Oppo BDP-83 as transport to PC USB DAC?

[Lossless]

I am trying to find a way to use my Oppo BDP-83 as a CD digital audio transport only, bypassing the Blu-Ray players internal DAC. Instead of ripping my CDs, I would rather just play them through my Meridian Explorer 2 USB DAC connected to my PC.

The Meridian Explorer 2 sounds significantly better to me than the Oppo BDP-83 DAC and I would rather play CD's through PC with an external CD player as I'm doing now with my LG Slim DVD USB burner/player.

USB digital to analog converters are a dime a dozen. Is there a low cost digital coaxial to USB adapter that I could connect to Oppo's Coaxial or Toslink digital output and then let the Meridian Explorer 2 USB DAC convert the digital signal to analog?

 

[bobschneider]

The SACD standards don't allow players to output raw SACD DSD data to Coaxial or Toslink digital outputs. This is a copyright protection measure. If the player outputs anything from the digital outputs when playing an SACD, it's a PCM version. But if you're happy using your DAC to decode the PCM stream, you may be able to find a coax or toslink to USB converter, although I just did a quick search and couldn't find such an animal.

There are some ways to use an external DAC to decode DSD data from SACDs. Some very expensive brands (e.g., Accuphase) have proprietary digital outputs which include copyright protection verification. These allow decoding in an external DAC with the same proprietary digital input, without allowing digital copying. I don't believe your OPPO has that feature.

Another is to rip the DSD data to a computer, and then send that to a DAC. This involves bypassing the SACD copy protection. This is only possible using hacked versions of certain players - certain early versions of the Sony PS3 video game console, and certain universal players with a specific chipset (the Oppo BDP-103 and 105 have the right chipset, but not the BDP-83). There are instructions on the net available if you're interested in that approach, but it's fairly complex. And these approaches don't allow direct use of a hacked player with an external DAC - they basically download the DSD data from the SACD over an ethernet connection or a thumb drive, which then needs to be saved and sent to a DAC.

 

[write]

You can send the data from Oppo via HDMI, but the data structure for I2S are completely different. You need a converter to convert the data from standard HDMI structure to I2S non-standard HDMI format.

 

[lini]

(...) Is there a low cost digital coaxial to USB adapter that I could connect to Oppo's Coaxial or Toslink digital output and then let the Meridian Explorer 2 USB DAC convert the digital signal to analog?

Problematic disc formats (formost SACD) aside, for example the Hifime UR23 should be good for optical SPDIF (with up to 24 bit & 96 kHz) to USB. However, that might nevertheless not be, what you'd ideally want. Shall mean: If you use a playback software, that can play from an internal or external optical drive, that doesn't necessarily mean, that this software would also be able to play from a USB audio interface (which such an SPDIF to USB converter would basically be - just a pretty specialised kind of...), simply due to that being a different type of device. Hence it's possible, that your preferred playback software doesn't support that, so that you'd rather need to use a recording software (like for example Audacity or whatever...) for that purpose.

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

 

[Dingman]

The SACD standards don't allow players to output raw SACD DSD data to Coaxial or Toslink digital outputs. This is a copyright protection measure. If the player outputs anything from the digital outputs when playing an SACD, it's a PCM version. But if you're happy using your DAC to decode the PCM stream, you may be able to find a coax or toslink to USB converter, although I just did a quick search and couldn't find such an animal.

There are some ways to use an external DAC to decode DSD data from SACDs. Some very expensive brands (e.g., Accuphase) have proprietary digital outputs which include copyright protection verification. These allow decoding in an external DAC with the same proprietary digital input, without allowing digital copying. I don't believe your OPPO has that feature.

Another is to rip the DSD data to a computer, and then send that to a DAC. This involves bypassing the SACD copy protection. This is only possible using hacked versions of certain players - certain early versions of the Sony PS3 video game console, and certain universal players with a specific chipset (the Oppo BDP-103 and 105 have the right chipset, but not the BDP-83). There are instructions on the net available if you're interested in that approach, but it's fairly complex. And these approaches don't allow direct use of a hacked player with an external DAC - they basically download the DSD data from the SACD over an ethernet connection or a thumb drive, which then needs to be saved and sent to a DAC.

OK, is there an easy answer as to who exactly (how?) is being protected with this specific hardware copyright protection? Maybe that would need a new thread? I've never known...

 

[bobschneider]

OK, is there an easy answer as to who exactly (how?) is being protected with this specific hardware copyright protection? Maybe that would need a new thread? I've never known...

Remember that Sony developed the SACD format, and also has a very large record business.