anfieldude...have you received the player? could you post a short review of the player?

thanks. it sounds like a bargain.

have you tried any other Media Player like Egreat as a comparison to Oppo or M9702? i am currently using Egreat so i am not sure if the M9702 will be an improvement to the egreat.

from some forum, they mentioned that the M9702's visual is as good as the Oppo but the Audio segment is no where near Oppo quality even with the M9702 upgraded version with Talema transformer.

thanks for the feedback.

For the finicky issue of the 8bit content, i encounter the same issue with my egreat as well. i realized that this is due to the projector/AVR. when i turn on the egreat first and let it boot up before i turn on the rest, it will stay at 10 bit but if the sequence is wrong, the AVR will somehow force the egreat to 8bit. Maybe Himedia Q10pro faces the same issue.

i used to think that a player should not affect the sound as conversion is done on the AVR but after trying out several different player, i find that the sound has the biggest impact compares to image quality. different player has different characteristic of sound. some can be very bright and sharp while some could sound very mellow and less dynamic.

my personal experience is based on Atmos playback. i use Raspberry Pi for 2 channel playback instead.

so far, the best i have heard for HT is from Oppo 203 but due to the price, i have yet to take the plunge especially with the limited support after Oppo announce the closure of the Blu ray department.

i am very keen on the M9702 but from some chinese forum, they mentioned that the sound quality is still not on par with the Oppo even with the top specs Talema transformer+high end caps. this option is available if you purchase it through taobao.

i think the Jitter plays a big role in the sound quality. i usually use the John Wick 2 catacomb scene for my testing. there are a lot of small details in the ambience for the catacomb scene which is not able to be reproduced by the normal media player.

I am using Arcam 390 running 7.1.4 with external amp.

Great to have Arcam owners here. i am using Starke A7 for my 5 channel (main speaker using hifi monoblock) and Anthem PVA7 for my 4 atmos. Due to difference in power and speaker efficiently, i am having difficulties volume matching all the speakers during Dirac setup even with the 10db individual speaker volume adjustment. The different of my main speaker vs my back speaker is more than 10db. i am still able to get all the channel to fall into the green bar in order to run Dirac.

even with Umik mic, i find that all the speaker are not volume matched even after Dirac Live. the difference between each individual speaker can varies up to 3.5db when i run the test tone from the AVR after dirac calibration.

If i volume match all the speakers (my front 2 speaker are usually the loudest), i get more pinpoint imaging but it reduces the dynamic of the system by a little.

yes...i agree that the sound level is just crappy on the Arcam but the Umik helped reduce this problem by a lot if compares to the original Arcam MIC. the volume is about 3.5db difference (max) between each speaker.

as for the subwoofer, i do agree that Arcam sub setting is on the low side. some forum suggest to increase it by 10db as what you have done. my SVS16U was at -10DB when was using Yamaha 3050 and after calibration, the volume for sub was about -1 in the AVR. As for Arcam, i have to set the SVS to -15DB and the internal sub volume in the AVR is at -10db.... :facepalm. thats practically more than 10db differences if you compare it with the Yamaha.

as for the Arcam original MIC, all my speaker started to roll off at 13khz. when i switched to Umik, the mic is able to detect a rather flat line al the way to 18khz below a minor roll off. the original Arcam calibration MIC is a big no no for me.

This post has been edited by Fusion: Sep 17 2019, 04:29 PM