I recently bought one of these players new on ebay. They are pretty heavily discounted at the moment despite being current according to Yamaha. The BD-S681, this player’s cheaper sibling, appears to be discontinued already based on a call to a local retailer despite both players being released mid 2016. This might explain the discount.
Why buy a high spec blu-ray player?
So why spend $550 on a shiny disc spinner? I have Netflix and Stan. There are a few reasons.
- I have quite a few Bluray discs.
- The Samsung player I had was pretty tacky
- The Samsung player I had was crowded with ‘apps’ that didn’t interest me (I have a Chromecast).
- I wanted a player for SACD, mostly for multi-channel music
- I wanted a player for DVD-Audio (which I didn’t get see below)
- 4k up-scaling will matter one day, 1080p TVs are all I really need given where I sit and how big a TV I want, but good TVs are 4k now.
- I love nicely built hifi gear.
Video performance
So how does it work? The remote is nice to use, the player is fast, quiet, looks good and is nicely built. The menus are nice to look at and easy to use.
Unsurprisingly the BD-A1060 seems able to read a bunch of data off a Blu-ray disc and throw it out an HDMI cable at the highest of standards – much the same as my cheap Samsung player did.
Audio – mostly about surround music
I like surround sound music. Not as an effect added by a home cinema receiver/amplifier (though it can be cool I prefer stereo), but as a purposeful mix. I am not alone.
Pink Floyd apparently boycotted the release of Dark Side of the Moon because their four channel mix was not ready (which is AWESOME, thanks Alan Parsons). There is a Grammy category for surround music mixes too. I also like progressive rock and thanks to Steven Wilson there is plenty of surround content to listen to (Yes in particular for me).
The player can play SACDs beautifully (Brothers in Arms for example or an amazing Philip Glass harp performance). It also has a CD mode that slows the spindle motor down and disables ‘noisy’ video circuits etc. If the player is properly engineered (and I suspect it is) this should not create an audible difference. I can’t detect one but it’s pretty cool and shows the player was designed with more than video in mind. The ‘pure direct’ mode doesn’t make an audible difference for me either (on my receiver this is not true because of its bypassing of some DSP features) but it is a handy way to black out the TV.
One review says this player can do DVD-Audio playback in high resolution (rather than the DTS and prologic content that any DVD player can play). This is not what I found. It is possible it is firmware related. I updated mine when I first turned it on before I did any checks. Yamaha does not claim the player can do it.
However, it can play surround sound (six channel) 24bit 96khz .FLAC files over a network (DLNA) which mean I can easily rip the surround mixes and play them without navigating terrible DVD menus. Excellent. I can also play the DTS and Prologic mixes (which have lossy compression like, but different to, MP3) that are included on the DVD-Audio discs (as can any DVD player). For most purposes these DTS tracks are high resolution enough.
All the player’s multi channel audio is sent out over HDMI (HDMI 1.2, since 2005, has had this capability). My receiver does the digital to analogue conversion. The BD-A1060 only has two analogue audio outputs (left and right). The RCA sockets are solidly made and gold plated. Nice.
High resolution audio
It’s probably worth explaining that SACDs and DVD-Audio discs contain high resolution audio, usually 24bit 96khz, instead of the 16bit 44.1khz content of a CD. This only matters for very particular content. It has to be both beautifully recorded and very high in its dynamic range and even then it’s the 24bits that count the most. They give over 16 million volume increments (2^24) per sample instead of the over 60 thousand on a regular CD (2^16). Some recordings of the Tallis Scholars for example have very loud parts and very quiet parts. The quiet parts with ‘regular’ digital audio (16 bits) are encoded in relatively few bits at the bottom and can sound a little synthesized if paying attention.
But wait. There’s more. Many high resolution audio sources do not have the same mix or, more likely, mastering as the regular source. The audio engineers can assume a better standard of HiFi gear and set the tracks up accordingly. Greater dynamic range is an example of the differences that might be found. That is, the quietest and loudest sounds are further apart.
DACs
What about the analogue outputs on this up-spec player? I am yet to listen to them. I have a cold that has my ears ringing. However, audio DACs (digital to analogue converters) are no longer the state of the art technology they were. Once upon a time they were a big deal to engineer and implement but no longer. According to a post I found on the web this player uses the BurrBrown PCM1795. Unless Yamaha have horribly mis-implemented the DAC IC, despite the example circuit in the data sheet to get them started, the player will be good beyond human perception.
Other options?
If I cared more about 4k blu-ray discs and had deeper pockets the Oppo brand stuff would be the way to go. It would not match my Yamaha receiver the same though 🙂
SACD and DVD-Audio too much trouble?
DVD audio (for the DTS tracks) is easy enough. However, for high resolution surround sound, an ordinary blu-ray player has also recently become a good option. While SACD and DVD-A have required special support, the ‘Pure Audio‘ standard takes advantage of the already very high standard of audio (including lossless compression of high resolution audio) available on blu-ray disks. Much like an ordinary DVD player can do surround sound over DTS or prologic a modern Blu-ray player, including the BD-A1060 can use its ‘native’ formats. My hope is that this will make surround music more popular, there are quite a lot of Pure Audio releases already.
Conclusions
I am very happy with this player but, as always, if you want advice ask an expert. I am not one.
Benjamin's Bench 