TDA1541 S1 listening problem

[Bernhard]

Huh !

Today I received my CD880 with S1 chip.

It is the one from ebay of which the link was posted in another thread

I have listened with Sennheiser HD430* to a couple of CDs so far and I slightly prefer the CD650 and CD304mkII.

Both have the plain 1541 inside. No A, no S1, no R1, just 1541.

The CD880 is very fast on skipping titles or replay from beginning, there is no doubt the machine is in excellent condition.

How it sounds to me.

CD880:

Warm, colorated, a little too bright in the upper mids ?
A little distant, a little like a conserve.

CD650:

Neutral, very direct. Envolving. Perhaps , if there was anything to complain, a little too cool.

This hits me

The same with CD830, 1541A, as with CD880.

Maybe I will change my opinion after some time, but now when I listen to CD650 I get the "this is it" feeling and I miss it on the CD880.

So I will put a socket in one of the CDPs and listen to different chips.


Anybody compared 1541 to 1541A / S1 ?


Bernhard

*Just sold my DT990 on eBay, way too much bass for my taste.
My speakers need room equalisation per digital eq for the ground tones...

[guido]

I guess all are not modified ?

Anyway, there are more differences than the DAC: the 650 has 7220A dig filter (vs 7220B) and probalbly a different decoder (7210 vs 7310). The B filter should be better, but maybe better filtering causes more rubbish on the supply lines (?)

CDM transport differs too, CDM2 vs CDM4. Saw a post somewhere that the CDM2 has a bruchless motor and CDM4 does not. An advantage for the 650..

Don't know about other differences, PS and output. I do know the 650 build quality is crap. Tutto plastico as we say.

Cant compare anymore myself, my 650 is not standard anymore.


Greetings

[Bernhard]

Originally posted by guido
I guess all are not modified ?

Anyway, there are more differences than the DAC: the 650 has 7220A dig filter (vs 7220B) and probalbly a different decoder (7210 vs 7310). The B filter should be better, but maybe better filtering causes more rubbish on the supply lines (?)

CDM transport differs too, CDM2 vs CDM4. Saw a post somewhere that the CDM2 has a bruchless motor and CDM4 does not. An advantage for the 650..

Don't know about other differences, PS and output. I do know the 650 build quality is crap. Tutto plastico as we say.

Yes, the CD650 is plastic and the CD880 has 3mm steel plate + aluminum chassis made from one piece.

CD880 has CDM1mkII also with brushless spindle.

[eganz]

time for some mods...

[Bernhard]

Maybe tweak with older 7220A ?

The sound of the older players just seems to be a little more open.

[LeoJar]

I also owned the CD880.

I do think that the different of the sound quality on different machine is mainly due to the earphone circuit itself. For your reference, 880 is using two 5532s.

It is hard to compare two DACs chip without fixing other variable.

So, the comment here should be on the whole machines rather the DACs.

Cheers,
Leo

By the way, I do love the audio output of 880 (using OP2604)....You may try..

[Bernhard]

I couldn't stand it anymore...

Removed the S1 from my CD880, put single full gold plated socket pins inside and installed banana chip from CD650 ( plain 1541, no A, no S1 ).

First & immediate impression:



It sounds right, very open, transparent, smooth and silky highs.

The S1 chip was 100% original, the board untouched.

Somebody had put in a socket for the 7220, I can see it because there are remains of the flux on the board.

I will compare to 1541A and S1 from my bulk order and have a look at all of them with spectrum analyzer.

[till]

i suspect humans need a little more distortion for a pure, open, transparent and so on sound. Thats the reason why Tube amps are high end , and all the solid state listeners need to tweak and solder around in hifigear until something is messed up, they reach more THD, and are confident with the new high end sound.

This may also be the reason why the ultimate highest end hifi gear ist TDA1543 with resistor i/v and a gainclone with fancy caps.

[jean-paul]

It could just be an S1 which is not OK. Why would the SAA7220P/B be replaced otherwise ( in the faultfinding process )? Cdplayers with flaws are sold easily on Ebay. 1541's can fail, certainly the older ones. Often you can hear a soft scratching noise when you just powered up the cdplayer if they're defective. Please note that TDA1541A and TDA1541A-S1 are the same from the same production line with the S1 being selected for better specs. So comparing a new A to the A-S1 in question can provide the right conclusion.

Sorry Till, but your post seems a bit sour. One of the big reasons that non os TDA1543 sounds very good is that simply has less jitter than os DAC's. It could be that our ears prefer less jitter over 24 bit 96 kHz that should be better according to specs. Precision in the time domain seems more of influence than precision in the DA conversion. Removing a SAA7220 will "prove" some of this phenomenon.

I almost never see anyone commenting on TDA1543 in standard 4 x Fs configuration. Believe me, it sounds less than good. Other oversampling DAC's win with a large margin in that case.

You know my opinion about gainclones with fancy caps. BTW other amps can benefit from fancy or good industrial caps instead cheap types as well. Try it. I don't buy more THD being the reason of the success of LM3875 based amps.

the solid state listeners need to tweak and solder around in hifigear until something is messed up, they reach more THD, and are confident with the new high end sound.

Maybe true in some cases but nonsense in general.

[till]

absolutely not sour, please don´t take every word i post to serios. I beliver THD is an absolutely overrated spec and something like transient response, or the ability not to compress, is much more important for music reproduction. And i belive every cheap film cap is much better than 15$ Elkos. Please note, i don´t say the TDA1543 sounds bad. I only experienced its very easy with a few ohms more or less to change between 0,05 or 3% THD with this chip and passive i/v. And i´m not so sure if the 3% at full load sine wave made the sound worse in any way when music was played with that setup.