OPPO UDP-205 MQA (via USB-In) is now live!

It is working just fine for me via XLR and RCA on OS 10.3.6.

One of the other new options with the recent oppo software beta that includes MQA is the USB DACupsampling option. I had not tried that out until tonight. I actually liked what I heard. I compared it to upsampling in Roon and preferred the upsampling in the OPPO. What is unclear since I can’t see it on any screen is the actual upsample rate. I am assuming that the OPPO is upsampling PCM to 384 and DSD to 256? I don’t see anyway in the menu to up sample PCM to DSD. Or am I missing something? I guess I could convert PCM to DSD 64 in Roon and then let the OPPO upsample TO DSD 256, but if I am going to do that may as well do all DSD upsampling in Roon or HQ player. But I was pretty pleased with full PCM upsampling in the OPPO. What have the rest of you experienced with this option?
Doug

Got a new answer from Oppo this morning.

tir. 26. jun. 2018, 06:21
Hi Thomas,

we tested a freshly unpacked 205 with the regular beta firmware yesterday and indeed there was no sound with 96 kHz and above files via the XLR output.

We hope to make a revised firmware available soon as we understand that most of our users who use the DAC input also prefer to use the XLR outputs.

So hopefully there will come a fix soon.

1 Like

Pressing the info button on the Oppo remote during playback will show the up-sampled rate on the TV. Had a look last night it appears only 44.1kHz and 48kHz material gets up-sampled (by a factor of 2). No up-sampling happens to material of 88.2kHz or above.

I do agree though in that the I prefer the sound of Oppo up-sampling to that of Roon.

The info button also shows whether MQA decoding / unfolding is being done by the Oppo.

UPDATE: Trying this again tonight and it doesn’t show the upsampled rate on the info screen. I was certain it was there last night.

UPDATE 2: turning the upsampling feature off and then back on again has brought it back. The USB Audio In input rate shows double, as described above.

Thanks for checking this and sorta verifying some of it being what I thought, and some of it not so much! I wonder if they can/will add options much like Roon and HQPlayer to choose upsamping to a certain rate (power of 2, 96, 192, all the way up to 384) AND also choose to convert and upsample PCM to DSD 256. The ESS Sabre chip in the 205 is capable of all of those functions correct? Then I would really want to do a listening test b/t upsampling in Roon, HQPlayer and the Oppo DAC itself. I suspect the mac mini I have (despite it being the older version w/the quad core i7 and an added (by me) Samsung Evo SSD w/all music files on an attached thunderbolt drive just doesn’t have the firepower to do the DSP as well as other Roon/HQPlayer users who seem to have NASA supercomputers at home!
thanks,
Doug

Hopefully it will come out not as a beta…

Hi, I’m new to both the Oppo UDP-205 and Roon. I’m using wi-fi to stream to the Oppo right now from a Synology Diskstation. Seems to sound fine, but I don’t know if there is a better way to go yet. Also, I noticed in the signal Path window on the screen shot, there is one extra step I don’t see when I’m playing MQA, with is the MQA Full Decoder. Is that because I’m streaming to the Oppo?

I’ve already done the latest Oppo firmware update listed on Oppo’s website on June 29.

MQA is only playable via the usb input/dac.

I just updated my OPPO 205, general firmware and dac firmware.

Now HQ player only outputs white noise from the ultra Rendu to the Oppo audio dac.

Disabling HQPlayer and lust using my ultra Rendu It works fine unless I enable sample rate conversion - in which it sounds like much digital distortion - it also slows down the playback slightly.

Any ideas on how to fix this would be welcome.

Thanks for the reply. It seems then, that I hook a mac or pc up to the Oppo via a usb cable and either run the core on that computer or install the bridge software. Is that correct?

You don’t need to use the USB DAC to play MQA only to have the OPPO do the unfolding. You can set it so Roon does the unfolding. See this thread.

1 Like

Roon only performs the first unfold (“Decode Only”) of MQA. The USB input should perform both “Decode + Render”.

I’m not sure what the ESS9038Pro itself is capable of - but it would be nice if Oppo published some info to detail what is actually happening within the player when the Up-Sample DAC Input option is turned on.

UDP-205 only support hardware Core-decode, 2nd unfolding (Full-decode) never support in future due to hardware limitations. Oppo refer to them in JP website.
After these updates, my UDP-205 don’t accept DSD native by USB-DAC port. Changed to DoP from Native.

@Chris_Kimmelshue, can you kindly post your Roon settings for the OPPO-205? I can’t make mine work. It only works via the ethernet. While the USB DAC driver is properly installed on my laptop, and is connected to the OPPO, Roon via USB DAC is not working. By that I mean, no sound is coming out even though the Roon shows as playing music, but also, the signal path does not look anywhere like yours.

I do have the 118 USB DAC firmware, and the latest OPPO firmware, and the latest USB DAC driver, but this is not working for me.

Thank you very much,
Goran

My path does not have

Authentication
Media-Server
MQA Full Decoder

Thanks again,
Goran

Also, can somebody please elaborate what/where is the indication on the OPPO (I am guessing it’s on the display screen) that tells the OPPO is doing MQA processing.

Thank you,
Goran

I would be happy to do so once I return home.

Thank you, Chris,

But I made progress over the weekend and realized I wasn’t playing MQA content :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

This is what it looks like right now:

1 Like

The thing that is still bugging me is: even though the original content is amazing 352.8 KHz, somehow when it hits the USB DAC driver it gets downgraded to 44.1 KHz, which is very disappointing.

Do you have this problem?

Thanks,
Goran