New Kit Alert! OPPO and rear surrounds....

So I have upgraded both my rear speakers and Bluray/DVD player.

Rear Speakers
Kef Eggs -> Spendor SR5’s with Chord Odyssey Silverscreen
PS3 -> OPPO 83SE with a plethora of cables, but 71 analogue using Chord Crimson’s

So my cinema setup is now:
OPPO 83SE
AV2/Supernait/NAPV175
Spendor S5e,C5e,SR5
REL Stampede

Spendors SR5’s
I was actually quite happy using the Kef’s at the rear, I have always been of the belief that as long as you have the front 3 speakers matched you will be ok. But I had an opportunity to purchase the SR5’s in the same finish as my main at a bargain price, it was a no brainer and my partner was never happy with the mismatch (visually) of the rears.
But you know what, the difference is astounding, before it was very much a seamless wall across the front, with very separate effects form the rear. Now the effects are seamless through out, it really has made a huge difference, really feel like you are engulfed in the sound rather than the very obvious front rear that was there before. One other change in the setup is the height of the rears, they are probably about 20cm higher than the Kefs were, so the bottom of the speaker is now inline with the top of my head when seated – this seems to be perfect. Honestly I was not expecting such a difference with this, but it really has.

I am going to do some fettling, currently all speakers are set to large on both the OPPO and AV2, but I am going to have a play with the centre and rears as neither go deep.

C5e
Frequency response 70 Hz to 20 kHz ± 3dB
Typical in-room response -6dB at 55 Hz

SR5
Frequency response 90 Hz to 20 kHz ± 3dB
Typical in-room response -6dB at 70 Hz

OPPO 83SE
The PS3 as a Bluray player is fab, no doubt about it. I have been using it for year, it updates with all the current specs even a latest 3d one it really is a powerhouse and works nicely with my Harmony remote. BUT neither the AV2 or the PS3 can decode hi-resolution soundtrack on Blurays…and well being an audio guy not having this feature has been a niggling issue for ages! I was tempted to buy a HDMI PCM to 5.1 converter but was not 100% convinced, and all the bluray players on the market did not seem up to the speed of the PS3 which is amazingly fast at loading. Also I was going to have to spend a fortune on the player that was going to be able to compete with DD/DTS though the AV2. Then along came the OPPO’s– across the net reviews were astounding for all three models, and from a little research I worked out the following:

Models
80 - Very good with blurays and same 7.1 analogue quality as the 83
83 - Better than the 80 with DVD on par with Blurays – additional stereo circuitry and outputs
83SE – video identical to the 83 – much improved 7.1 and stereo analogue audio quality

I don't actually have a large DVD/Bluray collection totalling maybe 50 inc music DVDs…I tend to rent everything I watch, so the majority of film I watch are now on Bluray, also I have a small collection of SACD’s and DVD-A’s, approx 20. So my short list came down to the 80 or the 83SE…

And well in short….the SE won, just seemed like a perfect match for the AV2. So it was ordered along with some Chord Crimson’s 2x 4rca to Din (thank you for that tip Dr John William Martin) – the player arrived the next day fully setup for UK use (they are US imports) and painfully the cables came a week later!

I though I would make a point about the cabling, this player connects to everything in my system, luckily I have a nice collection of unused cables lying about. So….

Mains cables
Ethernet
HDMI to TV
Coax to AV2 (for DD/DTS decoding)
7.1 to AV2 (DD?DTS MA deciding/SACE/DVDA)
Optical to Supernait (CD)
Analogue to Supernait (CD/SACD)
Spaghetti heaven!

I only really connected to my supernait directly out of curiosity, I had the cables spare – but I will oneday get around to comparing a CD to the FLAC coming out of my PC/ESI soundcard and maybe even try a SACD in hires stereo!

So after setting it up, what’s it like? Well I watch a few DVDs (forced myself to wait for Bluray’s) while I was waiting for the 7.1 cables to arrive, good old 8 Mile with a DTS soundtrack was fantastic as always, a quick check showed the DVD picture quality was certainly better than the PS3 and as always the AV2 sounds fantastic decoding. Again the new rears really made a difference too.

Oh on the third day of owning it, OPPO released a firmware upgrade, it updated and installed itself in about 5 minutes.

But the real fun came once the 7.1 cables arrived, a quick setup with the AIX audio setup Bluray and a sound meter (there an ap for that!) showed I have everything setup just fine except the Sub – which was playing really quiet and need a full 10db gain on the OPPO as well as a boost from the sub….not sure why I am going to research his some more. Also meant I needed to turn down the gain on the AV2 for DD/DTS duties.

So Avatar was the first disc…I heard it a pita with firmware and uber slow loading times. Loaded first time and within no time at all of putting the disc in I had selected the DTS MA track and the movie started. Without a doubt the film looked and sounded fantastic!! The sound quality was so good, I was astounded – I can finally see what all the fuss was about, the HD v SD really is big. I have it setup on my harmony remote so I can switch between the AV2 decoding (stock DTS) and OPPO easily – its just all around better details and dynamics all improved. Fantastic. I also did a picture quality test vs PS3 – virtually no difference  but I did expect this – but are ‘just’ 1080p digital output to my TV. No up scaling involved like the DVD’s I tried.

Also had a listen to some SACD and DVDA material – its been a while since I have had a proper listen to any of it since I did not have a player…(could play DVD and CD layers). Yep they all sounded good as expected – Lauryn Hill’s SCAD was particularly captivating, but Goldfraps SACD I found a little odd as there was so much rear effect…hmm…over the weekend I will work though my Doors DVDA boxset that I al looking forward to!

So in short – new rear speakers were quite a shock – fantastic!!! The OPPO was certainly an good upgrade and I am really glad I went for the SE over the 80 as the Bluray soundtracks are astonishing. All round happy…..and I can probably say…my home cinema is complete – I wouldn’t know what to upgrade!