as playing Blu-ray Audio. . . and it doesn’t do a very good job of that. I’m a disc spinner and I have those discs to spin and thought I could . . . that was an influence in my purchase. Years later not a biggie, but I still would like it to do better if it could.
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The market is sufficient enough to justify a $50K CD/SACD transport, otherwise Esoteric wouldn’t be building them.
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Esoteric is of course the premium brand of TEAC that includes TASCAM, and overalls part of Pioneer. I’d be surprised if Esoteric makes money, the Japanese do this sort of thing for branding purposes. Esoteric if famous for its VDRS drives that cost about $5,000 each to make. Contrast with PS Audio that is buying in third party drives that cost relative pennies.
I’ve mainly used TEAC and TASCAM for CD in the past and several years ago emailed Pioneer about using a TASCAM transport asking:
I have owned several TEAC and TASCAM products.
I currently uses a TASCAM CD200 that uses the CD-5020A drive unit. I feed
the digital output into a high quality external DAC.
Is there any reason why the digital data stream from a VDRS transport (as
used in Esoteric) should be any better than from the CD-5020A transport?
Surely both provide perfectly accurate digital data streams?
Kind regards
to which they replied:
Hello Mr Segal, difference will be the durability of the mechanism and a
reduction of jitter, which in turn helps your DAC achieve a greater audio
conversion accuracy. To a certain level jitter is not an issue when
extracting data (computer files and the like), but when a real time DA
conversion is done to the data stream, jitter becomes very important and
can create minute timing issues in the DA conversion. Whether it would be
actually audible is another thing altogether. Audio is a very subjective.
Regards
Talking about sitting on fences.
Can you get a digital stream playing Blu-Ray Audio from your Oppo UDP-205 player?
I now own my first, and last, Blu-Ray Audio disk. A famous Bach recording, I have it on vinyl and this lovely CD and Blu-Ray Audio set just arrived.
The Blu-Ray Audio disc says it’s 24/192.
I shoved it in my Denon Professional DN-500BD (cost £325, about $400), which is connected to my TV via HDMI and my audio system using the digital (coaxial) output.
Confirmation that the DVD input is coaxial (not analogue)
So none of the analogue outputs are connected to anything.
I pressed play, the system shows the input as DVD, and I got glorious sound!
It was also playing through the TV via the HDMI.
So this humble little professional disc spinner seems to be functioning as a Blu-Ray Audio transport. Should I be surprised?
Yes, but copyright management downsamples the digital output from my Oppo to the DSD. And I don’t have the two in the same system any longer–each is the DAC for a separate system. If these particular Blu-ray Audio discs were able to be read by the DMP and sent to the DSD I feel certain they would sound better than the Oppo analog outs and better than the Oppo transporting to the DSD, though they do sound good. I can’t play them in the system with the DSD which is a better system overall as far as pre- and amplification and cabling and power management; wish I could.
The Oppo is meant to have a very good DAC, but I assume the DSD DAC is better.
In my test I could easily have used the analogue outputs, it was to see if I could use the Denon as a digital transport for the Blu-Ray Audio. It works, but I have no idea if it is downsampling.
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I consider the DSD a considerably better DAC than the Oppo used as one–I used to have both in the same system. The DSD shows the input information and with the Oppo 24/192 or 24/96 from the Blu-ray Disc is received as 24/48.
Unfortunately, it is downsampling. You are probably getting 16/48 or, at best, 24/48 via your Denon’s coaxial digital output. If you want the BR-A disc’s full 24/192 bandwidth, you would need to use the Denon’s internal DAC and analog outputs. Alternatively, you could try adding an HDMI de-embedder. See:
If you want an HDMI de-embedder that, in addition to 24/192 PCM, claims to pass DSD64, check out:
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Thanks, but I have no desire to use this device for audio. I’m happy now to have a CD rip and a hard copy of the booklet, but I tend to play the vinyl. I can also stream it at 24/192, the same as on this Blu-Ray disc.
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Yes, that happens for me too from time to time, not too often (maybe 3.15 is in fact better then earlier versions in that respect or it just depends on the weather…) but most annoying for me is that DSD downsampling is not working. This is an advertised feature and was an important reason for me to buy the DMP. Whenever I compared the DSD layer of the hybrid SACDs I own to their Red Book layer, I preferred the downsampled DSD (with one single exception). So please, at least make that work again!
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My very first streaming experience is different. I don’t have an optimized network as many here have, nevertheless I immediately heard that the speakers disappeared even more than they had already (since I have a Lyngdorf amp), some recordings (even on Spotify) were tremendously holographic. But those were recordings that I don’t have CD versions of. When comparing CDs to their streaming versions (in my case Spotify and Qobuz via Roon), Spotify lost dramatically (kind of grainy sounding), but Qobuz/Roon was in some respects better then the DMP. But not all-in-all. So, I guess, if I invested money in optimizing my network, it might be possible to surpass the DMP…
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Which is why I prefer not to utilize one kind of source only, one day I feel like streaming (from my own library), the other day like spinning a CD and than the other day like vinyl. I like the variety of such system.
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