The Oppo UDP-205 ups the ante for 4k AV PlayersCategories: AV & Home Cinema, Streaming

The brand new Oppo UDP-205 takes the winning Oppo UDP-203 and revamps it with a host of enhancements, guaranteed to make audiophiles sit up and take notice.

Oppo has carved a niche for themselves making exceptionally well featured, high-performance products at a price point well below what one would expect. A great example was their UDP-203 4k DVD player; a machine which received universal praise for its excellent performance.

If you’re in the market for a 4k resolution Blu-Ray player, an audiophile grade CD player, or a hi-res USB DAC, the Oppo UDP-205 does them all. Let’s take a look…

Oppo UDP-205 – Built to Perform

As we’ve come to expect from Oppo, the design of the UDP-205 is well thought out and highly featured, with design touches one would expect from much more exotic and highly priced competition. With the ever-increasing convergence of product, it makes sense that Oppo has endowed the UDP-205 with upgraded audio capabilities too.

The new enhancements to the Oppo UDP-205, over the previous UDP-203, gives UPD-205 true potential as an Audiophile stereo source. Oppo has, as per their Oppo Sonic DAC, chosen the superb ESS Sabre 9038 PRO DAC chip to form the heart of the UDP-205 D/A conversion.

In line with offering 7.1 channel support, the Oppo UDP-205 utilises two of these 32-bit Hyperstream chips for outstanding audio resolution in both stereo and multi-channel configurations. To best take advantage of the exceptional audio performance “under the hood” the Oppo UDP-205 supports a range of media.

4K UHD, Blu-ray, 3D, DVD, SACD and traditional Compact Disc are all supported by the Oppo UDP-205, as is multi-region support. It could, therefore, be the only disc-based media player you’ll ever need.

As with the Oppo UDP-203 Blu-Ray player, Oppo has teamed up with Media Tek to produce and manufacture a specialised 4k Blu-Ray decoder, the quad-core OP8591. This endows the Oppo UDP-205 with the most advanced image decoding and processing technology available.

Oppo has gone to unusual lengths, for a Blu-ray player, to ensure the performance of the analogue, audio circuitry is of the highest standards; yet another indication of the Oppo UDP-205 pretentions to fulfil your Audiophile requirements.
Separate power supplies for digital and analogue circuitry are employed, to eliminate noise and harmful interference.

The analogue side of the Oppo UDP-205 makes use of Oppo’s signature Torroidal power transformer, which (so claim Oppo) offers “superior efficiency and significantly lower exterior magnetic field interference compared to traditional laminated steel core transformers“.

Class-Leading Connectivity with DAC Functionality

The Oppo UDP-205 offers a remarkable array of connections: Individual analogue outputs are provided for each of the 8 surround outputs. Dedicated Stereo outputs are provided for two channel listening, with the very welcome option of either unbalanced RCA connections or fully balanced XLR outputs (full marks Oppo).

Whilst not immediately obvious, a glance at the digital connections highlights the ‘added value’ offered by the Oppo UDP-205. Digital Audio inputs are offered on both optical and coaxial connections; it’s the addition of USB and network connections, however, which highlight the UDP-205’s ability to function as a USB DAC.

Lossless, Hi-Res audio is supported in AIFF, ALAC, APE, FLAC and WAV formats. DSD64/128 (DSD64 is played back in native mode or converted to PCM, DSD128 converted to PCM.) and 192kHz/24-bit PCM is also supported.

Hot-Rodded Reference Edition

If the already impressive specification of the Oppo UDP-205 isn’t enough to take your breath away, Audio Affair is proud to offer an extensively reworked edition, the Oppo UDP-205 Reference Edition. The Reference edition promises to take the already outstanding Audio Visual performance of the standard UDP-205 and punch it into the stratosphere. Contact us for more information on this very special upgrade.