Using blue ray player as a high rez transport

manek..great info !
have you checked the Digital out ? is that also High Rez ?

Yes arj, I am playing 24/96 files on usb pen drive built into the player, taking the digital out from the blue ray player into a dac at 24/96. Its seems to behave like a media player. I have tested 16/44, 16/48, 24/48, 24/88 and 24/96. They all show up with their respective bitrates. Ofcourse I did 3 official firmware upgrades till date. It doesn't support flac. But wave is good enough for now. The newer ones from sony may have flac software support too. Wonder if the pioneers have flac support via usb ? I am told oppo's have it.

The shortcomings are:
1) No flac support,
2) Doesn't play dvd-a
3) pcm output from sacd via digital out is 16/48. Sacd out via hdmi in pcm format is 24/176.

The last firmware update was june 11 so I doubt any more will come out for this model since newer models are out already.

Now if entry level blue ray players start to come close to media devices in file format support, what's more does one want for 9k ?

Happy days !

Manek

Very interesting.

OTOH, I recently had a Oppo player - BDP83 that came to me for installing the Region Crack Hardware & Lens cleaning (it was not working ) .

I was rather disappointed with the BDP83 Sound Quality. I had expected Much better, considering its past Audiophile Status.

On comparison with my Electrocompaniet UMC 1 UP, the shoot out was over in less than a minute.

Would agree with you ampnut whole heartedly. Though my blue ray has 24/192 wolfson dacs, its own analogue outputs are not much to write home about. Use it a just a transport for discs or usb and then the fun begins....remember its just a 9,990/- rupee player....

Would expect a lot more from the oppo but I guess you do have a darn good cdp.....period !

Manek

Hi Manek, Thank you for the compliment.

However, my real disappointment with the Oppo player really stems from the fact that I did not hear any Audiophile pedigree traits in the Oppo sound.

Most audiophiles have a preferred sound and may not necessarily like different sounding equipment. However, genuine Audiophile equipment will bring something special to the table..... whether its up yr street or not is a different matter.

The Oppo BDP83 did not ...

That last statement of yours just makes me feel better !

I was contemplating on getting a oppo and then didn't :-)

Manek

On a hunch, I burned some 16/44, 16/48, 24/96 wave files onto a dvd and played it back as a data dvd disk on the sony bdp player rather than from the usb pendrive/hard drive. Same software interface, just different media.

Observations :

1) Data dvd cleaner in the highs and crecendo's, cleaner bass lines
2) Usb sounds more dynamic
3) Usb has more midrange bloom

Manek

Intersting.... Thanks for the info

Managed to get a 500gb HDD portable drive (usb2.0) going with blue ray player instead of the pen drive from the players usb drive, also powered by the players usb port. Had to tweak the drives partition to get it working.

Hit upon a bug or you may call it limitation, the browsing software doesn't go down more than 3 levels of directories from the root. I didn't encounter that with a pen drive. HDD is formated with fat32 and pendrives by default come with extFAT. Maybe one more firmware update would fix it ?
Wonder when that's coming.

Having a good time with this little thingie. And to think I had this player for over a year and didn't even bother with the usb for so long.

Manek

Had to tweak the drives partition to get it working.

What was the tweak ? FAT 32 ?

Yes fat32 but partitioned with swiss knife since vvindoz would partition only upto 32gb.

Manek

Hi

Along with the blue ray player, I hit upon two more jackpots, the ipad(64gb) and ipod(16gb). Both seem to play upto 16/48 wav files. So full cd/dvd res music on the go ! I wish it would play 24 bit but I guess that's asking for too much right now.

.....this is fun.
I have been ripping my cd's to wav with itunes and error correction enabled. The same libraries get exported to the ipad and ipod with very decent sound. Ipod is a bit edgy on the highs but not much to be bothered about. Am looking for a good set of phones for the ipod/ipad, sensitive and easy to drive.

There is a camera dongle that apple has with the ipad which when fitted to the port near the home button helps in taking spdif output via usb into dac so that's next. A battery powered portable digital source ! Perhaps the samsung galaxy can do this too ?

Regards

Manek

Manek said:

There is a camera dongle that apple has with the ipad which when fitted to the port near the home button helps in taking spdif output via usb into dac so that's next. A battery powered portable digital source ! Perhaps the samsung galaxy can do this too ?

Are you SURE about this ?

The Ipod also provides a USB connection via its Apple to USB cable, biut it will NOT output Digital out, unless enabled by a separate device ( such as the Wadia dock... for which Apple charges a HUGE royalty PER DEVICE

Manek schrieb:

... There is a camera dongle that apple has with the ipad which when fitted to the port near the home button helps in taking spdif output via usb into dac so that's next. A battery powered portable digital source ! Perhaps the samsung galaxy can do this too ? Regards Manek

Is this something you have tried ? i have the camera dongle but no good USD/Spdif converter to verify ..

Ampnut

Yes about the ipad, not the ipod. Read about it on the net so will explore more about the camera connection kit. Now if the ipad can do it then netbooks would be also ideal sources along with other tablets. Small, light, massive storage via external hdd(netbook). I am wondering if the smps power supply of a netbook is so much of a deterrent for high quality music on the go ? Even netbook batteries nowadays last pretty long.
http://www.stereo.ne...a3856ffa46a0dd53e78a

Manek

And for "I" devices, do I go ALAC or stick to wav/aiff ?

Alac would be so much more usefull in terms of storage.

Manek

hi all

Found another limitation to the sony bdp s370 blue ray player....hard disk is now over 100gb and the player finds it difficult to read the TOC on startup. It gives errors "cannot load file type". One power reset from the remote fixes it. It happens every time I use the HDD with the blue ray player. No such issues when I connect the same HDD to a computer.

I guess this player was never made to support hard drives, only pen drives.

Interesting....I wonder if I should split the existing files into two or more large pen drives for stability ?

I believe the later model s380 reads ntfs/nfs partitions as well so I guess would be tweaked to read large storage devices.

Interesting no ?

Wonder if Sony would release a patch for the s370 ?

Manek

Maybe it just does not 'like' the huge FAT32 partition created by Swiss Knife ?

Such a large partition in FAT32 was just not meant to be ....

Fat32 file systems can take a lot except for a file size limitation of 3 to 4 gb per file( I forget the exact number). The pc doesn't show any such behavior, just the bd player.

You can format linux and apple systems with fat32 and they would be fine.

The s380 I believe recognizes ntfs too and that would mean proper hard disk support.

Your are right, what I am doing is "desi jugaad" and I guess
I have got to do more to make it work well :-)

Manek

Any of you guys using a external usb powered hard drive to playback music ? If so try powering the hard drive from two usb ports with a splitter cable which comes with two usb port connectors. Its funny that you get to hear differences from unsuspecting quarters.

I was trying to see if my hard drive was not getting enough power to explain the previously mentioned behavior of the blue ray player popping "device not supported" error. When I used the splitter I got a different presentation...more easy flowing and relaxed. Is it the power or the change of cable ? Don't know yet. Am using very stock lam road/oem single and splitter cable to connect hard drive. I haven't got a "device not supported" error now but the " cannot load data" error persists on power up from the cold.

actually you are supposed to feed these disks with the splitter cable only. the power given with one USB is too less for the motor and the cause of many a failed HDD due to a dead motor !!