Magnetar UDP800 disc player review: A spectacular media hub

The Magnetar UDP800 is a one of the most flexible playback devices I’ve ever used, and it’s a godsend for anyone still devoted to physical media. It’s a great option for cinephiles who still watch 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD discs, an incredibly valuable tool for music lovers devoted to CD and the increasingly rare SACD and DVD-Audio formats, and an essential tool for everyone who’s interested in both.

I set up the unit in my audio component stack and used a long 8K HDMI cable to connect it to my television system. That proved a perfect home for the UDP800, as it allowed for me to easily switch between audio and video playbacks.

The Magnetar UDP800 offers a world-class experience for people who still care about music and movies on disc.

To be clear, while the UDP800 sits near the top of the market for 4K UHD players, we’re not even close to the high end when it comes to SACD and CD audio players. Audiophiles can spend $10,000 or more on players that aim for the quietest possible mechanical components and the best possible digital-to-analog converters.

This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best Ultra HD Blu-ray players.

What the Magnetar UDP800 offers is a world-class all-around experience for users who care about both audio and video media, and the UDP800 starts to look like a great investment when you add up what it would cost to buy a similar quality 4K UHD player and a versatile CD player that supports all the formats on offer here.

What can the Magnetar UDP800 do?

The Magnetar UDP800 will play 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD video discs, in addition to the AVCHD, Kodak Picture CD, CD-R/RW, DVD±R/RW, DVD±R DL, and BD-R/RE media. You can also play media stored on USB hard drives with up to 16TB of capacity, including files encoded with the h.264 and h.265 standards. The only thing you won’t is HD DVD support, the now-dead 1080p standard that lost out to Blu-ray in the early 21st-century format wars.

Music lovers and file collectors can play CD, SACD, and DVD-Audio audio discs as well as audio files—DSD64/128, multi-channel DSD64, and up to 24-bit/192kHz PCM formats with AIFF, ALAC, APE, FLAC, and WAV—from DLNA or SMB media servers on a home network, or from USB hard drives with up to 16TB of capacity. Audiophiles will note the presence of dual Burr-Brown PCM 1795 DACs and both balanced XLR analog audio outputs and unbalanced RCA outputs.

The UDP800 uses the MediaTek MT8581 for processing and upscaling. Supported HDR (high dynamic range) formats include Dolby Vision, HDR10, and HDR 10+. The player supports all the important audio formats, including Dolby Digital, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio, Dolby Atmos, and DTS:X.

The Magnetar UDP800 has a simple on-screen menu that evokes the basic interfaces of the 1980s or 90s. Unlike a lot of other gear that still evokes that primitive digital era, the UDP800 menu options are remarkably clear, and you never lose sight of the top-level settings menu while navigating to adjust individual settings.

The included remote has dozens of buttons, but most of the action takes place around the wheel control at the center. The buttons are well backlit, and each is clearly labeled. Magnetar also includes a detailed, well-illustrated manual that will make the particulars of how everything works clear to anyone who takes the time to read it.

What’s it like to watch movies on the Magnetar HDP800?

The 2019 movie John Wick: Chapter 3–Parabellum is one of the most visually arresting contemporary Hollywood movies in recent memory, and the 4K UHD release demonstrates the superiority of physical media over streaming. The blacks are blacker, and the images are consistently sharper when played back from the physical disc instead of streaming a 4K version from iTunes.

All streaming services must use some form of compression to deliver video at a reasonable cost and keep the bills under control at their data centers. There might be some point in the future when compression algorithms deliver streaming video at quality comparable to physical media, but we’re still at a point where true cinephiles will always be able to see the difference.

As Magnetar’s press release points out, streaming video is limited to an average bit rate of between 10 and 26Mbps, with peaks of 41Mbps, while the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray format streams at an average bit rate of 60 to 80Mbps, peaking at 128Mbps. The huge gap between the two sources’ bit rates can be attributed to the image-softening, artifact-inducing data compression streaming services use.

A regular 1080p Blu-ray will also play back flawlessly via the UDP800. Watching the Blu-ray version of the Oscar-nominated movie Women Talking (2022), the image was as detailed as what you’ll see with the 4K digital streaming version. The film was not released in 4K UHD, but I’d pick the uncompressed 1080p version on Blu-ray over the 4K streaming version any day of the week.

The DVD format is limited to 720p resolution and isn’t designed to work with the current generation of 4K televisions. Blu-ray and 4K UHD players attempt to upscale the 720p image to play back smoothly on high-quality televisions; unfortunately, most players on the market can’t quite smooth all the resulting jagged edges.

If you’re looking to watch old DVDs on a state-of-the-art big screen TV, the Magnetar UDP800 does a surprisingly good job of presenting a watchable image. A DVD of the 2011 film The Mechanic, starring Jason Statham and Ben Foster, might not look as good as the version currently streaming on Paramount+, but the UDP800 makes a collection of old DVDs look about as good as they can.

How does the Magnetar UDP800 sound with music?

I hooked up the Magnetar UDP800 to my audio system, which includes a NAD Stereo Preamplifier S100, a NAD Monitor Series Amplifier 2400, and a pair of vintage Bowers & Wilkins P5 floor standing speakers to evaluate its audio performance.

I did A/B listening tests using Björk’s 1997 album Homogenic on CD, comparing the UDP800 to a NAD C545BEE CD player. Tracks like “Joga” had so much more detail played through the UDP800 that it was easy to question whether I was playing the same source disc. That improvement is a testament to the quality of the DACs that Magnetar used for this unit. The UDP800 is a great standard CD player.

I next played an original CD pressing of Matthew Sweet’s 1991 album Girlfriend with the UDP800 and then switched to the 2020 Intervention Records SACD reissue, one that features a new remaster by engineer Ryan K. Smith from the original analog master tapes. Intervention is one of the few labels still committed to the SACD format, and its catalog features these discs alongside vinyl LP reissues that are remastered with the same painstaking care.

Since the UDP800 is such an excellent standard CD player, the difference between the standard and SACD might not be as pronounced as you might expect. I chose this album because it’s one of the driest records made in the CD era, almost completely stripped of the reverb that would obscure the details of the players and evoke the best qualities of the Beatles stereo recordings.

The new remasters dig more details out of the iconic guitar parts played by Robert Quine and Richard Lloyd and give more insight into how Sweet created the stacked harmonies that featured only his voice tracked multiple times. The SACD master keeps the mix glued together and it never collapses into a stream of competing individual voices and instruments the way some high-res digital files can.

While the 2011 recording of Gustav Mahler’s Symphonie Nr. 2 by Markus Stenz conducting the Gürzenicih-Orchester Köln isn’t my favorite performance of the piece, the SACD release by Oehms Classics is a spectacular feat of audio engineering that captures both the orchestra and vocalists with unparalleled clarity. The album is streaming in lossless quality on the Apple Music Classical app, and the streaming version doesn’t begin to deliver the impact I experienced when listening to the SACD version through the UDP800.

For my last comparison, I listened to the DVD-Audio (stereo and surround) Rhino-reissue of David Crosby’s 1971 album If I Could Only Remember My Name, released in 2006. The immersive experience on tracks like “Tamalpais High (At About 3)” and “Song With No Words (Tree With No Leaves)” was created by remix engineer Stephen Barncard; it’s one that’s superior to the algorithm-created surround mixes that modern subscription services are streaming. Collectors looking for titles like this one need a player like the UDP800 to get the complete experience that format promises.

Should you buy the Magnetar UDP800?

Users interested in any or all the formats the Magnetar UDP800 supports will find it to be a nearly essential purchase. As movie and music companies look to transition their customers to streaming formats, audio companies are less invested in building gear that supports what some are now calling legacy formats. Yes, the Magnetar UDP800 is a niche product—it might even be a niche within a niche—but it fills that niche almost perfectly.

Part of the negative reputation that CDs developed is more about the poor audio reproduction typical of the cheap players that flooded the market during that format’s peak than it is about the format itself. The UDP800 delivers the full promise of the 16-bit/44.1kHz compact disc format. Garden-variety CDs sound spectacular, while SACD and DVD-Audio reproduction verges on mind-blowing. And there is tons of content available in those formats if you don’t mind doing a little digging.

There’s a great analog with vinyl here. Record companies tried to kill the LP, but there’s just something about records that listeners feel they can’t get from digital. The market finally had to satisfy that demand by once again building high-quality turntables.

On the movie side, no streaming version of any film can compare with 4K UHD disc playback in all its uncompressed glory. Serious movie fans will want a player that can maximize the experience and match the capabilities of their television and surround-sound setups.

I know you’ll be enthralled with the quality the UDP800 delivers with 4K UHD video and SACD audio, but I’m even more impressed with the experiences it delivers with DVDs and standard CDs. This player breathes new life into those aging and lower-resolution formats; it’s one of the most versatile investments you can make in your home theater.