MEASUREMENTS: Oppo Sonica DAC and Bluetooth 4.1 (Low-Complexity SubBand Coding) Audio...

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope things are going well out there.

As you know, earlier this year, I had a look at the Oppo Sonica DAC including measurements with the "fixed" firmware. Over the last few months, I've actually sold the device to a "more needy" audiophile buddy. Remember, the DAC measured and sounded fantastic, but truth be told, it is to the point where I personally am not able to differentiate the sound quality from my already excellent TEAC UD-501 bought in 2013 and I didn't absolutely "need" any of the new features it provided. Furthermore, as you know from my discussions of digital room correction, sound quality IMO is more a function of other factors than just the DAC accuracy.

Before I parted with the Sonica DAC, I did make a few other measurements out of curiosity. One of the measurements was to have a listen and look at the Bluetooth 4.1 audio playback from my Samsung Note 5 phone to the Sonica.

MEASUREMENTS: Oppo Sonica DAC (ESS Sabre ES9038Pro based device)

My Raspberry Pi 3 "Touch" on top of the Oppo Sonica DAC - notice the DAC can handle up to PCM 768kHz (and DSD512 / 22.4MHz).

A few weeks ago, I published the preview of the new Oppo Sonica DAC and noted some issues I ran into with unusual jitter and digital filter measurements. Thankfully, Oppo was able to correct the issues within a week with the beta firmware and I see that the official firmware incorporating the improvements is now out - Sonica-33-0511 on the support website (May 15, 2017 date).

With it becoming official, I figure it was time for me to run and post results of objective tests on the device. This should give us a taste of both the capabilities of this Oppo Sonica DAC as well as look at what the "latest and greatest" ESS Technology ES9038Pro 8-channel DAC chipset is capable of... Although I have not seen it specified anywhere, my assumption is that the stereo configuration in this device ties 4 of the DAC channels for each of the stereo pair.

PREVIEW: Oppo Sonica DAC (Thanks Oppo for making it right... On the rationale for technical perfection.)

Usually, I don't post many "preview" type articles, preferring to give you guys "the goods" when I've had an adequate amount of time with a device (usually at least a month or so) including measurements and such. I'll discuss why I'm posting this earlier as we go along...

Well, this is what showed up at my door last week:

That's of course the recently released Oppo Sonica DAC. A "hi-fi" USB, S/PDIF, ethernet, WiFi, Bluetooth digital player with DLNA streaming capability, part of the Oppo Sonica "family" of audio devices. The only other device with this moniker currently being the Sonica Wi-Fi Speaker, capable of 24/192 streaming. Coming later this year apparently is the larger Sonica Grand.

Let's have a peek inside the box...