Wireless audio streaming with Oppo BDP-83

[srayan]

I apologize if this question has already been asked in these forums...

The Oppo BDP-83 Blu-ray player is capable of streaming lossless audio from a hard drive. Using a DLNA compatible server such as Asset UPnP, you can stream your FLAC (or any) tracks to your hi-fi system as long as the Oppo is hardwired into an Ethernet connection. Although the software is somewhat cumbersome to use, it essentially accomplishes what a squeezebox will. Plus instead of a touchscreen, you have your plasma TV (or whatever) display to play around on.

My question is- should I keep my Touch on preorder? Or is DLNA capable hardware simply going to make this stuff obsolete?

My guess it that the DAC is slightly better in the Touch but doubt it's much better than the SE version on the Oppo. I'm sure the Touch navigation is better but that can likely be improved upon in the Oppo. There's a good thread on this on AVSforum for those that are interested. Any comments from the Squeezebox gurus?

[toby10]

I'm a big OPPO fan myself, I have two OPPO players. SBS has some sort of UPnP support but I've never tried it myself and I'd guess there are limitations to it.
If you go the UPnP route you might want to try the many other UPnP media server software choices out there, see which works best with your OPPO.

Keep in mind that you are comparing a swiss army knife media player (OPPO) to a dedicated music streaming device (Touch).

Also, if you plan on using either music streaming device often, your plasma will chew through electricity quite quickly compared to the very low power Touch.
Depending on your listening needs the Touch could pay for itself in one year by electric savings alone vs a power hungry plasma.
For *me* I have no interest in powering up my 400 watt plasma to select my next song or playlist.

[linvale]

I don;t know the details of the oppo interface but usually DLNA rnabled players use soemthing like TWONKY media to achieve the purpose (I used to run this on a PS3 when I first started gtting interested inn digital music streaming).

Compared to the squeezeboxes (any of them) the interfaces tend to be basic and rether difficult. You have few or none of the search options or access to the wealth of options a well organised and tagged library can offer. There is patc hy support of streaming services such as Napster/last fm etc etc which you will definitely miss not having. Finally you may need your power hungry tv on to listen to music unless thre is an interface on the oppo facepanel that is usable (most aren't). The novelty of that soon wore off for me, though cover art can be pretty to display there are ways of doing this with squeeze box - and with a touch or duo it is very well done.

The squeezebox line and the plugins that come along with it really do set themselves above anything I know of that is DLNA. You can always use this in addition to your squeezeboxes as it accesses the same files. The DAC in the oppo will be pretty godd - but what I hear about the touch is that it is unlikely to be beaten and especially as it can (when avaialble) decode at higher resolutions the audio will be superior.

So no comparison - but this is a squeezebox forum .....

[KarolG]

But Oppo has 5.1 DAC and theoretically could play FLAC 5.1

If someone made "Oppo plugin" to SqueezeBox Server and use an Oppo as a Player - this would be an interesting option

[jamesg]

Hopefully you want to turn on your tv. This has been a non-starter for me and would not pass WAF.

Controlling the Touch with an ipod touch is a key selling factor to the wife.

I am interested in the 5.1 capability as I have invested some money in DD, DTS and other 5.1 formats. These are much better than most of my traditional stereo collection.

Does anyone think logitech will support 5.1 or is this too far from the mainstream for them?

James

[JohnSwenson]

The Touch's internal DAC will not do 5.1, BUT it should be able to send a 5.1 encoded stream over its digital out to an external decoder (AV receiver, 5.1 DAC etc)

So if you have a 5.1 encoded flac or wav file it should just work. The only gotcha is that you HAVE to have volume set to 100% with no replay gain. Anything that "changes the bits" such as a volume control will destroy the encoding.

John S.

[KarolG]

You can rip DTS or AC3 (Dolby Digital) from DVD disc. You can also wrap them into WAV container. Having this you can convert this WAV to FLAC (for tagging as there won't be any compression gain).

This will work with SqueezeBox Touch because DTS and AC3 are lossy formats with 1.5 MBit/s bandwidth - which is an upper limit for S/PDIF (Coax or Optical).

Therefore the maximum 5.1 quality for SqueezeBox Touch to pass to AV Receiver via S/PDIF is DTS 96/24 - still lossy format, still 1.5 MBit/s.

For real lossless 5.1 FLAC's - DVD-Audio rip or HD downloads - you are limited by S/PDIF connecttion. Cannot pass this to AV receiver - SqueezeBox would need HDMI output to achieve this.

The only way to pass it to AV receiver would be USB. I don't think there are AV Receivers with USB input capable of decoding 5.1 FLAC's.

Here comes Oppo BD-83 - it is DLNA capable. So I can imagine passing 5.1 FLAC via Ethernet to Oppo.

What about ripping Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD and "play" them via Oppo ?

The only thing we need is decent software. Here we are SqueezeBox Server. If it would only recognize an Oppo as a player.

Now I have SqueezeBox Receiver connected via Benchmark DAC-1 to stereo amplifier. I hate I need to downsample my HD music to 24/48 (playing from NAS). So SqueezeBox Touch will solve my problems. Perfect solution for Stereo (which is 80% I listen to).
However for Multichannel I would love the Oppo BD-83 Special Edition to be recognized as a player - this would make a complete solution for me

[toby10]

.........However for Multichannel I would love the Oppo BD-83 Special Edition to be recognized as a player - this would make a complete solution for me

So you want Logitech to spend time and resources on their free server software to make it more likely to not buy their hardware players.

[Amnesiac]

So you want Logitech to spend time and resources on their free server software to make it more likely to not buy their hardware players.

It's open source with a plug-in architecture... so anyone with both a Slim Devices and a DLNA device and the right coding skills might see the need & give it a go....

There are plug-ins for subscription services that there could easily be a revenue share deal for, so its in Logitech's interest to increase the use of their server so people who use those services and have DLNA devices take the Logitech over some other "free" server to use.

oh and how about a corporation with a good DLNA device to sell who don't want to develop a whole new server when they can piggy back on a really good one... I don't know oh how about someone like Logitech who make devices that fall into both camps.

etc etc etc

whatever the business driver 7.6.x builds support a DLNA server plugin now.

[toby10]

.........
oh and how about a corporation with a good DLNA device to sell who don't want to develop a whole new server when they can piggy back on a really good one... I don't know oh how about someone like Logitech who make devices that fall into both camps.......

Like the doomed Logitech Revue which is selling 70% below expectations?
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2384652,00.asp