rayfar

I own the Oppo Sonica DAC, and I do like it a lot. I was just hoping additional features discussed on this forum would get added over time.

Yeah, looks like Oppo's busy with the 205 and Sonica DAC is not getting much love... :-(

I also searched all over to find a good iZotope setting for the Oppo Sonica. Problem is that I believe the DAC is not the only thing to consider. The amp, speakers and pre-amp (if you use one) would also contribute to the overall sound. I use a tube amp that has a warm sound. The speakers I use are clean and revealing. With that setup, I have ended-up with the following iZotope setting that I like. But I suspect with a discrete amp this setting may sound too harsh. In any case, here's my current setting for iZotope (I found this on the Internet): Steepness: 3 Filter max length: 200,000 Cutoff freq: 1.30 Anti-aliasing: 50.0 Pre-rining: 0.36 I also set "Forced Upsampling" to "Power of 2 oversampling only (2x, 4x, ...)" Again, your setup may require a completely different setting. Comparing this to the Apple Core-audio, I definitely prefer iZotope. I also played with converting everything to DSD128 and DSD512. Doing this pushes the Mac (Macbook Pro with Core i7 3GHz) CPU utilization very high and the fan stays on almost all the time, which I don't like when listening to music. I also could not tell any real difference in sound quality, except for some slight improvement with 192kHz encoded songs. But not worth it IMO.

Agreed, there is an improvement in sound with new firmware. More pronounced with higher resolution music such as 96 and 192kHz encoded songs (mine are Flac). Before it seemed the sound was almost too bright and somehow harsh, but now much cleaner and balanced. 44.1KHz music seem to be slightly cleaner, but I don't hear much difference. I use Audirvana Plus 3.x and I had played with the iZotope converter to get better sound with previous firmware. Now I've switched back to almost the default settings if iZotope and overall I think the sound is better. So far I have not found any issues with this firmware, so sticking with it.

Gutb, curious what you did not like about the sound and if they played different music through these DACs. I have the Sonica and I feel it does well with certain music file formats (44.1kHz-96kHz encoded) and not so good with others (192KHz for example). The sound seems to be too bright and almost on the side of harsh and I use a pretty warm tube-amp. Also curious if you felt there was any difference between the sound of the modded version and vanilla. Thx!

I have the Oppo Sonica. I use the app on my phone as the volume control remote and it works pretty well on my iPhone. I use Audirvana Plus on a Mac for playing music, and Audirvana also has a remote app. So with the two on my phone, I have full control to select the music/album I want to listen to and then control the volume with the Oppo app, which is nice. If listening to Tidal I don't need any other apps since Oppo app has full integration. I was contemplating buying the Teac UD-503 (similar to NT I believe, but without Ethernet - if that is not correct, I apologize), but after reading the review in "What Hi-Fi?" stating it lacked transparency and rhythmic ability I decided to wait, and then Oppo became available and I went with that instead. So far I am pretty happy with the Oppo.

I've been using my Oppo Sonica DAC for about a month now. Been waiting for it, my Tube amp and speakers to all be burned-in well before commenting. speakers are Martin Logan Motion 15, which are pretty open and revealing. The setup is in my office which is a small room. I am using a Macbook Pro Retina with Audirvana Plus for playback of music files, no CD player connected yet. Someone asked about red book CD music quality - just my opinion, they sound very good. Warm and fairly clean. DSD (from SACDs) sound excellent. I can deal with the somehow bright 96K Hi-res file playback, but the 192k is just too much highs and the overall sound does not seem balanced, even with my tube amp which has a fairly warm output. I plan to test the Oppo with my Rotel discrete amp as well to see how it would sound. I've played with the isotope settings under Audirvana and so far have not found a good setting that works for all the music formats and qualities. I am assuming Oppo will continue to refine the DAC firmware so hopeful things will get better. Tidal and MQA (using Audirvana since Oppo does not support MQA) sound very good. I have also upgraded some cables here and there, so things may settle-down and clean-up more as my cables get enough burn-in. If you have any specific questions let me know.

It appears the higher the rate of the original file (ex. 192Khz compared to 44Khz) the more this issue happens. Also, it appears things are worse now with the latest upgrade to A+. I have checked the memory and my Mac never runs anywhere close to being low on memory. Still I lowered the buffer and that did not make any difference. The effect is a very momentary mute/stop of the playback of the song. It never happens when playing a DSD file, only when a PCM is converted to DSD. It also never happens if I play the PCMs as PCM, even with oversampling. If anyone has any ideas what could be causing this, or if you're having the same issue, I would love to hear about it. Thx.

Same issue as user jl1101. Using latest A+ version 3.0.4 (3008) that was just released. DSD128 hick-ups even though the song has fully loaded into memory before playback cursor gets to the conversion point. No issues with DSD64. Using Macbook Pro Retina with Core i7 with 16GB mem. Tried different DSD filters, changed filter max length to 1,000,000 and 1,500,000. No difference. Using the new Oppo Sonica DAC (amazing sound quality BTW) connected to a Tube amp. I feel there is a SQ difference between DSD128 and DSD64 so before I give-up on DSD128, anyone has any other suggestions? Really appreciate your help!