Can this be resolved with a firmware upgrade from Oppo? If so, then they should provide it, IMO. In the past, Oppo has been very responsive to compatibility issues. |
I agree. They usually are very responsive. In this case they have been uncharacteristically defensive and said they do not know if they will be able to come up with a solution. They said they tested the unit before market with external hd's that you would get at staples. They never bothered with 'pro audio' hard drives. Very dissapointing. |
How do they know that the player is incompatible with the latest Oxford chipset if they didn't test it?
Also, just to be sure something simple isn't being overlooked, have your drives been formatted with either FAT32 or NTFS (preferably NTFS, of course)? Looking at the manual for the player, it appears that Mac file systems are not supported.
Finally, it looks like the drives you are referring to probably provide both USB and eSATA interfaces. Have you tried both?
Regards,
-- Al |
Very disappointing, indeed -- particularly if they are just going to shrug their shoulders and respond, "Oh, well... that's just how it is". How long is it going to take for someone with the resources to finally stop and think long enough to get this right? Let's see... I'm supposed to cough up $2500 to the Bryston network for ANOTHER semi-huge box, complete with sterile, uninspired, chunky vanity faceplate, etcetera, to... take a FILE and HAND IT OVER to the buffer reservoir of a DAC -- another semi-huge, semi-vulgar irrationality if it should be theirs? Not to mention more cables... And that's essentially IT? That's basically all it does? And oh yes, the display is so eye-wateringly miniaturized and the controller so off-putting that Bryston's OWN people "prefer" to WALK up to the device each time to survey their options and make a selection [Ref.: cover feature in the recent 'Stereophile']! Turntable and stacks of wax, anyone?
So that -- and this Oppo + your choice of fix-the-Apple-doesn't-give-a-s**t third party software -- are 2011's great audio "breakthroughs", you say (for those of us without $6500 DACs)? So where is the Volksplayer/Server the Oppo might have been? Let me add, as well, that there is serious doubt around some audiophile circles that hyped superchip DACs can play Redbook PCM at all well by high end standards. I know of three cases for sure where slick magazine-favorite-Ayre owners walked away from an encounter with upper mid-level 20- bit Audionote with a somewhat crestfallen look on their faces.
So here I am, anyway, with a universal player/transport for Blu-Ray music/SACD/"convenience"-impromptu CD... a DAC for hi-rez PCM (to be undumbed-down, i.e., modded)... and a DAC for 16-bit and compressed files [Internet radio] (to be rebuilt to higher specification mongrel Audionote)... and I think this isas things stand, a rational experiment! I believe I will be setting up a third turtable for mono and certain forms of vintage vinyl. Someone -- get me out of this (!): ANY music I might want to hear, played really, really well... and [way] under $7K on the digital side of things, PLEASE. |
Please excuse my typos above: the go-back-to-edit operation here doesn't work with my Android Color Nook for some reason.
Thanks, Al, for the tips. I would certainly like to believe some clever folks will figure out work-arounds and, maybe, simple mods that might disinhibit the Oppo and make it more like the Volks-solution I have in mind. Personally, I'd like to see something from Oppo stripped back to transport/media player function, not unlike the BDP-83 offshoot they had out before. I remain skeptical about that ESS-based platform, however, mods or no mods. But I expect I could live with that, if just for
the SACD's.
It has been one slow evolution to get this far with hi-rez in the audiophile realm from SACD's and DVD-A's introduction, compared to the state of things in the pro, and even the pro-sumer market. 15-year-old kids with guitars and an interest in recording were basically beating the pants off audiophiles for years when it came to such things as lower jitter Firewire and Expresscard interfaces, and receiving asynchronous data streams. |
Al, thanks for the suggestions. All were tried without any success. Oppo claims they only found out about the incompatibility after being told by end users. I am left to wonder why their 'audiophile' piece - the bdp 95 - was tested using hard drives never meant for audio. It is absurd. I know of others who have tried the latest audio grade hd's without success. I'm going to have to try and get a two year old model from glyph or avastor in order to play my 2TB of digital music. really I can't believe it. I know someone who notified oppo of this 4 months ago and still no firmware update. Ugh. Gonna have to go back to lp's. |
Srz888, thanks for the update. Sorry to hear that.
With respect to my previous post, I should clarify for others who may read this that the reference to the NTFS drive format being preferable to FAT32 refers to the fact that NTFS has far less susceptibility to corruption and data loss, which may be caused for example, in the case of FAT32, by a power dropout. NTFS also does not have FAT32's 4gB limitation on the size of an individual file, which can be significant with some kinds of video files. However, those using Mac's should be aware that Mac's require third party software to be able to write to NTFS drives.
Regards,
-- Al |
Al, thanks for the suggestions. All were tried without any success. Oppo claims they only found out about the incompatibility after being told by end users. I am left to wonder why their 'audiophile' piece - the bdp 95 - was tested using hard drives never meant for audio. It is absurd. I know of others who have tried the latest audio grade hd's without success. I'm going to have to try and get a two year old model from glyph or avastor in order to play my 2TB of digital music. really I can't believe it. I know someone who notified oppo of this 4 months ago and still no firmware update. Ugh. Gonna have to go back to lp's. |
Ooops. Didn't mean to re-send that last one. Good points on the formatting, Al. Has anyone had success with the 95 and a quality hard drive that is not a discontinued model? |
A further thought. You mentioned having 2TB of music. How big are the drives you've tried? Many computer operating systems have incompatibilities with drive sizes exceeding 2.19TB. I'm wondering if the OS that is running within the Oppo may be having that problem.
Regards,
-- Al |
I tried 2TB hard drives. Oppo said the compatibility issue is with the oxford 924 chipset which is used in the current model pro audio hd's. |
My 1 TB HP will not work right on my Oppo 95. It will play only about 100 CD's out of the 2000 that were ripped on the Hard drive all in Apple Lossless. |
Ozzy, did you let Oppo know? What did they say? |
Srz888, No,I have not called Oppo because I thought the 95 could only handle just small flash drive storage not external hard drives.
Perhaps I will contact them, maybe they can suggest an external hardrive that DOES work with the 95. |
Called Oppo today. The tech support says the Oppo 95 will only support about 8000 songs on any hard drive.
My experience is much less. |
Same here. My OWC Mercury Elite AL-pro 1.5 TB is not recognized (Oxford Chipset).
My old Buslink (e-sata and usb 2.0) drive was recognized nicely for months and one day it stopped being recognized by the Oppo. Still works fine with my laptop e-sata connection.
Tried the small black Oyen Digital 2.5'' (e-sata, usb) and works fine (JMicron chip)
Tried a small Eagle Tech 2.5'' enclosure (e-sata, usb) and works fine up to 320 gb.
oppo told me that LaCie drives that they tested did not work (they mentioned that those had Oxford chipsets)...
Now I am simply using the DLNA from my Netgear Readynas and hoping Oppo will come out with an external app (web or ipad) to control the playback.
Good luck |
