I took delivery of my upgraded BDP-83SE on Friday. I played the SACD versions of The Who's Tommy and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon plus track 12 of Hugh Masakela's CD Hope "Stimela". The SE version is like the '83 on steroids. I felt the regular '83 hyperdetailed but a little bit clinical in its presentation. The SE version is much more harmonically rich. There is a lot more texture to horns in the Masakela track in particular. Bass lines in Tommy track Sally Simpson are punchy, articulate, and very dynamic. Pinball Wizard was simply exquisite. Detail was revealed that I had never heard before and it was as exciting to listen to as the very first time I heard it in 1969. These are first impressions, but straight out of the box I found the SE to be very listenable in my system. Bravo to Oppo for a very cost effective mod to those of us that do not have HDMI 1.3 capability but want to experience lossless encoded multichannel audio. Also, I have to commend Oppo for delivering the mod on time as promissed.
