VINCULUM 103D PLUS COMPARATIVE REVIEW by José Antonio Rodríguez, Palma de Mallorca, March 2014

Well. I will continue the thread but will focus more on the oppo Vinculum as a music player . It turns out that on Monday , March 24 , i had a meeting with Miguel for a test of his Oppo Vinculum 103D Plus , as he came to Mallorca, where I live , and with whom i had spoken by phone, being interested in the device. He kindly offered to come to my house, bringing his player to listen it on my equipment. I 'll start with the social. Miguel , a lovely person with a feature that I want to highlight here ; at no time he gave any opinion on the comparative we were doing, until finally I asked him to get wet and, even at the cost of falling into a false modesty, to express his opinion . Even then, he gave a very balanced view and above all very cautious, knowing and believing sincerely ( I think) his oppo is an authentic wonder and , shall we say now, that we liked it more and believed it was superior to my equipment . The test was , and this was the goal from the beginning, only played in stereo audio cd format for which he brought the Oppo Vinculum 103D Plus . I have a PS Audio PWT transport feeding a Devialet D- Premier . The loudspeakers were DeVore Fidelity Silverback .

We started with my equipment. When we put the first track I was enjoying it because it sounded great and i believed that a cinema oriented player , even greatly improved, could not reach the quality of ultra hi - fi equipment . Understand this the most objective way possible and without intention to brag (PS Audio PWT and his Dac PS Audio PWD are among the elite and Devialet has been a revolution , well deserved in my point of view). We heard another track and the same, overjoyed . But when I plug the Oppo Vinculum (this time by feeding the Devialet analog input) the things changed a lot. It was not just another type of sound but was clearly better. From my point of view the main difference was "the reality". At all times it was more real . It revealed the "digital flavour" (which i hadn´t noticed until now ) of my equipment, and made me think of the analogue sound . But not only did this happen , many more nuances surfaced from my cd 's. For example the bass of the voices was softer while also deeper , tight , sober , elegant ... My PS Audio sounded great but the Oppo Vinculum just make M-U-S-I-C. It was much more balanced and much more rounded.

Finally i subjected it to a definitive test for me, with which i try everything I buy ; I have a recording of Ave Maria by Kiri Ti Kanawa with tremendous treble level where , in my opinion, combines the highest sensitivity with the greatest virtuosity , where these highs, rather than scream, it caresses you . Well, my equipment sounded scary but with the Oppo Vinculum I simply melted . That highest part on the spectrum that the interpreter reaches never sounded so real and I had never been cherished so much. I want to emphasize something that I did not realize, because i truly centered in delight me once I gave up , more than noticing how are the mids, highs , tonal balance, etc ... It is that the Oppo Vinculum manages the bass so in a way that the part of the equipment responsible for the amplification has to do less " effort" to play it ( I know that amplification does not "play" but I can not express otherwise) . I am unaware about the technological reason for this , but certainly i felt like the amp was lighter and had more room to run everything else.

I really find it hard to achieve the quality of the excellent reviews that are done in the magazines and on some forums because I have not the technical knowledge to reveal in detail all elements in music reproduction but what I can say is than with the Oppo Vinculum i forgot that music reproduction and I just focused on enjoying the music.

We spent a very pleasant afternoon and finally got some film clips that Miguel had brought , but in terms of image the test was not 100% revealing because my room was not ready enough. There was some ambient light which detracted the deep blacks from the image that, according to Miguel ( and I do not doubt this, as i have proof of the sound quality ) are achieved with his Vinculum 103D . Even so the picture was amazing , much better, and now by a larger margin , than my player for home-theater : the Oppo 93 Xtreme NuForce Edition . Regarding films sound, we did only played in making a stereo downmix from 5.1, which was managed by the same Oppo Vinculum ( at all times the sound connection was always stereo analog, and the image output was directly connected to the projector ). It charmed me so much that i did not miss even a subwoofer or the center and rear channels. To end the evening we enjoyed the bombing helicopters chapter with Wagner music of the wonderful "Apocalipse Now". A gift to end the day . JOSÉ ANTONIO RODRÍGUEZ PALMA DE MALLORCA - MARCH 2014 Note: These are the exact comments that José Antonio published in a forum on his own initiative . We only have translated it and have added some pictures of that demo session ( taken with a mobile phone camera). He refers to "Oppo 103" while in fact we tested a Oppo Vinculum 103D PLUS, so we added sometimes the word Vinculum to the english translation, only for better understanding.