External HD VS Flash Drive Sound Quality Question

A few VERY INITIAL comments:

1. It works!

2. It's definitely putting out a lower (digital) volume level than discs or flash drives. No idea why. Not a big deal, I'd say I'm turning the volume control 1-2 clock markings higher

3. I decided to use an older hard drive that does not have the proprietary usb jack, so if I ever do have the $'s to try an audiophile cable, it would be an option.

4. Due to the layout of my power conditioner, I can only plug in the wall wort in 1 direction, so I can't test the audible effects of polarity unless I use a cheap power strip or plug straight into the wall.

5. I really feel I need at least a couple weeks to make an accurate statement regarding what I'm hearing (other than the volume drop, which is not subtle). My INITIAL reaction is: not bad, but seems to be a bit less of a sense of depth & sound stage on i-res, 44/16 sounded about the same.

I'm going to take some time o get used to the current sound, then do some a-b', then I will report back.

I have a suspicion that despite some comments above, the cables are going to have an impact. Of course the problem with subjective hearing is we often hear what we expect to hear, unless it's really obvious!

The benefits for me is not having o have all those flash drives (& possibly eventually moving a huge disc collection to hd's) & as compared to Flash Drives, everything is sorted by genre & alphabetically o I don't have to look at a list to see what album is on what Flash drive.

But the sound quality will be my real determination.

Either I'm going brain dead, or my "s" & "t" keys are intermittently not working (or both......)

It's definitely putting out a lower (digital) volume level than discs or flash drives. No idea why. Not a big deal, I'd say I'm turning the volume control 1-2 clock markings higher

If so, I'd expect that the reason is not that the hard drive is "putting out" a lower volume than the discs or flash drives, but that for some reason the player is treating the data that is received from the hard drive differently than the data that is received from the other media. Perhaps shifting the data within each sample by one bit location, at some point in the data path, which would probably result in a 6 db change in volume.

Regards,
-- Al

A couple more quick comments: I'm going to break what I said above about waiting:

1. The volume issue was me; I'm too embarrassed to say what I did, bit it was me.

2. WITHOUT a/b ing at all, my initial reaction is that other than missing HDCD (the Oppo only encodes HDCD on discs), 44/16 sounds fine; based on memory 44/16 sounds just as good as it does on disc. As I may have to do a major physical downsize, I may end up ripping most discs to hd's.

3. I hear very little difference WITH THE HARD DRIVE between hi-res & 44/16. Based on memory alone, the Flash drives & real discs are much better on hi res. Don't know if it's my imagination, or a cable issue; but that's what I'm hearing.

The Oppo's strength is sound staging & depth on high res material, & at least today that strength is almost totally gone with hi-def files played back through the USB HD (identical files to those I've been playing on the Flash Drives).

Again, I will report back in a couple weeks, though I do not expect to have the money to try audiophile cabling options in the meantime so that will remain a variable.

Thanks for the update Moomoo. I hope you can get those high res files sounding like they should. I'm looking forward to hearing more on your findings.