OPPO Speaker Distance Settings

I was reading this post today:
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1439524/official-oppo-bdp-105-owners-thread/9930#post_24598238 (read the 4th paragraph in the post)

Basically it says that settings other than 0 in the Speaker Configuration/Speaker Distance screen cause a collapse of the sound stage. He was referring to the 105 but said he had the same problem in the 95.

So I had to try this to see what he was talking about and yeah...I'm getting way better sound when I set all the Speaker Distances to 0. It is not hard to do so you might want to see if you get the same experience.

The poster wrote: "...sounds that flitter front-to-back have very accurate timing and the sounds are easily discernible. However, the soundstaging collapses..." Don't think I've read about such an issue before.

I've never set Speaker Distances to zero, but as you said it's simple enough to change. Think I'll try it on my Oppo 95 Sunday to hear if I can tell any difference.

Thanks for the link.

Interesting experiment, will try this too. Wavelenght, did you use a certain disc to test this?

Robert van Diggele said:

Interesting experiment, will try this too. Wavelenght, did you use a certain disc to test this?

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Any 5.1 high res. I tried a few- it shouldn't matter.

Thanks, during the day I did some testing but did not notice an improvement with speaker distance set to zero. Actually a slight weakening of the overall sound stage. So I am keeping them as they were, with correct distance.

Robert van Diggele said:

Thanks, during the day I did some testing but did not notice an improvement with speaker distance set to zero. Actually a slight weakening of the overall sound stage. So I am keeping them as they were, with correct distance.

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I read the post at avs, obviously this guy is just being anal about the issue. As most members there are like professional types anyway. A lot more $ into the equipment.

leevitalone1 said:

I read the post at avs, obviously this guy is just being anal about the issue. As most members there are like professional types anyway. A lot more $ into the equipment.

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Sorry, I have to disagree. He noticed an anomaly and he, and other posters there are trying to figure out what, if anything, is going on.

I will go and check this out - my 105 is set to Zero, as the "distance" setting is there to add delays to channels to compensate for poor or less than optimal placement.
So if all set to, say 6 feet - then you are delaying the audio by 6ms per channel & introducing additional DSP unnecessarily.

EDIT
Which, given this layer of DSP is unnecessary and combined with the setting probably being misunderstood by some, as it is *not* there to set the distance between you & the speaker.
It's there to adjust - suppose your front 3 channels are 6 feet away from you & the rears are 9 feet away, you use this to delay the front channels by 3 feet to compensate for the later arrival of the rears at your listening position.

neil wilkes said:

I will go and check this out - my 105 is set to Zero, as the "distance" setting is there to add delays to channels to compensate for poor or less than optimal placement.
So if all set to, say 6 feet - then you are delaying the audio by 6ms per channel & introducing additional DSP unnecessarily.

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According to the posts in the AVS Forums thread if all speakers are set to the same distance no processing occurs.

neil wilkes said:

EDIT
Which, given this layer of DSP is unnecessary and combined with the setting probably being misunderstood by some, as it is *not* there to set the distance between you & the speaker.
It's there to adjust - suppose your front 3 channels are 6 feet away from you & the rears are 9 feet away, you use this to delay the front channels by 3 feet to compensate for the later arrival of the rears at your listening position.

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Yes that is how it works.

neil wilkes said:

I will go and check this out - my 105 is set to Zero, as the "distance" setting is there to add delays to channels to compensate for poor or less than optimal placement.
So if all set to, say 6 feet - then you are delaying the audio by 6ms per channel & introducing additional DSP unnecessarily.

EDIT
Which, given this layer of DSP is unnecessary and combined with the setting probably being misunderstood by some, as it is *not* there to set the distance between you & the speaker.
It's there to adjust - suppose your front 3 channels are 6 feet away from you & the rears are 9 feet away, you use this to delay the front channels by 3 feet to compensate for the later arrival of the rears at your listening position.

Click to expand...

The Oppo manual says one should measure the distance to the listening position of all speakers. But what you are saying is that, in a non ideal set up of the speakers, one should set the distance of the speaker that is closest to the listening position to zero, and adjust the other speakers accordingly?

From following the discussion over at AVS Forums I think it is the difference between distances that matters. So setting the 3 front speakers to 6 feet and the rears to 9 feet would be the same as setting the fronts to 0 and the rears to 3 feet. Either way the fronts will be delayed by the amount of time it takes sound to travel 3 feet. So I don't think it matters which way you go.

The problem in question is: do the settings (to compensate for distance) negatively impact the imaging of the sound? Nothing concrete has been established on this although the general consensus seems to be don't use the settings for stereo. For multi-channel use them. Personally I'm turning mine off for multi-channel even though my rears are 5 ft closer than my front 3. I just don't like the decrease in fidelity when I turn the distance processing on. I will continue to listen for issues that may arise because I am not using the distance processing although so far I don't hear any.

Although still to be confirmed by Oppo, it seems that there is a bug in the Oppo 105 speaker distance settings software:
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1439524/official-oppo-bdp-105-owners-thread/10140#post_24625852

In my own setup LF and RF are the same distance but if there is a bug there may be issues in the other channel settings as well which could explain why setting everything to 0 sounds better to me than entering the real distances for my speakers (front 3 at 9 ft and rears at 3.75 ft.). We'll have to wait to see Oppo's response on this one as the AVS forum member over there will be submitting his findings Oppo.

wavelength said:

Although still to be confirmed by Oppo, it seems that there is a bug in the Oppo 105 speaker distance settings software:
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1439524/official-oppo-bdp-105-owners-thread/10140#post_24625852

In my own setup LF and RF are the same distance but if there is a bug there may be issues in the other channel settings as well which could explain why setting everything to 0 sounds better to me than entering the real distances for my speakers (front 3 at 9 ft and rears at 3.75 ft.). We'll have to wait to see Oppo's response on this one as the AVS forum member over there will be submitting his findings Oppo.

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Does this just affect the analog outs and not the HDMI out?

PK said:

Does this just affect the analog outs and not the HDMI out?

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Correct. From page 69 of the 105 User manual:
"Speaker Configuration applies to the multi-channel analog audio outputs only. All digital
(bitstream and LPCM) outputs are unaffected by these settings."

Speaker Distance Settings are part of the Speaker Configuration interface.

Thanks Wavelength for keeping us in the loop of the AVS findings.

Robert van Diggele said:

Thanks Wavelength for keeping us in the loop of the AVS findings.

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You're most welcome. And likewise to some of the guys over there for staying on this and figuring out that there is a software error. Hopefully it won't take Oppo too long to push the solution out with a firmware update.

Thank you for keeping us up to date on this issue.

The thread on AVS is geared towards owners of the Oppo 105. I was wondering if it has been confirmed that the bug is only in the 105 series, or if it also extends to the 95.

hafquark said:

Thank you for keeping us up to date on this issue.

The thread on AVS is geared towards owners of the Oppo 105. I was wondering if it has been confirmed that the bug is only in the 105 series, or if it also extends to the 95.

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Oppo has not confirmed any bug yet. A couple of the 105 owners on the AVS forum have, I believe, submitted the bug-revealing test results to Oppo. And that, as you stated, only deals with the 105. AFAIK nobody has tested the 95. I would suggest that once Oppo confirms the 105 bug that you ask Oppo directly if the 95 is bug-free.

wavelength said:

Oppo has not confirmed any bug yet. A couple of the 105 owners on the AVS forum have, I believe, submitted the bug-revealing test results to Oppo. And that, as you stated, only deals with the 105. AFAIK nobody has tested the 95. I would suggest that once Oppo confirms the 105 bug that you ask Oppo directly if the 95 is bug-free.

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Rereading the relevant posts I see that it was only the members who believe they found a bug and have submitted their findings to Oppo. I can't hear any appreciable difference on the BDP95 when changing distance settings (apart from what might be the artifact of not having the proper delay when the distance is set to zero). As such, I think I'll let the matter slide.

The user who has been testing the 105 for the distance bug has said that the 103 has the same issue. Quite likely the 105D and 103D are affected as well because all these players get the same firmware updates.