Could a OPPO BDP-83 benefit from an external DAC?

Frankie's Market

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Hi Folks, I have an OPPO-83 Blue ray/CD/SACD player. It runs into a Foreplay preamp, QuadII tube amps ,which feed a pair of Paradigm Monitor 7v.3 speakers. All in all I'm happy with the system, but the OPPO is a what 10 years old? My thinking is that DACs have come a long ways in 10 years and was wondering if all the budget DACs I've been seeing might actually be an upgrade for the OPPO? What are your thoughts and recommendations? Thank you, Ed
 
I don't think you'll get much of an upgrade with budget DAC -
expect to drop a piece of change for a decent DAC if you go that route.
 
What I think it would benefit from is a DAC that you like listening to. They do sound different from one another depending on what chipset is used.

As hjames said, you'd probably not like what you hear from the budget DAC compared to the DAC chipset in the Oppo. It uses a Cirrus CS4382 and I've never heard one of those chipsets.

Maybe you can go visit a shop and demo some different DACs to see what sounds best.

Good luck.
 
Frankie, IMO it would have to be more than a budget priced dac to get gains that would be easily noticeable. I did a lot of reading on Oppo prior to getting the Oppo 95, and the 83 can certainly be improved upon.

By coincidence I owned the monitor 7 3 for about a decade, and their biggest weakness was the dreary midrange woofer and the cabinet which is pretty lively and adds to the sound in a bad way.

That said, I’d check out the Schiit Modi multibit dac, and others around the $250 price point. I prefer Schiit’s approach in employing old school tech, the R2R design, which can have a terrific analog sound.
 
I'm agreeing with what others have posted above, and will also say it will depend on the DAC.

I, too, have an 83 and tried a used Bel Canto DAC2. It did sound different, not better. The soundstage of the Bel Canto was very 'narrow' compared to the 83. A bit more refined perhaps, but the soundstage presentation threw me off, so flipped it.

So, it all depends.
 
The DAC technology has progressed by leaps and bounds and the prices have drastically come down.

Today's $100 DAC can sound better than the $1000 DAC of ten years ago.
 
I owned an 83se

From memory it used Sabre32 chips... Not sure about the regular 83

I now have the 105... I can A/B the internal DAC vs PS Audio Nuwave DSD DAC in a split second. Cant say one is 'better' just different

Back to OP's question: Yes the 83 could benefit from an external DAC making the SQ more to your liking
 
Like others have said above you will have to go above a budget Dac to hear a difference compared to your 83. I have owned the 83 103 105 and now the 203, the 105 uses the Sabre Dac and sounds really good if not a bit sharp in the highs to my ears , with my 203 I have bypassed it’s dac by adding a Dac that cost more than a udp 205 and it has changed my rig into sounding like a big bucks rig . My gear isn’t cheap but by adding the higher end Dac it really elevated my system to another level , so to answer your question yes an external Dac can give you better sound but will take some trial and error to find the one that sounds good to you .

Audiofreak71
 
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