dvd-audio

Oppo's upcoming Blu-ray player: The BDP-83

We've been fans of Oppo's upconverting DVD players for quite some time now, but it's been harder to recommend them recently with the company's latest player costing as much as a Blu-ray player. There has been tons of speculation over when Oppo might release a Blu-ray player, and it looks like it's finally going to happen: Oppo showed off the BDP-83 Blu-ray player at CEDIA.

Oppo's DVD players are known for playing back both SACD and DVD-Audio, but Gizmodo reports that Oppo is still "investigating" DVD-Audio support. That's unfortunate, as a … Read more

Can $2,000 buy bona fide high-end audio?

You have two grand to spend on a fantastic stereo system. Can your cash get you there? Yes, it can!

In this case, we're talking about a headphone-based system, but I will in the coming months cover speaker-based audiophile-grade systems for less than $3,000.

For the headphone system, I'm recommending the Woo Audio WA6 Special Edition vacuum tube headphone amplifier ($1,050) I reviewed in yesterday's blog, along with Grado RS-1 headphones ($695), and Oppo's DV-981HD SACD/DVD-Audio player ($229). All prices are manufacturer's suggested retail price.

Mind you, the Woo and Grado are … Read more

Nero 8: Sneak a peek at brand new features

What's better than Nero 7's suite of multimedia apps, which bursts with tools to record, edit, save, and distribute audio, video, and data CDs and DVDs in a dozen permutations?

The so-new-you-can't-buy-it release of Nero 8. Tune into the First Look video below, and watch this space on Monday for a full review.

PS3: Final nail in SACD's coffin?

Much has been made of how the PS3 is Sony's not-so-secret weapon in the Blu-ray/HD DVD format war. But I actually held out some small hope--call me naive--that the PS3 might be able to breathe some new life into Sony's near-dead, high-fidelity audio format, SACD (Super Audio CD), which competes with another near-dead, high-fidelity audio format, DVD-Audio.

In case you hadn't heard, the PS3 supports playback of SACD discs. There aren't a whole lot of SACD discs out there, but I happen to own five of them. I made an effort to find them the … Read more