Real or fake PCM63?

[beauty_divine]

Hello, a good friend of mine oredered and recently recieved a pair of PCM63 - Y grade. Somewhere in the forum there was discussion about this not well known grade. These devices put into the contactors instead of my own pair of K grades sound very different and for sure not better. I took a detailed look at them, here they are:

What made me doubt if they might be fake is the place of "Y" grade marking - not where they put J or K, and most - the pins are so clean, shining and scratchless as they had not passed production test and had not been put in a contactor.
I wonder what you might say looking at this chips...

[Bernhard]

Maybe the Y lasered / etched (?) are produced to meet specs while K stamped are selected from production.
Anyway I tested K and K2 with analyzer and they were nothing special...

Also they are not tested in ordinary sockets that make scratches, ever noted new chips have pins not 90° ?

[irgendjemand]

Dr.H,

thanks for this. I did not see this topic until your post came on the "Pcm63-y?" thread.


beauty_devine;

Originally posted by beauty_divine

[B] sound very different and for sure not better. [/B ]

This is interesting: Please let us know what is the different in sound; can you describe it?

[B] What made me doubt if they might be fake is the place of "Y" grade marking - not where they put J or K, and most - the pins are so clean, shining... [/B ]

I was the one who started the subject, so I see myself somehow responsible...

First, do note that I got similar "Y" Chips, and only the dates are different: 0323 E9 027.
It is also BB Japan, same colours which are engraved on the Chip.

Like Bernhard I assume that this come from some special series.

Can it be at all fake? I wonder, because if it is not PCM63, what can it be??

The really sad thing here is that you don’t like what you hear. So please give some more info. By the way, which configuration you are using?

See also the other thread: There is a lot of info about it. Pcm63p-y ???

IY.

[beauty_divine]

What matters most is the sound and the sound is bad :-(
I've got two pairs of 63-K, one made in Japan, the other in the Philipines. There is no noticeable difference between them.
On top of this, a friend of mine has external DAC Parasound 1000 that originally comes with pair of 63-J, and replaced with the mentioned 63-K the DAC sounds definitely better. However this pair of 63-Y has nothing to do with the sound of the K's.
Whether the Ks are something special or not I don't know. Measured they simply meet the spec especially in the low level signal range, where they sound noticeably better then PCM58.

What I see on the picture of your DAC there is "-" sign before the grade letter "Y". On my friend's DACs this is not there. That seems inappropriate.
A friend of the Bulgarian audiophile society said that the russians produce fake 63's that even can work without -5Vdigital supply I really do not know what to think about this issue....

[Ivan Petrov]

Hm, interesting, I had heard about fake chips but did not believe I would see one. I am not sure if this is fake but I have a friend that said the PCM63 were made in Japan up to 98 and then Philippines and then Korea, there is no way it was made in 2004 as designated on the chip... Or may be it was a secret production? Anyway, looking at the two pictures there are a differences - apart form the unusual place of the Y, there is a difference in the signature of engraving and also the "-". Is it from one and the same source?

[irgendjemand]

Hi beauty_divine & Ivan Petrov,

The Chips looks indeed slightly different, just as you described!

It will be interesting to get an answer from any of our Japanese diyaudio friends, who might know the people from BB Japan. May be they will answer this question about the production mystery. My Chips are from 2003…

I would have ask you to send them to me for a try & examination – however I don’t have the possibility to do so, as since 1 month both my PCM63P-Y Chips are mounted directly on the PCB.

Before mounting them however, I have been to my good friend, the Digital Specialist Stephan Horwege http://www.hoer-wege.de/ and showed him the chips. We listened to them in comparison to K (Korea), K (Phl) and also the Monarchy Audio PCM1704-UK Adaptor Replacement. There was no question which Chip is the better one, and since then they are peacefully mounted on the PCM.

Was your Chip faked by somebody? It is quite hard to believe: How one can fake this complicated kind of chip? Moreover – it demands a tremendously amount of affords for a relatively small market-segment.

I would think that something else in your HiFi chain is responsible for this: You will have to check this carefully.

As for the sound-changes: Going from “J” to “K” is indeed easy: One hear that the K does not scream like the J. Now – going from K to Y – you should hear that the sound changes are going in different directions at once: It has a lot of depth, the sound stage is hugh, the instrument's sound is becoming full (try listen to a classic instrument like Violin or Clarinet or even Flute). Tell me please if the sound at least changes in this direction. If yes, see where in your HiFi system you were trying before to compensate for the "J" harsh character; may be now it is sounding to “heavy” , “bold” and “not transparent” ?

[irgendjemand]

beauty_devine,

the Parasound DAC 1000 is using the somehow old SM 5813 Digital Filter. You should try to put your hand on the DF-NPC-13 Adaptor from Audiotuning - it is a direct replacement, and it has on it the BB DF1704 Digital Filter.

My DAC has such a DF1704, configured to 20 bit out + "Slow": It works magnificently with the PCM63P-Y. However, if the configuration on the filter (DF1704) is on “High”, the sound is quite bad.

[spzzzzkt]

There seems to be odd things going on in the world of PCM63's....

digchip.com is listing pcm63's with date codes of 04,05 and '07. There are 17,000 '07 dated coded pcm63 listed as available. How is this possible for a chip that was listed as obsolete/OOP by 2003?

Things are getting pretty stupid....
this site is listing pcm63-k (new as used in space shuttle Endeavour) at 150USD EACH.
http://diyaudio.org.ua/forum/topic242.html

I've ended up with '04 DC 63P Y's as shown in the pic at the start of this thread. Unfortunately I can't compare with any "know good" PCM63's except to say they are far better than pcm63k's A'af was selling.

cheers
Paul

[Cobra2]

This is a factory (piggy-back) Monarchy Audio Chip, I think they still can supply PCM63 K for reasonable price.

Arne K

[beauty_divine]

Originally posted by irgendjemand
beauty_devine,

the Parasound DAC 1000 is using the somehow old SM 5813 Digital Filter. You should try to put your hand on the DF-NPC-13 Adaptor from Audiotuning - it is a direct replacement, and it has on it the BB DF1704 Digital Filter.

My DAC has such a DF1704, configured to 20 bit out + "Slow": It works magnificently with the PCM63P-Y. However, if the configuration on the filter (DF1704) is on “High”, the sound is quite bad.

The difference between J and K grades I checked on the Parasound with SM5813 DF.
The K to Y grades I tried on my CDP equipped with SM5847, where K sounds much better then the suspected to be fake Y chips. To my opinion 5847 is much better than 5813, so the example must be correct