electrocompaniet emp3 blu-ray/universal disc player - SoundMania

If you don’t have or plan to one day own an amplifier with balanced input, the justifications for theEMP3 begin to fall away fast. It’s still a fairly good performer, both in stereo and multichannel mode,with exceptional picture quality too. But that just shows the quality of base model Oppo. It will notprovide a sonic challenge to any decent £1,000 CD or CD/SACD player, but its sins are of omissionrather than commission, but it goes from mature and intelligent to sounding inconsequential.This is however, a great strength in multichannel music mode, because it doesn’t go for the jugularthe way some more cinematic-oriented players seem to. I’ve got to admit, my multichannel musiccollection is more limited than I’d like and much of it is Blu-ray concert-based material, but on thisit is outstanding, even through my cobbled together ‘bitza’ home cinema system left over from mymultichannel reviewing days.It would be easy to highlight this balanced-only Electrocompaniet recommendation as being acurate’s egg of a player. In fact, it just makes it fit snugly within the confines of the Electrocompanietecosystem, where balanced is king. Many of EC’s Classic Line products are not only balanced bydefault, but only have balanced connectors in place. The EMP3 is just another expression of that.Granted, that makes it more likely to be the disc player of choice for someone building on thestrengths of an EC amplifier, instead of the first foot in the EC door, but its strengths in such asystem are so marked and obvious, it’s makes models like the EMP2 and ECC1 players in therange a tougher commendation. Not for everyone, then, but in the right context, the EMP3 is atough act to follow.TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONSCompatible formats: CD, DVD, SACD, DVD-Audio, Blu-ray (2D and 3D), AVCHD, HDCD,Kodak Picture CD, CD-R/RW, DVD±R/RW, DVD±R DL, BD-R/RE, BD-R/RE DLAudio Outputs: 1 x 2ch. balanced line out (XLR), 7.1ch single ended (RCA)Digital Outputs: 2x HDMI, 1x TosLink S/PDIF, 1x Coax S/PDIFVideo Outputs: 2 x HDMI (NTSC: 480i/480p/720p/1080i/1080p/1080p24, PAL576i/576p/720p/1080i/1080p/1080p24) CompositeDigital/Analogue conversion: 24bit, 192kHzDimensions (WxDxH): 46.6x31.6x9.3cmWeight: 10kgPrice: £2,490