2014 — 8 January: Wednesday
Happy anniversary, Big Bro! 42 years, heh? Not too shabby. Of course, this year would have been our 40th. Speaking of which...
The nice man from Hidden Systems in Hartley Wintney who sold me my (fabulous) new Oppo toy on Monday is also a Linn hi-fi dealer. He kindly sent me off with a card 'entitling' me to a free download of Linn's 40th anniversary collection that normally sells for £18-95 and consists of 40 hi-res audio tracks1 assembled more or less at random from that Glaswegian outfit's jazz and classical archives.
Yesterday evening — after I'd finished fine-tuning the Oppo's video playback settings — I spent some time downloading and listening to this collection (using the Oppo to stream the FLAC files from my Synology NAS). I've now concluded (not entirely to my surprise) that I'm actually happier listening to music I like2 at lower resolution than to music that leaves me largely unmoved, no matter how faithfully it's reproduced. And — having long since paid my dues to the audio industry — I certainly can't afford to replace any significant fraction of my collection at those sort of prices even if it were all available in the first place. Which it isn't.
That said, I'm still very grateful to have such a fine set of "reference" quality audio material in Technology Towers. So, thank you very much, Mr Chris Fuller! I suspect I shall see you again when Mike upgrades his own Oppo...
Opinions vary
An interesting set of links:
- No point in 24-bit/192 KHz?
- 24-bit audio FAQ
- B&W guide to 24-bit FLAC
- FLAC and MP3 info plus free demos
- Conversion software
I returned from...
... a little supplies jaunt (kitchen cleaner making a rare appearance) more than ready for a cuppa with my lemonses before then turning my attention to the latest Waitrose credit card bill, and a DVD that's taken its fair time to cross the Atlantic:
I find Helen Slater most attractive.
In hot pursuit...
... of video pixel nirvana, I'm now using both hdmi outputs on the new toy. hdmi #1 carries digital video (and audio, which has nowhere to go) directly into the Kuro plasma screen, and hdmi #2 carries both digital audio and video into the pre-amp (which now has nowhere to send the video). Close reading of the (still useful) unofficial FAQ here suggested that "mishaps could happen" to a digital video signal even when it is ostensibly merely "passing through" an A/V receiver (or the like) on the way to its final destination.
Meanwhile, I've also discovered that although the Oppo can play the 24-bit 192 KHz FLAC files from the NAS, I can get no audio via the hdmi, yet can deliver the 192 KHz digital audio to the pre-amp via the co-ax output. Hence, my latest variant of the system diagrams is also now showing more SP/DIF interlinks than (should be) strictly necessary.
Impressions, after...
... a couple of days tinkering and tweaking?
Blu-rays play just as impeccably as ever, but the handling of SD stuff is extraordinary. I must say, having got quite used to the Panasonic, I'd overlooked its relatively mundane performance on DVDs. (There was never an issue with BDs.)
The Oppo also sails through the Spears & Munsil setup. Blacker than black, whiter than white, colour balance, sharpness. (That's an interesting one. Instead of minimum, it's now on the neutral point between adding and subtracting "sharp" bits.) I'm using "Source Direct" whenever I play a BD to send raw digital video straight to the Kuro, and 1080p for everything else (just as my late friend Henry advised, in fact) to give the Qdeo video processing a chance to do its thing. I get a brief flash of green screen HDCP crapness, but no more than a fraction of a second. Audio resumes in about two or three seconds. Physically, the Oppo is inaudible — unlike the Humax. And even that is by no means noisy.
The bunny is happy.