Phono stage and caps - change?

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Seems to me that a lot of sound improvement can be achieved only by choosing high quality passive components, especially caps, careful layout, good power supply and so on.

I'm of that oppinion that if you put your efforts into the circuit design and PCB-layout, you have gone 90% of the way.....

Think of old KRELL amplifiers etc. They still sound very good, even the fact that the caps used are 15+ years old, and should have been replaced 10 years ago......;)
 
Thanx Thomas for the enlightenment, one must learn something every day!

ACD, whil talking about opamps etc, is there table or list of the natural "speed" of instruments anywhere? For instance, the attack time of a piano, and what frequencies the attack contains?

Apart from the "colouration" of the sound etc by opamps (assuminging that newer, faster ones are better in that respect), is there any need to have opamps that are way faster than the instruments themselves?

ACD, have you replaced all caps in the Quad with 1% polyesters? Is there any improvements in changing all caps in the tone controls, RIIA etc for better ones (polyprops?)?
Cheers
 
Tom

Apart from the "colouration" of the sound etc by opamps (assuminging that newer, faster ones are better in that respect), is there any need to have opamps that are way faster than the instruments themselves?

Quite a tricky question, however when speacking of amplifiers, you absolutelty need an Opamp/Circuit able to handle higher frequencies... The sonic in music is often caused by hormonic frequencies well above the human hearing. Therefore a faster opamp or circuit is necessary.

However... Radio-signals don't get above 18kHz and your CD-player cuts everything above 22kHz away, so........?????
Whats the idea???? But somehow it has some influence to get the hormonics amplified by amp. I normally uses 300kHz as upper limit (both for practical and economic reasons):nod:
 
OK, sounds encouraging :nod:
I put Shottkys in the power supply, too, instead of the rectifying brigde.
I am aalso keeping an eye on the diodes on the psu board. Maybe there's an improvement to put Shottkys there, too?

Not even mentioning all the naked, unshielded signal cables everywhere...I have at least bypassed the psu board (the output signal goes from the tone control board, to the psu board and then to the outputs!)
 
Jan, I didn't say that you said that ;) Just asked for a second opinion...sorry if I offended you, though

Is it more appropriate to break up the choke circuit, or is the 4k7 (R300) resistor useless unless I want to use the -ll- option on the phono input?

tom

btw, I can faintly hear radio? reception when I turn the volume to maximum using the radio input with 627s. The tuner is off, but the Cd is connected...might be the CD doubling as a receiver...
 
Thank Jan, I'll bypass the whole shabang and see what happens :nod:
Guess I must lift out one leg of R302/3 and C302/3, too, right?
Sorry for taking so much of your time...

Btw, talking about circuit layout, that poor L channel 5mV signal has to travel a loooong way before it reaches its opamp...diagonally across the whole board...
tom
 
I think you should start keeping the R301 and R302 and also C302. This acts like low pass filter (R301/C302) preventing very high frequencies on the input, while R302 gives ref. to GND.
Let us know the results:nod:

Yes... QUAD have looooong signal paths around the PCB.
I think it's a product of paying bigger attention to the look of the PCB.
 
Yeah, the mod is done and after a couple of weeks one is already used to the better sound and the search for new improvements start, when will the curse end? ;)

No, I mean that since I put a shortcut (copper wire) from the input of choke 1 to the output of choke 2, R300/301 are shorted.

Is the low-pass filter to avoid RF to come in through the phono amp? (Remember there was smth like 1/RxC, using that I get 4,5 MHz)

tom
 
Yes. This way R300/301 are are shorted.
However I think you keep a 4K7 resistor on the input of the opamp (of many reasons). You can easily do this just by removing your L300/L301 shortning and instead just cut the PCB connection between the L300 and L301.

The filter has many functions....
Both RF signals and other high frequencies picked up by your
pick-up are filtered away, and assures that your Opamp doesn't get frequencies that can get it to start oscillating.....
 
Yeah, the mod is done and after a couple of weeks one is already used to the better sound and the search for new improvements start, when will the curse end?

You may get incremental improvement with the Quad for a long time but does it make sense? It was, after all, a severely compromised design even in its heyday, let alone today. Unless you build a new PS, get rid of the analogue switches and all the junk parts it won't ever be really good. So, what's left? With about the same effort you can build something many times better. Or can you not make a box as ugly as a Quad? :)
 
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