I have had an interesting morning, but first to explain why I have purchased a second-hand Arcam BDP300 Bluray player almost by accident.
I have mentioned my Pioneer BDP450 Bluray player in a number of old posts. The poor old Pioneer was becoming a bit troublesome, a case of becoming mechanically very noisy, and vibrating quite severely during some phases of disc playback. Hearing the little Pioneer audibly vibrating during key sections of a movie was not the best way to become immersed in whatever was on screen, so I figured a replacement was needed.
Looking at what was on the market, I quite fancied the Cambridge Audio CXUHD. Trouble is that I do not have a 4K TV, so I then thought about getting a second hand 1080P Oppo. With Oppo recently ceasing production of Blu-ray players, the second hand prices of the better Oppo players were a little high, to be honest, I would have preferred the new Cambridge Audio for similar money. Am I planning to get a 4K TV? In a way yes, I have two 1080P plasma TV's, one is about 6 years old, the other pushing 15 years old. I have been told that Plasma TV's only last about 10 years, so presumably one of them will keel over before two long, at which time the next TV will be 4K. But that might not happen for years, and if I did buy a 4K TV, I would want to buy a latest spec 4K player at the same time, not 3 years or something in advance. So I then started looking on eBay for reasonable looking second hand 1080P Blu-ray players, just anything that looked nice, I was not too fussy. I started putting lowish bids on a number of items, just to see what might happen. The next thing I knew, I had bought an Arcam BDP300 for £200. (they were £999 when new)
https://www.arcam.co.uk/products,FMJ,BD-...#techspecs
Anyway, the thing turned up. The box was immaculate, the remote, manual, cables etc. had all been put back in their original plastic bags with cable ties, the player itself looked new. Connecting it up, it works fine, picture quality and sound quality with movies seem fine. It is a big heavy beast too, probably over twice the size and weight of the Pioneer. I am happy I have got a reasonably good buy for the money, it definitely looks like it has been well cared for.
The Arcam BDP300 never had the best reputation, certainly a step down from the equivalent Oppo players. It does use a lot of "parts bin" components from mainstream players, with a little of Arcam's audio circuitry and LPSU's on top. Anyway, this got me wondering, what would it sound like in two channel mode? The Arcam will play music files from a USB drive, and will of course play CD's. I read something on-line that claimed that the BSP300 sounds slightly better from USB, maybe a quirk of the "parts bin" CD / Blu ray drive. So out of curiosity, I loaded some music files onto a USB thumb drive, connected the Arcam to the Mutec MC3+USB, thus allowing me to do a direct head to head comparison with the SOtM streaming kit. I have done this before with the old Pioneer BDP450, and the sound quality was quite a step behind the SOtM kit. I have also tried this with my near 20 year old Musical Fidelity CD player, which as I mentioned in a previous post, got pretty close to the SOtM kit.
I was expecting similar things from the Arcam, that it would sound ok, but the SOtM kit would edge ahead for ultimate sound quality. Listening to the first few tracks, the Arcam sounded good, a few switches between the Arcam and SOtM kit I found that it was very hard to discern much difference, this was a close one. I think expectation bias was getting too me, I was telling myself that the SOtM kit was better, after all, it is dedicated audio kit, it has the advantage of being fed with up-sampling HQPlayer etc. Ultimately, and much to my surprise, I had to come to the conclusion that the Arcam was the better performer. Just that touch more real, less "digital", slightly better ambiance and clarity. Not what I expected. I then moved to comparisons using the Arcam playing CD's, again the Arcam was good, but I did not spend much time with this, after much A/B testing I was getting a bit jaded.
So a big surprise. I guess I have never been 100% convinced by the SOtM kit, but I did not expect my "£200 off eBay" universal device to edge it out. Maybe something to do with taking the PC and network out of the chain, and instead using a simple bit of audio circuitry to send a digital file to the MC3+USB? Maybe a result of taking USB out of the chain altogether?
There is no way of telling for sure. Which ever way you look at it though, it does indicate that there is a little bit of extra performance to be gained somewhere from the streaming system. This has also got me thinking again about that Weiss DSP501, which outputs S/PDIF AES/EBU, I wonder what the retail price will be?
I have mentioned my Pioneer BDP450 Bluray player in a number of old posts. The poor old Pioneer was becoming a bit troublesome, a case of becoming mechanically very noisy, and vibrating quite severely during some phases of disc playback. Hearing the little Pioneer audibly vibrating during key sections of a movie was not the best way to become immersed in whatever was on screen, so I figured a replacement was needed.
Looking at what was on the market, I quite fancied the Cambridge Audio CXUHD. Trouble is that I do not have a 4K TV, so I then thought about getting a second hand 1080P Oppo. With Oppo recently ceasing production of Blu-ray players, the second hand prices of the better Oppo players were a little high, to be honest, I would have preferred the new Cambridge Audio for similar money. Am I planning to get a 4K TV? In a way yes, I have two 1080P plasma TV's, one is about 6 years old, the other pushing 15 years old. I have been told that Plasma TV's only last about 10 years, so presumably one of them will keel over before two long, at which time the next TV will be 4K. But that might not happen for years, and if I did buy a 4K TV, I would want to buy a latest spec 4K player at the same time, not 3 years or something in advance. So I then started looking on eBay for reasonable looking second hand 1080P Blu-ray players, just anything that looked nice, I was not too fussy. I started putting lowish bids on a number of items, just to see what might happen. The next thing I knew, I had bought an Arcam BDP300 for £200. (they were £999 when new)
https://www.arcam.co.uk/products,FMJ,BD-...#techspecs
Anyway, the thing turned up. The box was immaculate, the remote, manual, cables etc. had all been put back in their original plastic bags with cable ties, the player itself looked new. Connecting it up, it works fine, picture quality and sound quality with movies seem fine. It is a big heavy beast too, probably over twice the size and weight of the Pioneer. I am happy I have got a reasonably good buy for the money, it definitely looks like it has been well cared for.
The Arcam BDP300 never had the best reputation, certainly a step down from the equivalent Oppo players. It does use a lot of "parts bin" components from mainstream players, with a little of Arcam's audio circuitry and LPSU's on top. Anyway, this got me wondering, what would it sound like in two channel mode? The Arcam will play music files from a USB drive, and will of course play CD's. I read something on-line that claimed that the BSP300 sounds slightly better from USB, maybe a quirk of the "parts bin" CD / Blu ray drive. So out of curiosity, I loaded some music files onto a USB thumb drive, connected the Arcam to the Mutec MC3+USB, thus allowing me to do a direct head to head comparison with the SOtM streaming kit. I have done this before with the old Pioneer BDP450, and the sound quality was quite a step behind the SOtM kit. I have also tried this with my near 20 year old Musical Fidelity CD player, which as I mentioned in a previous post, got pretty close to the SOtM kit.
I was expecting similar things from the Arcam, that it would sound ok, but the SOtM kit would edge ahead for ultimate sound quality. Listening to the first few tracks, the Arcam sounded good, a few switches between the Arcam and SOtM kit I found that it was very hard to discern much difference, this was a close one. I think expectation bias was getting too me, I was telling myself that the SOtM kit was better, after all, it is dedicated audio kit, it has the advantage of being fed with up-sampling HQPlayer etc. Ultimately, and much to my surprise, I had to come to the conclusion that the Arcam was the better performer. Just that touch more real, less "digital", slightly better ambiance and clarity. Not what I expected. I then moved to comparisons using the Arcam playing CD's, again the Arcam was good, but I did not spend much time with this, after much A/B testing I was getting a bit jaded.
So a big surprise. I guess I have never been 100% convinced by the SOtM kit, but I did not expect my "£200 off eBay" universal device to edge it out. Maybe something to do with taking the PC and network out of the chain, and instead using a simple bit of audio circuitry to send a digital file to the MC3+USB? Maybe a result of taking USB out of the chain altogether?
There is no way of telling for sure. Which ever way you look at it though, it does indicate that there is a little bit of extra performance to be gained somewhere from the streaming system. This has also got me thinking again about that Weiss DSP501, which outputs S/PDIF AES/EBU, I wonder what the retail price will be?
1000 Pro - KEF Blade - iFi Zen Stream - Mutec REF10 - MC3+USB - Pro-Ject Signature 12
