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| Model: | Oppo BDP-83 Full Force |
| Category: | Universal SACD/DVD-A Players |
| Suggested Retail Price: | $800 |
| Description: | Modification of Oppo BDP-83 universal Blu-Ray player |
| Manufacturer URL: | Jena Labs |
| Review by Quint on July 01, 2010 at 18:11:59 IP Address: 205.188.117.73 | Add Your Review for the Oppo BDP-83 Full Force |
As some of you know, I’m pretty partial to Jena Labs and its principal, Jennifer Crock. Her products have consistently performed up to and beyond my lofty expectations, besting many contenders both moderately and stupid expensive. Yet I don’t consider myself a fanboy. I’ve directed my share of criticism toward her products, which she’s used to improve her offerings.
Jennifer’s newest creation is a modification of the Oppo BDP-83 Blu-Ray universal player called the Full Force. (It can be applied to both the SE and base versions; mine was an SE.) Much has been written about the BDP-83, so I’ll cut right to the chase. Jena Labs is late to the Oppo mod party, having been beaten to the punch by the likes of Nuforce, Modwright, and Reference Audio Mods (RAM). From my discussions with her, Jennifer wanted to wait until she had her modifications perfected. First came a beta version, one of which I was fortunate enough to audition. As far as I understand, those versions included extensive revisions to the power supply and audio board—I’m not at all technically minded, so those who want a more extensive description would be advised to check the Jena Labs website or call Jennifer—while the finished units feature a lot more filtering, upgraded wiring, ridiculous amounts of damping, and a few other finishing touches. The quality of craftsmanship on the inside is beyond reproach; it’s beautiful and cleaner than Martha Stewart’s house.
Now to the juicy stuff. As far as comparisons go, I had the Nuforce-modded ’83 on hand for a direct comparison, while I’ve had the RAM and Modwright versions pass through my system recently.
Compared with the Nuforce, the Full Force went much further sonically. There was not a single area in which the Nuforce was superior. With every recording—which included Dire Straights’ first album, Badfinger’s 1973 eponymous album, Gloria Gaynor’s Never Can Say Goodbye, the SACD of Elton John’s Honky Chateau, and the Who’s Who’s Next—the Full Force lived up to its name, presenting music with a sense of momentum, openness, and “pop,” and most importantly naturalness, that made the Nuforce sound closed in, dull, and edgy by comparison. Lest you think the Jena was forward or bright, it is emphatically not. It had a way with music that was utterly natural and effortless. For example, Badfinger’s Pete Ham had a beautifully sweet tenor that on the right system can sound heart-melting. On the song “I Miss You,” his voice sounded decently sweet through the Nuforce, while through the Full Force it sounded absolutely gorgeous. On the Elton John SACD, the gap was even wider than on redbooks, with the Full Force presenting Elton’s voice and the band’s instrumental prowess with a clarity and power that the Nuforce simply couldn’t match.
Dynamics was another are that the Jena beat the Nuforce hands down. On Who’s Next, the band swung and kicked with an effortlessness that was intoxicating, while The Nuforce sounded positively strangled in comparison. Bass extension and power were also better with the Jena.
The Full Force also has one of the blackest backgrounds I’ve heard in a digital component—modded or stock. Images positively exploded within a huge and impressively deep soundstage, which adds to the sense of excitement you usually hear in live music. With the Nuforce, images sounded much flatter and much less dimensional, with a lot less resolution of inner detail and a significantly narrower soundstage.
While the Full Force costs more than the Nuforce, IMO the performance gap more than justifies the price and is well worth the stretch for those on the fence. Though aural memory is a tricky thing, I think I remember enough about the Modwright- and RAM-modded units to post some halfway decent thoughts. While I was impressed with the quality and performance of those players, I can’t remember enjoying music as much as I have with the Full Force in my rig. The biggest difference seemed to be with the overall sense of naturalness and tonal “rightness” and, again, the sheer amount of energy released into the room. The Modwright and RAM were very good in these respects—much better than either the Nuforce or stock unit—but the Full Force, as I remember it, went a couple of steps further. Strings and vocals were sweeter and more textured, while the soundstage bristled with an energy and, ahem, force that neither the Modwright or RAM could quite match. Also, backgrounds were quieter with the Jena, which no doubt contributed to the sense of ease and energy-release to the presentation.
Overall, the Full Force is quite the achievement. It not only beats other modded BDP-83s of my experience, it also sounded considerably better (again, from memory) than a stock Esoteric X-01 and mildly modded Marantz SA-11S2 that I had on hand for a few weeks earlier this year. For about a hundred south of a grand (a little more for multichannel), it represents a tremendous value when measured against other, more expensive modded units and some very serious stock players. For those of you searching for a universal player that does it all and sounds awesome in the process, I can’t recommend the Jena Labs Full Force mod highly enough. Hopefully this review captures some sense of what it does well. Thanks for reading.
| Product Weakness: | Not much at this price. Maybe could be bettered if you spend MANY thousands more. |
| Product Strengths: | Utter naturalness and ease, energy release, background blackness |
| Amplifier: | Coda CSi-B |
| Preamplifier (or None if Integrated): | none |
| Sources (CDP/Turntable): | none |
| Speakers: | DefinitiveTechnology Mythos STS |
| Cables/Interconnects: | Jena Labs |
| Music Used (Genre/Selections): | Pop/rock |
| Room Size (LxWxH): | 24 x 20 x 7 |
| Room Comments/Treatments: | Various ASC |
| Time Period/Length of Audition: | One week |
| Other (Power Conditioner etc.): | Jena Labs Platinum |
| Type of Audition/Review: | Product Owner |
Is this the same person who destroyed a mans R10, then curses him over the phone? I wouldn't trust her with anything..
Not surprised that it sounds better than the NuForce. I have upgraded, not sure the exact number, about four of them for Pymble Hi-Fi here in Sydney. They got them early before the Ozstralian importer was able to get Oppo SE models. Yes, better than SE - but they had a long way to go to fully extract the available potential out of the SE. No doubt a fully tricked up SE is worth the extra pennies it takes - just wish the SE I have here could be heard alongside your Jena - would have been interesting.
Cheers, Joe
"Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think." Niels Bohr 1885-1962 (Einstein's favourite wrestling opponent. "Einstein - stop telling God what to do.")
Better than a X01 with that well built design, best transport ever made, perfect read of all discs. And the plastic Oppo beats it. That is good news.
No wonder I'm fully foolish buying $$$$ gear....call me sad! Snake oil all.
PJB
according to Jena' website.
Not a bad price, given how much Jena charges for their cables :)
From what I can gather, they change to better op-amps and take out some coupling capacitors, add a bunch of bypass caps and dampening maerial, change to better IEC jack and RCA connector, add a power filter ("Full Force"), and upgrade rectifiers, and throw in some Jena wiring.
Personally I would have preferred some well-designed dicrete output stage and a better clock, but that's just me..
I was mistaken on the price. It is indeed $1,000, not $800, but I got a decent deal because I was a beta tester. She experimented with different clocks, but none satisfied her--and they added too much to the bottom line. She found other ways.
Speaking to another "modder" the importances of tweaks on SACD players are:
The Linear PSU is the single most important mod in our view, the Clock comes second, the Audio Board tweaks 3rd, cabinet damping 4th.
I also got a friend that fitted a new clock to his unit and he is not overwhelmed with it?? Maybe different players need different type of tweaks???
I appreciate the descriptions of her mods and the photos she includes. That is very helpful and she is to be commended.
Regards,
Geoff
I recently had my 83SE modded by Ric Shultz. I didn't like the sound of the stock SE. My unit now sounds a lot better than my Denon 3910 with about $1700 worth of mods from Pcx. The difference between the Shultz-modded SE and the stock unit is significant. The soundstage is deeper, voices and instruments sound much more natural, bass is deeper and fuller, dynamics are now downright startling, and leading edges and trails are now way more audible. For about $550, Ric tranformed my time spent listening to music into a much more compelling experience. My only other modding experience was about $700 worth of mods done to a Pioneer 47Ai by Modwright, which was underwhelming.
I understand that you also have an iteration of Oppo BDP-83 that you use with stunning results in a two channel, but especially multi-channel through a HDMI DSP-EQ set up. Can you offer objective or subjective comments through either direct comparison or aural memory of relative sound quality between the set ups?
Robert C. Lang
Robert:
I think you're mistaking me for someone else. I don't run a multichannel setup. Never have, in fact.
Ah! So you are not "Andy" Quint from the Philly area? I may have made that mistake before. Sorry.
Robert C. Lang
Hi Quint,
Thanks very much for a typically excellent (well done) review. A few questions for you:
1. Is the mod $800? Must be, I guess. The player itself is about $8-900, as I recall : )
2. If the regular BDP-83 is modded, do you know if the end result is the same? If that's the case, then buying a regular unit would make this even cheaper for some of us to do.
3. Does the modded unit have tubes?
4. Finally, yes...I'd like to know about picture and DVD-A sound. And sound with Blu-Rays too.
Thanks Quint!
John
Hi, John:Thanks for the kind words. I’ll answer your questions as best I can in the order you made them.
I may have misspoke on the price. The basic mod is $800. For the SE, it’s $825, because the SE board has additional op-amps. Modding for multichannel outs adds another $120. So, actually the Full Force package—which includes everything plus a few more goodies, is $1,000. I got a decent price on mine because I was a beta tester.
Actually, the base BDP-83 is probably the way to go. The SE has slightly better-measuring DAC chips, but the Cirrus chip in the base version is no slouch, and besides, Jennifer in fact replaces the SE board with the standard board, because the standard has fewer parts and has the capability of sounding significantly better. I got an SE because another modder ruined my standard 83, and initially I had no plans of modding the SE. Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men . . . :)
No tubes. But honestly, the player is so natural and dimensional, you’d swear you were listening to tubes—without the drawbacks, of course.
Picture quality is simply the best I’ve seen from any Blu-Ray player in my experience. As great as the stock player is with video, the Full Force mod takes it at least a couple of notches up. With the mod, it’s almost like watching film—especially on Blu-Rays. Gone are most traces of visible artifacts. Edge definition is phenomenal, but not forced, and its rendering of shadow delineation is among the best I’ve seen. Also, colors pop with a vividness that is startling.
In my system, I’m listening through the analog outs, but Blu-Ray sound is REALLY impressive with the right material.
I don’t own a ton of DVD-As, but the sound I’ve gotten through them is akin to what I’m getting with SACD: great dimensionality, much improved resolution overall, tonal superiority, etc.
Hope this answers your questions. I’ve certainly tried! If you need any additional info, feel free to ask here, or you can email me offline.
Andy
Edits: 07/02/10 07/02/10
Thanks Andy. You did a great job of answering my questions. Thanks too, for posting the review.
NT
I can confirm that the Terra Firma clock upgrade does make a significant improvement when audio is piped through HDMI. The improvement is NOT small. I cannot speak for other clocks. But it must be applied to the 27MHz clock. Also, if used via HDMI only, there is no added advantage in buying the SE. So don't buy the SE unless you are going to use the RCA audio outputs.
Pymble Hi-Fi here in Sydney does the HDMI comparison all the time. The TFL installed Oppo sounds immediately better to anyone coming into the shop when they do the A-B. They often are not even explained why and what difference between the players until afterwards. Does that not count as a true blind test?
Cheers, Joe
"Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think." Niels Bohr 1885-1962 (Einstein's favourite wrestling opponent. "Einstein - stop telling God what to do.")
Sorry I can't be of any help. I'm using the Oppo as a player, not a transport. Maybe a call to Jennifer would be of help?
I compared those too, but my fingers were going up in smoke, so I stopped the review where it was! :)
Your descriptions sound much like many use to describe Music Technology's Upgrades including VSE's almost famous Terra-Firma
Lite clock. Did you attempt to compare with it? Yes, I have one now
but have not had time to really compare with others and I may not
bother. One goal they had was to get very close to their famous
upgrade to the Sony SACD model 5400 when playing SACD on the Oppo.
Your comment on " thousands of dollars " to do better sounds very
exaggerated for something you not know?
Granted I do not have recent experience with VSE (though I have heard their Sonys in the past), I based my comments on my listening thoughts vs. comparably priced and more expensive modded players, and vs. an Esoteric X-01 and a modded Marantz SA-11S2, both pretty highly respectable units. And IMO the Full Force beat them all. I don't mean to rain on your VSE parade—I’m sure your player is terrific—but I stand by my comments about the Jena. I think it holds its own against players a lot more expensive, and you’d need to spend a LOT more to get better. Then again, maybe not. Maybe there is something better out there that’s comparably priced. Maybe the VSE beats it. Who knows? I’m done worrying about it. I’m happy, and ultimately that’s what matters most. Enjoy your player.
Edits: 07/02/10
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