It’s a wonderful thing when something works the way it’s supposed to. Remember I mentioned that the engineering team at Oppo offered to modify my BDP-103 so that it would output multichannel digital audio via multiple S\/P DIF connectors? Well after a little technician type work, I can report that I can play a 5.1 Dolby TrueHD MCH audio streams from a Blu-ray disc into my Benchmark DAC2 HGC and listen through a set of OPPO PM-1 headphones. That’s one more box I can check off for the AXPONA event happening at the end of the week.<\/p>\n
When my friends at OPPO suggested that they could make one of their units talk digitally to a few Benchmark DAC2s, I was excited. As I’ve stated previously, this is not something that you can get from OPPO or any other consumer electronics makers. There are laws that prohibit placing a native high-resolution, digital stream on the digital outputs of a consumer device. Don’t ask me why. It clearly makes no sense. After all, you can visit HDtracks or PonoMusic and download a 192 kHz\/24-bit transfer of a classic album or track but the RIAA restricts you from accessing the same quality from a disc player? The output on virtually all optical disc players downconverts the S\/P DIF outputs to 48 lHz\/16-bit PCM…you are prevented from getting high-resolution AND you can’t get a digital high-resolution connection in multichannel. The HDMI connection does provide the “Full Monty” but you can’t get at it unless you purchase a Kanex Pro audio “de-embedder”.<\/p>\n
Every source device has to have an analog output board. The internal DACs convert the digital stream to analog and then output the individual channels to the RCA jacks on the back of the machine. DHL delivered a small box late this afternoon that contained a replacement analog board with about 8 thin wires and a couple of power leads routed to the secondary board. This is the board that has an AK4101A semiconductor at its heart. According to the data sheet, “The AK4101A is a four outputs digital audio transmitter (DIT) which supports data rate up to 192kHz sample rate operation. The AK4101A supports AES3, IEC60958, S\/PDIF & EIAJ CP1201 interface standards. The AK4101A accepts audio data and auxiliary information data and etc, which is then biphase-encoded and driven on to a cable. The audio serial port supports eight formats.”<\/p>\n
In a brief email with OPPO about the installation of the modification, I assured them that I was technically capable of modifying my BDP-103. Some many months ago, I installed the ARIA music server board in my BDP-105. That operation was much more complicated than removing the analog board in the 103. In fact, I’ve been messing about with electronic since I was a teenager. I spent a lot of time building HeathKits including an electric guitar, color television, HAM radio transceiver, test equipment, guitar amplifier, and audio receiver. I loved making stuff (solder smoke is one type of smoke that I can tolerate). Things didn’t always work when power was applied and I’ve been shocked with 120 volts AC more times than I would like to admit.<\/p>\n
Swapping out the analog board on the BDP-103 as trivial. And once I programmed the card via the USB port according to the rather terse instructions from OPPO (and a support phone call because it didn’t work the first time), the multichannel outputs worked perfected on my Benchmark DAC2.<\/p>\n
It’s a little delicate and I have to remove the card before shipping the whole thing to Chicago, but it does work. Many thanks to OPPO for providing this custom setup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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