Audio Aero Capitole Special Edition - Bought back from the dead!!!
I purchased this player in a terrible condition. Someone had decided to "upgrade" the player and pretty much destroyed it!
The Mundorf supreme silver oil caps had been changed to basic film MKPs and the board was completely destroyed around the tube mounts.
Fortunately I was able to clean up a bit and there was enough of the PCB left to recover from the mess left behind!
I have some sub boards on the way to properly tidy up the valve area of the PCB.
For noe I had to fashion the tube legs to replicate the connectivity
Still not as I would like it to be but its functioning...... I'll get there
Result is its now running and fully functioning as a CDP, DAC and preamp albeit its not as pretty on the inside as it once was.
There's still some work to do, as I have designed new sub PCB's for the tubes to mount to and the caps will revert to Mundorf Silver oil! More than happy to have saved this one!!!!
I purchased this player in a terrible condition. Someone had decided to "upgrade" the player and pretty much destroyed it!
The Mundorf supreme silver oil caps had been changed to basic film MKPs and the board was completely destroyed around the tube mounts.
Fortunately I was able to clean up a bit and there was enough of the PCB left to recover from the mess left behind!
I have some sub boards on the way to properly tidy up the valve area of the PCB.
For noe I had to fashion the tube legs to replicate the connectivity
Still not as I would like it to be but its functioning...... I'll get there
Result is its now running and fully functioning as a CDP, DAC and preamp albeit its not as pretty on the inside as it once was.
There's still some work to do, as I have designed new sub PCB's for the tubes to mount to and the caps will revert to Mundorf Silver oil! More than happy to have saved this one!!!!
Nothing really......
The only thing that tends to suffer in these players is the STARS upsampling processor on the early models tends to go problematic with age.
It's the same unit originally made by Anagram Tech in Switzerland thats used in a few very high end players of the time.
My experience until now is only with earlier players like the one in my profile picture. These tend to be V1 or V2 units. I've had both of these versions fail in my own original machine which was replaced by the UK AA distributor albeit it took well over 6 months to get the replacement and a friends slightly earlier (but still Capitole II) failed with no replacement available.
I ended up fitting a much later S8 module and quad DAC setup on an interface board I designed.
Audio Aero S2/8 quad DAC module
Obviously the CD Pro could also be a source of potential issue depending on how much use it's had.
I sill maintain that I love these players and in reality, other than the connectivity options, with the S8 processor there are minimal differences between the early models and the Vermeer Audio Model 2 so far a I can see.
Very much appreciate the info. I bought mine used on Audiogon, then lugged the monster to Beijing. The seller had recommended warming up the tubes a day or two for best sound, so I pretty much followed his advice, but that meant listening to its "analogue" sound much less often, especially after going musicPC+Chord Hugo. Do you also recommend such a long warm-up?
(I once performed careful experiments on the Unison Unico hybrid amp, and concluded its input tubes took 6 hours to settle soundwise, the first 2 hours all over the place, even with the amp fully warmed just turn-off-swap-tubes-turn-on.)
Interesting. Perhaps someone had too much "silverness" from the Mundorfs. I would have done the same.
Yes it was not pretty.
I formed the legs on the tubes then soldered. Finally super glue played a part.
The repair sub boards are produced and on their way to me now.
I plan to hot glue the new pcb section to the main pcb as a permanent fix. I can then mount the tubes normally to the new pcb.
I would say from the state of the work that the original owner wouldn’t know “silverness” if it bit them on the ****!!!
My guess is they were removed as they have a value and replaced with junk!
Hello UV-101,
I owned a Audio Aero Capitole mk 1 and recently the DAC board is experiencing cracking sound. Sometimes it plays a song or two and other times no sound at all.
My tech checked it and suspect the DAC board is the culprit.
Based on my description, do you think its the same issue you had mentioned?
I am trying to source for a board and hope you can help.
Are you able to sell me the module you had mentioned ?
Is it difficult to install? My tech is competent so with some instructions, he will be able to do it.
Please kindly help.
STEVE @musiclinkav
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Hi Steve,
Usually when the STARS processor fails its all or nothing. I've not heard of one behaving as yours does but I guess its not out of the question.
All of the Original units are on borrowed time with that processor unfortunately
My unit is not a plug in replacement for the original unit. Although there are some common connections, the newer S2 and S8 units are designed to drive multiple DACs in differential mono non oversampling mode. To that end, there are 4 DAC's on my adapter panel. Fitting requires adjustments to the I/V stage to take the new summed DAC output and the adapter panel also requires the clock to be sent to the new processor, something that wasn't required on the original as it was derived from the word clock on the I2S input.
The issue I have is the cost of the processor, board and components mean its going to be extremely expensive to try and produce them for sale. Last time I added up the production costs it ran into 4 figures and that was only with a token amount for my time to build. I also have only fitted the adapter onto the MKII version with the earlier PCB version. Yours is totally different and without any service data I cannot confirm how you can integrate.
Unfortunately, this has been a labor of love and I don't see how this can translate into something I can offer for sale across the model albeit I'd love to see these players saved as I believe they are one of the best sounding CD players ever produced with the added ability to play (firmware version dependent) up to 192Khz files.
Hi UV101, My Audio Aero Capitole (Mk. 1) has stopped playing music although the display shows it is tracking. A technician established the power supply rails and can confirm -12v,+12v,+5v,+3v and +100v HT for the tubes are all healthy from the re-capped power supply PCB which is on the right side but it is still not playing, and he suspects the DAC unit is faulty. Are replacement DACs for my unit still available? And do you know who might be competent to repair my unit? I am in Oxford and can ship the unit as I have the original box. Thanks for any advice you can offer.
Thanks, Redsnake for your input. I am not literate about electronics and this may be a stupid question: I understand that aside from the STARS resampling processor made by Anagram Technologies (which you say is no longer available), the analog to digital conversion is done by an Analog Devices AD1853JRS 24-bit/192kHz DAC, while digital processing is handled by a 32-bit floating-point SHARC chip. Could it be the latter two that are at fault? How does one tell if the DAC function is still functioning and receiving the external signal? I suppose if it is the STARS DSP at fault, then my Capitole can just be used as a cd transport or be junked. Really shame if the cdp can't be rescued somehow as it's such a good (and expensive) unit.