Oppo 95 HDCD playback over HDMI, does it work?

[Owen Smith]

Hang on, I can run the output of my 95 into my 203 and select HDMI in and that might display more information.

Unfortunately this does not help. Press and hold i on the 203 remote displays a lot of information about the incoming and outgoing audio and video, EXCEPT the audio bit depth. Sigh, it seems I have nothing that will display it.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

@Owen Smith

For the purpose of testing, why not try and find yourself a genuine 20-bit PCM (in .wav) file. They do exist but they are very rare...

 

[Owen Smith]

For the purpose of testing, why not try and find yourself a genuine 20-bit PCM (in .wav) file. They do exist but they are very rare...

I don't see what that would tell me.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

I don't see what that would tell me.

The OPPO UDP-203 is actually able to tell you an audio files properties.

After transferring the audio file onto a thumb drive and doing what you need to do to play the file in your OPPO, you wait for the second screen to appear and then press the 'info' button twice. After which it will reveal the audio files properties, like this: -

 

[Owen Smith]

The OPPO UDP-203 is actually able to tell you an audio files properties.

After transferring the audio file onto a thumb drive and doing what you need to do to play the file in your OPPO, you wait for the second screen to appear and then press the 'info' button twice. After which it will reveal the audio files properties, like this: -

I know that. But how does that help me determine what happens when playing HDCD on my Oppo 95? The 203 does not do HDCD decoding.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

I know that. But how does that help me determine what happens when playing HDCD on my Oppo 95? The 203 does not do HDCD decoding.

Okay... But it was you who mentioned trying to display file properties using an OPPO UDP-203.

Either-way and to all, I can confirm my OPPO UDP-203 is not able to correctly detect the properties of 'native 20-bit' LPCM (in .wav) files, it displays them as being 24-bit. And sadly yes, HDCD flagged files (confirmed using Eac3To) are displayed as being 16-bit, not 20-bit.

 

[Owen Smith]

Okay... But it was you who mentioned trying to display file properties using an OPPO UDP-203.

By feeding my Oppo 95 HDMI out into the HDMI in on the Oppo 203. Nothing to do with file properties, it's the HDMI stream that I wanted data on.

Either-way and to all, I can confirm my OPPO UDP-203 is not able to correctly detect the properties of 'native 20-bit' LPCM (in .wav) files, it displays them as being 24-bit.

I suspect that's because they actually are 24 bit LPCM files with the bottom 4 bits set to all zeros. 20 is not a multiple of 8 and packing audio data into 2.5 bytes per sample is inconvenient.

And sadly yes, HDCD flagged files (confirmed using Eac3To) are displayed as being 16-bit, not 20-bit.

As expected since the Oppo 203 does not perform HDCD decoding I believe. We lost it in favour of the 205 having MQA decoding to the on board DACs, and the 203 gained nothing in return.