Tweaking an ESI Juli@ XTe card

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All the ground pins LIKELY connect together both at the card and the motherboard. That is what I've seen in every sound card and motherboard I've looked at. No distinction between signal and power grounds in this case.

So you COULD just connect just one wire from your new PS to one of the ground lines in the riser card. Just make sure it is a fairly substantial connection... at least 20g or so wire or larger. Connecting to several of the ground lines, to make sure you don't have a problem with contact resistance, is probably better.

Greg in Mississippi
 
I was able to power my esi juli@xte Card with 12v battery and atx converter.
You can power it with pci Express extension Cable.
Or you can use The upper pins(you can look pins at the first page of the post.)
Please DON'T forget cut the ALL POSITIVE power rails between computer and soundcard..
If you forget one pin,it is possible you can damage the computer ��
That's all!!
And thanks for replies to my questions GREG..
 
Hi Greg,
i have bought the 2 Crystek oscillators for the Esi@Juli PCI.
they are quite big and i do not know exactly if i have to build a separate mini-board for housing.
do you have some additional photos or suggestions?

thanks

I have a small suggestion:
You can look casea.eu site find proxima centauri upgrade For esi juli cards.
They mount The clock circuitry Right top of The esi juli..
Maybe you can use similar mounting..
 
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Ok, 1st info source, look at these threads for info on upgrading an older Juli@'s clocks:

Audio Asylum Thread Printer

and

Audio Asylum Thread Printer

I would go for local clocks instead of remote, info is presented in the threads for both.

I'm still looking for some clock upgrade pix for Squeezebox Touch's & inexpensive Chinese SD card players, both of which are similar to upgrading the Juli@. More soon.

Greg in Mississippi
 
To power the card separately, you need to supply 12v and 3.3v to all of those lines on the riser cable.
......
Best on your mod... let us know how it works.

Greg in Mississippi

Hi Greg.
I have a problem my linear psu powered esi juli xte card.
Generally I try to start the esi juli psu and pc at the same time.(pushing buttons at the same time) But pc most of the time doesn't see the card.
Maybe I try 20 times to be succesfull..

Do you have any suggestion?
 
I solved my issue.
I also had problem with Paul pang V2 USB Card.
He suggested changing pcie slot.
I don't know how this is possible.
But I change pcie1x slot to pcie16x slot.
And it work. I just power it before start the pc.

When pc had a problem and restarting automatically(unrelated problems), pc doesn't start. Only solution is turning off the esi juli xte psu..

I only have one problem right now.
I have a nos dac with clocking circuit.
When I play a song list with my pc, sometimes at the beginning of a song - sound start to glitch and continue like that. Sometimes it do that when I started the nth minute of a song..
If I hold the press play button 5-7 second with vlc player, sound become normal..
With foobar, I should restart the song..

I couldn't find permanent solution to this.
My dac doesn't have any input buffering or something like that. Just a receiver chip.
Maybe crystal of my esi juli xte isn't enough precise to match with my dac vcxo clocks.
Maybe if I upgrade the clocks of esi juli xte solves my problem.

Any suggestions??
 
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@slmnklyc,

I'm glad you found a way around the Juli@ startup.

I never had an XTE, but always had good results powering the Juli@'s separate supply before powering and starting the PC.

On your DAC clocking issue, how are you connecting your NOS DAC to the Juli@? I have a thought, but it would only work if you are using I2S.

BTW, pix would be great!

Greg in Mississippi
 
I use esi juli xte spdif outs..
I suspect it can be because esi juli xte has non-native pci express chip..? Somekind of signal integrity issue?
Dac is ta1543 with a programmed receiver chip.
I didn't have any this kind of problem with my singxer f1 usb spdif converter..But I really didn't like the sound.
New esi maya 44eX has programmed native pcie chip. But it has max 96khz..
And my dac is a nos dac and 192khz is very good for a nos dac.
Actually my esi juli xte has txc crystals(maybe a little bit better).
Fidelityaudio clocks aren't cheap. I can't buy them to try.
 
If someone wants to try, I want to share my setup photo.
Linear psu with 12v and 3.3v out
Riser card ordered from AliExpress.
So I can power different soundcards with this setup.
 

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Nige,

Not Steve, he can provide more details (and pix I hope) on his mod... but some answers.

There are a couple of caps on each clock... C4-C7 in toto. You remove them and the clocks and can feed the clock signals in. If you want, you can upgrade one or the other of the clocks and leave one alone, if you use that sampling rate family most of the time.

Both clocks are active all of the time, AFAIK. One, the 24.5760Mhz one, is used by the Envy chip as it's internal clock. The Envy chip MIGHT power the other down and up as needed, but I doubt it... and it works ok with a full-time on 22Mhz clock.

The Fidelity Audio Micro Clock is a neat little device with two good, but not great upgrade clocks (def not at the level of the NDK or Crystek). I have one of the previous versions without the good onboard regulation, but have never taken the time to install it. They say it was developed for the Squeezebox Touch, but works on the Juli@ just as well.

Attached are some pix from one of the Juli@ mod threads on the Asylum showing some of the details.

Later!

Greg in Mississippi

in case you are using 4 pin oscillator, you should remove the 1M ohm resistor that is a cross Juli@'s clocks, and then the new clock can be soldered directly to where the 1ohm resistor was, ....there are vias under those resistors right next to the Chip's x-in pins.
this way you will be able to have the shortest connection possible.
...get rid of that resistor and you will be shocked with the improvement!.
 

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