Pre-emphasis and OPPO Blu-ray Players

I am still optimistic that Oppo will come up with a fix for this issue. My work around is to keep my older player around just for these discs. Unfortunately, my older player does not sound anywhere as nice as my BDP80 (I bought two of them) for non-Preemphasis discs.

This will keep me from buying any more Oppo's and I will certainly investigate any other brands before purchase.

 

I would not hold out any realistic expectations that this can be resolved.

Of course you realize this affects only a small subset of PE discs. Discs, that in reality, are improperly authored. And to find a modern (non-dedicated CDP) that will handle these could be a real challenge.

One solution is to identify which discs you own that this applies to (I had a handful), and burn a CD-R version with manual PE applied. It's not like there will ever be any more titles released like this.

 

Rip into WAV and then open each file with WaveEmph. Select "Apply de-emphasis" (or whatever it's called) and seconds later you're good to go.

 

This seems to do a pretty good job, I was using the foobar filter but wasn't happy with it, thanks for the info!, (four years later)

 

Hi, I realize this is an old thread, but I was wondering--what is the label and catalog number of your OMD Architecture & Morality? I'm trying to figure out which one to get, and if all the old ones have pre-emphasis, I'll just have to settle for one of them. Do you know if there are any "pre-remastered" editions of this album that don't have pre-emphasis? Thanks so much!

 

Label: Virgin – CDID12

Not sure about other versions.

 

Any updates to the BDP 103/5... Did Oppo fix the PE problem?

 

My old BDP 80 does PE via analog and HDMI out I would certainly think the higher end models would

 

I think the only Oppo that didn't do PE was the BDP-83, which Oppo confirmed.

 

The OPPOs will correctly decode PE if it is ID'd in the TOC. The problem occurs when the PE is embedded the disc Subcode, which the players do not recognize.

 

Even the latest and greatest? That's a shame.

 

Slightly off topic, is there a way to accurately see subcode PE?

I've always wanted to rip an early Target CD that i have (The Digital Domain-A Demonstration). Literally lost a lot of sleep over it . It has TOC and subcode PE. Not 100% sure which tracks have what. Tried with the latest EAC but it doesn't seem to detect any PE on it...

 

Check out the link posted by this member. It worked for me.

 

This is incorrect... No HDMI decoding

 

Is this issue of pre-emphasis player the same for the Oppo 103 player?

 

Yes, for all of them...
Unless someone can verify a SUB Q disc

 

Besides the cost prohibitive BT Abbey Road are there any other SUB encoded Pre discs out there to test?

I have a BT Venus and Mars, did most BT discs have their pre-emphasis in the SUB?

 

Going through the entire thread I tried to label each as such that were verified, plus one's I own.
I'm thinking as stated in this thread Oppo can not do the proper EQ if found in the SUB
Here's a list of one's that were verified where the tag was located-
Pre emphasis list? »
I've found switching between analog and digital the easiest, You will definitely hear a difference (Vocals), almost night and day. Then I'll confirm via software

 

For what it’s worth, I’ve been playing with some 90s repressings of 80s CDs over the last few days and thought my experience could be helpful.

The first is a 90s Australian pressing of the International Version of Jennifer Rush’s first, self-titled album, cat no. CDCBS26488, matrix “CDCBS-26488 53 DADC AUSTRIA” (no I haven’t mixed up Austria and Australia). As usual, the way I first listened to it was ripping it and having a quick listen in headphones…
and after my ears stopped ringing, the AIFFs went straight into xACT for de-emphasis. A check of a generated cue sheet in XLD showed FLAGS PRE, and when the disc was opened in a recent version of EAC in a Windows box, it showed YES in the pre-emphasis column. So it’s a TOC-pre emphasised disc.

The second is an early 90s Japanese repressing of Whitney Houston’s first, self titled album (
this pressing ), matrix “32RD-31- 7K V”. Again, after ripping this was blazingly hot and de-emphasis made it sound great. XLD again showed FLAGS PRE when generating a cue sheet, but EAC didn’t show any pre-emphasis, so I can only assume this is flagged in the subcodes.

Now, I’ll come to the point of this post: today I compared the de-emphasised rips playing through an AppleTV to the original discs playing through an Oppo BDP-103AU running firmware 10XAU-80-1031 and they sounded pretty well the same. Trust me, if the player wasn’t de-emphasising the discs, I’d know about it!

The Oppo wasn’t running through the amp in my profile, it was connected via HDMI to a Pioneer VSX-521 - which is kind of important because it shows that the Oppo was passing the de-emphasis down the HDMI.

Hope this helps.

 

That is definitely interesting. Thanks.
Confirmation from other Oppo's would be nice. I'll give mine a try. Odd however that the EQ filter would be found in that section and not part of the DAC when the HDMI section just should be passing the straight digital pcm as a transport.

 

You need to connect the Oppo to the Pioneer via analog, SPDIF and HDMI and then switch between them to see where the decoding is being done. The pre-emphasis state is definitely part of the SPDIF standard, so, if recognized by the player should be sent to an external DAC. I assume the same is true of HDMI, but do not know for sure.

 

I’ll hook it up via all three and report back.

 

Ok, done. Flicking between the Oppo via HDMI, coaxial S/PDIF, analogue and software de-emphasised files through an AppleTV, the tonality is much the same - certainly not 10 dB difference at 10 kHz! The Oppo is set to bitstream output for both HDMI and Coaxial/Optical output, so I don’t really know where the de-emphasis is taking place but it’s certainly taking place somewhere in the player for it to be affecting the analogue output. Now if only I had an external DAC that indicated when it was receiving an emphasised signal!

Also, for the sake of completeness, I got the same results using both the TOC and the Subcode flagged disc.

 

Thanks for the follow up. It certainly seems that:

a. the Oppo is doing de-emphasis for analog playback;
b. the Oppo is passing the emphasis flag in the S/PDIF signal.

For HDMI it is harder to say, as your Pioneer does not indicate the presence of the emphasis flag. It would be most logical for the emphasis flag to also be transported in the HDMI signal, but it is also possible that the Oppo does an iTunes and digitally de-emphasizes the data sent via HDMI.

In any case, it seems like you are now covered regardless of which way you choose to listen to your emphasized discs.

 

Do the new oppos UDP203 UHD have the same issue with de-emphasize ? Now with the Oppo audio closing is there a alternative that does sacd 4k bluray and de-emphasize cds properly without any extra work involved (I am not tech savvy ) ? I have a old Denon made in japan Receiver so I think I will need something like this Oppo with the 5.1 and 7.1 inputs , I don't plan on getting a hdmi receiver at least anytime soon .