Finally, an affordable CD Transport: the Shigaclone story

Erik i investigated the materials and physics behind by bees some years ago and found similar material used for other electronic purposes. I am trying to find where I bought them from. I can send photos of them and it might be identified by someone on the internet.

I will report back on the 'pioneer puck', bybee, trichord clock mod surface cap changes and digilampizator over the weekend if i have time. I am also trying to purchase more EZ51 as there will be tears in some of these projects.
 
nemo1968:

If you email me the photos through the email in my profile I will photoshop them and host them and link them so that others can see. Maybe you would include a pic of your puck as well.

Last night I purposely made an eccentric puck (so that the CD wobbled) and I can't tell you how much worse the album sounded. Definitely more is to be had by somehow making sure the disc wobbles as little as possible. At the moment I am working on a "clamp" made from ebony but that holds a CD which acts as a full cover as well.

I need a metric week to do all this stuff!

Fran
 
woodturner-fran said:
Last night I purposely made an eccentric puck (so that the CD wobbled) and I can't tell you how much worse the album sounded. Definitely more is to be had by somehow making sure the disc wobbles as little as possible. At the moment I am working on a "clamp" made from ebony but that holds a CD which acts as a full cover as well.

I need a metric week to do all this stuff!

Fran

Maybe this will work, Fran.

Just kidding!!

Anton.
 

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They are turntable ones right?


What I think would work really well if I was a good enough machinist is to clone the Teres turntable platter and clamp.

Its kinda hard to describe how it works, but basically it forces the disc into intimate contact with the platter - more than just an ordinary weight. I think a screw down puck is needed, but I just need to figure out would one that covers the whole disc (or nearly the whole disc) be better than one for the centre only. I think its important to keep the weight down as much as possible.


See the way 47 labs set up the pi-tracer transport? You put the disc in upside down and clamp it down and then the laser moves over the top of it. Thats a good way to sort out this wobble in discs I think.

Fran

Fran
 
That depends Fran...If the warp is facing upwards (for us downwards) I reckon there is not much you can do with your PiTracer.....since it uses the same puck as us mortals....:D

I have heard the Pitracer and I was not thrilled by it at all....it might be the complete set....all of it was too much in a Zen mode for me........works great for a violin or a guitar but.....bla bla bla...

It was certainly a cold shower since it was my dream reference inspiration based solely upon reading reviews and beautiful pics...

What is funny is that you can see (unique by design) that the laser transportsystem of the PiTracer works like crazy ............:D


BTW
In the beginning I did loads of tests and the best solution for me is to tighten the puck ever so slightly....almost only whirling it to the end...
No strain and perfect read-outs (that is no muting etc etc) especially at the end of the disc (tracks)
 
jitter said:


IMHO those tolerance values are quite useless because they say nothing about how quickly or slowly the frequency varies. What if a clock is always 100 ppm off, but rock steady? And what if a clock has only 20 ppm but varies wildly within those 20 ppm?

ok jitter, it makes sense.
I forgot to mention that frequency tolerance of the stock ceramic resonator ZTTMX is usually 0.5%=5.000ppm.
In the last two days I listened to many other well-known CDs and all sounds better by far with the Citizen installed.
I know that in the past many declared there was no change or that the stock was better (i.e. johnm http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=1488505#post1488505), but in my system there's no doubt at all.
 
Yep! You're right Fran, they are for my turntable.

For the function of flattening you can also use a carbon disc damper (p.e. Millenium) together with your puck.

You have to be carefull with this little spindle motor, you don't want to make it 'top' heavy. :att'n:

But it will be a cream to center and screwdown.


Anton.
 
I added the trichord clock 4 needs burning in,but at the moment prefer the stock clock for its more natural warmth of tone. Strings have a smoothness and fullness with the original clock, but sound a little more detailed and harsher with the Trichord. The Trichord provides a little more air but not necessarily more presence and realism.........
need to burn the clock 4 in before making more judgements.

Used the pioneer stable platter disc and yes preferred it to the ebony. same naturalness and presence but less loss of detail and not as overpowering in the midbass,which felt unnatural overall to my ears. Perhaps because it was more correctly centered?

however the biggest improvement and it was the same regardless of which clock i used, was adding my own diy bybees. Brought solidity and tangible presence to voices, almost as if i was closer to the microphone now and more able to hear the details in Frankies voice. Not a huge jump but certainly a more significant upgrade.

PS as i had blown up so many transports i got fed up of upgrading the caps and so these comments are made on a stock version with no cap upgrades.

Photos to come at the weekend.
 
I tried another little experiment today. I switched from a highly regulated analogue supply to the dreaded Switch mode power supply. The latter was far more natural and realistic sounding. This finding is in complete contrast to what I often get with cd players, T amps and other low dc volatge requiring equipment!!!!!!!!!

I did switch back and forth on numerous occasions and got the same result.

I also removed the Trichord and went back to a standard clock out of a pioneer stable platter.I decided burn in or not i could not quite live with the Trichords leaner albeit more detailed sound.

I do feel at this stage that i am getting close to what can be achieved with this unit. Most changes make fine adjustments to a sound characteristic which remains the same overall, which is nonetheless excellent. Smooth palpable, refined, full bodied emotionally communicative with strong rhythmically underpinning bass line.

As i Keep destroying my transports when i mess about with the surface mount components I fear the potential for significant further improvement will end here. I do believe however, that the next important area to explore is the surface mount componentry at strategic points. But with my impatience and lack of fine manual dexterity I am not going to be able to explore this further.
 
BTW
In the beginning I did loads of tests and the best solution for me is to tighten the puck ever so slightly....almost only whirling it to the end...
No strain and perfect read-outs (that is no muting etc etc) especially at the end of the disc (tracks)

This has been my experience so far too. I also think that a small flat puck, the same diameter as the turntable works best in terms of flattening the disc. The only thing tat also gave a good result was to use a blank CD on top of the one you want to play and then the puck.

Audiojoy:

Can you give us more details about the pioneer stable platter? How bout a photo or is there somewhere we can lay hands on these things?

Fran
 
Hello Audiojoy are we talking about the Trichord NUMBER 4

I am amazed by your (contrasting) results but again it is all about combinations and experimenting in your own set...

Don''t let the blowing up of boards stop you...Okay...... you win some you loose some......in the end you will get there.
(for 500 bucks you can ruin 10 prints and still have 10 lasers)
.
I am Very Very curiuos how you implemented the stable platter

Can you point out at what location you placed the bybee(s)

If you want to compare your DIY Bybee with the original...all you have to do is send me one....:D
 
erik

I think i was impatient I am sure the trichord clock needs to burn in before it can be properly evaluated.

I can send you the 'bybee copy' if you let me know your details for posting.

The pioneer turntable implementation is probably akin to using another cd on top of the one to be played.

I will send photos tomorrow when i am off work
 
I was just trying my luck...but okay I will send you a pm...

Are you secret about wat you use as bybee materials or do you wanna share....I can understand if not..

I have a couple of standard big size Bybees (not the slipstream)

I have not implemented them yet....so..

Where do you use them......

Are you not straining the frail spindle a lot with the aluminum pioneer platform........anyway I am eager to see your photo''s

I cannot get to your e-mail....maybe you can e-mail me so I can reply..:att'n:
 
m.massimo said:


ok jitter, it makes sense.
I forgot to mention that frequency tolerance of the stock ceramic resonator ZTTMX is usually 0.5%=5.000ppm.
In the last two days I listened to many other well-known CDs and all sounds better by far with the Citizen installed.
I know that in the past many declared there was no change or that the stock was better (i.e. johnm http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=1488505#post1488505), but in my system there's no doubt at all.


Just to avoid confusion: 0.5% = 5,000 ppm (or on the continent: 0,5% = 5.000 ppm).
That's a lot, but again, it doesn't say how stable this frequency is. I guess the only way to find out is to hook up a spectrum analyzer and see what the harmonics are like. I guess the less, the better, right?

If I understand correctly a rock steady output will give few harmonics, one that is unstable will give more harmonics.

The way I visualize it in my mind is that an unstable clock has a lot of variation in the time domain (and hence in the frequency domain). Because the digital playback system operates in the rythm of the clock, this is also affected by these variations. Would it be correct to say that clock variations will be found in the analogue output too?
I think the answer should be yes because I once had a defective CD-ROM player that played audio CD's with what sounded like massive amounts of wow & flutter through its analogue output! A read-speed test of CD-ROM's also showed huge variations. Apart from these speed variations it seemed to work fine (it was actually able to extract data from CD-ROM's). IMO this could only have been the result of a bad oscillator.

Erik mentioned earlier a difference in perceived speed:
Originally posted by Erik van Voorst
For instance the standard resonator sounds awfully "slow" when compared to the Trichord.....

This is something I experienced too when I switched to my Primare D20 after weeks of listening to the Shiga only. Now that I switch more often between them, I don't seem to perceive that difference anymore. It's not unlike switching between a big van and a small passenger car, awkward at first but once you do it often, it goes seemlessly...

If the resonator is on the low side of the tolerance band (-0.5%), some people that are very sensitive to speed variations might perceive this as a "slow" transport...
I know some are very sensitive. A colleaugue of mine used to be a service technician and in the old days of tapes and cassettes every now and again someone would take back a cassette deck with the complaint of it being slow or fast. At first he could not hear anything wrong but after timing it found it to be off ever so slightly. We're talking just a few seconds (!) in 45 minutes playtime (one side of a C90 cassette).
 
here is the bybee clone, it was bought from an electronics company, the material used I believe had the same ability 'to filter out stray unwanted electrons'.
Vaguely remember at the time something about it being using in guitars ???pickups

The little disc carries the special conductive material on its centre and was capped with a plastic dome about an inch in diameter.
 

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Hello Audiojoy,

I do not get it....if this acts as a puck...(instead as a platter) the rubber mat has to be removed and placed on top of the cd and then the alu platter over the cd...like a miniature frying pan upside down......with the mat in it....

How can your laser otherwise read the info.....
Unless ofcourse your laser does NOT read from the bottom....:confused: