DeqX -pd 2.6

Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.
Hi Sjef

I did damp The DEQX with a lead bitumen kind of substance. I have specialised dampers (Japanes) cones (3 pieces) underneath the DEQX.
I find the DA converters to be very good and equalling the Burr Browns of my Copland and most of all I fabricated from a good solid looking TV cable (coax 75 ohm) and 2 Eichmann bullet plugs a digital cable of 30 cm () and it sounded more transparent and faster than my expensive hundreds of dollars costing digital cable form XO.

THe Audio Alchemy anti jitter box is not a good unit to be honest. Already many years ago I read at least 2 articles on the net that it induces its own kind of jitter different from what it supposed to "dampen" I have one too, but it just collects dust. It is old technology..

My Copland with its retrofitted precision clock from Denmark doesn't need an anti jitter device.

I would advice you to make your own digital short cable from premium tv coax cable 2- 4 Euro the meter as short as possible with Eichmann interconnects.

Above all buy the 20 US dollar plus cd damper. The best thing you could possibly buy to make a huge jump in cd listening. The difference is "earth shaking" That good. See: http://herbiesaudiolab.home.att.net/ttmat.htm
You will not regret it all, that i can almost promise : )))). It equals the difference between a good clock or not in yr cd player

I have the preamp option with the remote control. It is ..handy. a remote volume control and remote P!...P4 control and much more to mention, but also very complex remote EQ filtering options

Bas from soundevolutions.nl predicts that the digital AES EBU will make a perceptable positive change as digital polution will not contaminate the earth line

I am very glad with my DEQX. I use now temporarily active biamping. What a difference with my my passive filters I got much more tranparency and "snap" and silence..
 
What effect did the damping have on the PDC ?
What did you dampen, the top cover and bottom ?

I have put my unit on spikes, mainly because it looked better in the audio rack because the PDC is such a flat unit. To be honest I can not even hear the slightest difference at all between the spikes or directly on the rack.
 
top and bottom lid

effect is more precision, more focus, but to be honest id did not do, was not possible to do an AB comparision. My "spikes"are expensiv and special. It spreads out the freq resonance to a broader but less energetic spectrum. The effect is clearly audible under any kind of gear

HAve you ever tried the cd damper from herbies audio lab?
I gave Bas one and he was very sceptic
this is his response:

"De mat: Ontzettend bedankt! Ik geef het onmiddelijk toe! Vocalen staan met gebruik van de cd mat veel losser en vaster in het klankbeeld. De diepte en microresolutie neemt toe, en totale klank wint aan stabiliteit en gemak (het ademt!). Er gaat nu geen enkele cd meer in de speler zonder mat . Ik heb hier nooit in gegelooft, maar bijdeze geef ik mijn ongelijk toe."

babel
"the mat : Great thanks! I admit it immediately! Vocals stand with use of the cd mat much more separately and more fixed in the sound picture. The depth and microresolution increase, and total consonance gains stability and freedom (it breathes!). There cd now absolutely no more goes in the player without the mat. I have never believed in it, but by now I admit my mistake"n
 
well loooong time later

hi
I still have my DEQX pd 2.6 Will never part from it
with all the mods in it, it sounds very very transparent

The biggest changes are the boutique output caps replacements ( expensive) take your pick, I chose sonicap platinum together with a high end regulated PWS and the NewClassD Neutron Star 0.5 ppm clock fed with a seperate pws with choke DEQX HDP-3 Speaker/Room Correction Processor & Preamp Ultra High Performance Modifications & Optional Upgrades
NeutronStar.JPG

NeutronStar clock

I also had the latest mods form the manufacturer.

I listen through heavily modified DA-5 Jadis amps ( 4X 6550 NOS Tungsol) in a specific triode configuration that makes them sound like a 30 watts SET (JLTi EL34 & KT88 Amps ) Menno van der Veen acknowledged the SET sound with my units, also other mods like automatic biasing from Tentlabs UL40-S2-Mod
The electronic side is very very transparent and most CD sounds like my Lp's ( Well Tempered, Koetsu)
Very important also for the DEQX is pure power. So line conditioning is a must

An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.

Autobias

Speakers are open baffle types with servo woofers ( 15 inch 4 total) up until 125 Hz The paper mid driver ( 92 dB sensitivity) drives 125 Hz-8 Khz and is treated with Ennemoser violin laquer ( a VERY big gain again in transparency)

I cannot possibly better my sound unless i do BIG changes like bypassing DEQX'S internal dacs, but the sound is already so good. SO i am not going that route.
My source is now a full modified SB3 with a Paul Hynes pws ( 3.3V and 5V out) but i will change to a modified M2Tech hiFace for the 96 Khz option as DEQX filters works internally with 96 kHz Hiface USB Transport Modifications & Ancillaries
 
Last edited:
Hi Kyrill,

I also still have my DEQX PDC2.6P with latest modifications from the manufacturer.

Did you do all the mods yourself ? I always wanted to change the output caps with smething better the electrolytic but I could not figure out wich ones they are on the circuit board because they are the same as the power supply caps and the board is multilayered. Do you know wich ones they are ?

Have you just replaced the main +/- 12V regulators with the new regulators ? Another mod I always wanted to do but all the super regulator in the boutique stores are pretty low current so I spent some time looking for higher current ones but so far no luck.

Third question is about the C37 lacquer. On wich midrange did you use it. I'm asking because for years I'm eager to try it on my Phy-Hp drivers (only used as open baffle midrange) but am a bit afraid to do damage to them.

Good to see you are still happy with your system, enjoy the music, that's what matters
 
Hi Sjef

You are in for a feast :DDD CHANGE the caps as soon as possible assuming you have high end amps (SET?) accompanying your Phy-hp
I did the caps replacement mods by myself it is easy but time consuming also the pws change i did myself and to make room for the boutique caps inside the unit. The pws is outside the unit. I did not do the clock replacement myself.
Which caps are to be replaced depends on yr board revision. post a photo of the motherboard or send me one and i can tell you there is a total of six standing electrolytic 100uF or more caps in the vicinity of each other. They sound horrible and degrade yr DEQX. the high tones channel need 1 UF bypassed with 0,02uF
The mids need 5 uF ( but I have 1 uF, Alan says that will be too less for nice high bass/low mids, but the measurements and my ears say otherwise and 5 uF Sonicap is so expensive..) The bass need >30UF I have 40 UF polypropylene. Remember the output caps are in series with the input caps of the power amps.

I would paint the Phy-hp w. Ennmoser lacquer and also the tweeter. No doubt about it
6 layers ( 4 front and 2 back) a bit thinned with the supplied thinner. Not only more musical but also much more focus, less blurr and more transparency and not subtle. I wouldn't dare to try any other alternative lacquer on my beloved speakers
I almost went for yr drivers as well i belief they are very very good, but a bit too expensive for me . So after different tries i ended up with Visaton B 200

Once or if you can afford the super clock mod do it. But it needs the pws mod and caps mod first. The DEQX will be a true high end unit capable of sounding (96/24) digital like the best analogue LPs

Amsterdam is not too far away from Rijswijk/The Hague
you are welcome to listen and have a beer ehh or wine :)

I am still in search for better regulators too..
 
Last edited:
Thanks for your reply.

Treating the tweeters would be difficult because they are air motion transformers. These are very old ESS ones, still the best combination with the Phy so far. Normally I'm using Hiaga 20W le classe A amps (with original transistors) on the Phy and 300B SET amps on the AMT's but at the moment I'm using a pair of highly modded Trends TA10.1 amps on both the mids and highs. Don't know why I'm still using them, maybe it's my green heart wich is sometimes concerned about the power consumption of the classe A/set amps but that combination simply sounds way better. the Trends amps are just hobby toys too see what could be squeezed out of it.

The attached picture is not mine but a picture Alan send me once. It's the same board revision as I've got. I was one of the early adapters of the DEQX PDC2.6 back in 2003. Later exchanged it to one from the first batch of PDC2.6P units and last year had it upgraded to hdp3 standards but without power supply change, there still the cheasy smps unit to feed the whole unit.
 

Attachments

  • six output jumpers.JPG
    six output jumpers.JPG
    434.4 KB · Views: 417
ok
the caps are 6 central ones i beleif those sic wima orage ones are parallel to it to soften a bit the elctrolytic character. with a multimeter you can find out if there is a connection between the caps and the wima. if there is, what I assume you just remove them.

even with the trends you will hear the effect I would put the set on the high eff mid driver. but take notice what decoupling cap is inside the SET . it should be a good one too. I would cross over to the AMT as high as 8khz.

you can make an easy line cleaner the "FELIX" put it before and after teh cheesy SWPWS

FELIX Pproject: Felix project use a DIY pcb with all those little holes. Before the SWPS otherwise it pollutes enormously the rest of setup and after the swps ( 15volts rails, to clean up the garbage into the DEQX)

its is around 12 euro a piece you need 3 one for the 230V H and N and one for + 15V and N and one for -15V and N

And relativize the green effect of yr setup,sounding better is more important than your extremely symbolic world attribution ;)
 
PDC-2.6p Supply and Clock Mods

Folks,

so far I've been a reader of this forum for some time so far. Not sure I can contribute a lot, but a friend of mine and myself are seeking help with modding my DEQX PDC-2.6p:

In order to "dejitter" this baby, we plan on two initial things:

1. an external linear +/- 15 V Powersupply, based on two of these: http://www.peaktech.de/productdetail/kategorie/dc-netzgeraete/produkt/p-6080.html

2. Replacement of the PDC-chrystal oscillator by a new clock, where we seem to have a very good solution as such, but we are lacking one piece of info...

Cutting a long story short: What's the main clock frequency of the PDC-2.6p chrystal? The marking is very crypric and we dont have a counter high enough in frequency to measure the chrystal.

Please, if anyone has this piece of info, please let me know! You'll make two people extremely happy!

Thanks a lot in advance!
Winfried from Germany
 
Folks,

so far I've been a reader of this forum for some time. Not sure I can contribute a lot, but a friend of mine and myself are seeking help with improving our DEQX PDC-2.6p-HD modified units:

In order to "dejitter" these babies, we plan on two initial things:

1. an external linear +/- 15 V Powersupply, based on two of these: http://www.peaktech.de/productdetail/kategorie/dc-netzgeraete/produkt/p-6080.html

2. Replacement of the PDC-chrystal oscillator by a new clock, where we seem to have a very good solution as such, but we are lacking one piece of info...

3. measure planned is to implement better output buffering with one BUF634T per analog (cinch) output .

Cutting a long story short, our question:

What's the main clock frequency of the PDC-2.6p chrystal?
The marking on it is crypric and we dont have a counter high enough in frequency to measure the chrystal...:(

Please, if anyone has this piece of info, please let me know! You'll make two people extremely happy! :)

Thanks a lot in advance!
Winfried from Germany
 
Hi, regarding the clock frequency: it's 12.288 mHz.
However the deqx crystal seems to be a tcxo: tempature compensated.
I think fitting a better clock will therefore be a little bit less straight forward then, let's say, a cd player.
When you succeed however, I would love to hear it from you, since I still want to upgrade the clock in my deqx too.
Anyone replaced the opamps in the deqx for tube stages?
As an alternative to exotic opamp or transformer solutions?

Cheers
Another dutch guy :)
 
Henkus?
Henk neem ik aan.

well for others The DEQX is a real wonderful product. I did install the teh New DEXA clock and the difference depennds with yr source. The better ( jitterfree yr source is, the more the new clock shines :)

With a PC dedicated to music alone (JPlay) and the "best " USB/SPDIF converters ( Kenny MK3, Audiophilleo Pure Power,or the more expensive Off Ramp) the DEQX sounds unbelievable good transparent and musical IF you have modded the rest too ( power and outout caps) I compared it ( with no digital correction all flat) with the Metrum Octave and the first two weeks the DEQX won, than the metrum took over with a slight but discernable bigger 3D soundstage more air and micro details. The tone and fatness of the texture was equal, this on modded Jadis tube amps.
 
Hi,
I still have my DEQX pd 2.6 Will never part from it
I fully agree.
I have a spare one - just to be sure I won't have to be w/o it in case something weird happens...
Done some mods already (caps (BlackGateNX, Mundorf), opamp (LME49720) - both mods are not really convincing, though; might happen that there will by NX only and that the LME47920 have to go in favour of the OPA1642 now used in new DEQX).

NewClassD Neutron Star 0.5 ppm
30 MHz for the DSP?

Hi, regarding the clock frequency: it's 12.288 mHz.
This clock might be just for the A/D part... Would explain why there is no clock for the 44.1 frequencies...

Pls, let me add two other points:

Thomas has posted a picture of his psu/caps mod (scroll down to the the linear psu boards):
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.


The digital input chip (CS8414) is not know for good jitter handling. Putting one or even two chained Mutec MC-3+ in front of it betters SQ a lot. Feeding those re-clocker with almost noise-free 10 MHz gives another step of better SQ.

Ulli
Another guy from Germany
 
hi Ulli
the 12.28 Mhz clock is also for the DA part
replacing that sounds wonderful

What do you mean with Mutec MC-3+ is it a reclocker ? in front of the spdif in chip?

Have those green electrolytics a + and - side? And if not what kind of caps did they replace?
and where does the noisefree 10 mhz comes from? I did not see a 10 mhz clock on the deqx.
Henkus the Neutron star is also temp controlled
 
Last edited:
Folks,

clocking in the PDC is an interesting topic I'd like to understand better as well as invest into improvement on!

@ Kyrill
measurements at the DAC pins suggest that the PDC DACs seem to be clocked by the clocks derived from the incoming SPDIF or AES/EBU signal and not from the 12.288 MHz clock. Symptom being that the DAC Bitclock is always reflecting the input resolution. My initial thinking and hope was e.g. that the PDC would (always) do ist calculations in the 96 kHz Domain... Actual fact is, if the incoming SPDIF is 44.1 the DAC runs 44.1, if it's 88.2 the DACs run 88.2; hence the DSP engine also calculates with an according individual filterset!

Another symptom is the noticable dependence of the outgoing sound on the incoming SPDIF Signal Quality (i.e. jitter). I've noticed this dependence by the difference of influence the Mutec MC-3+ Reclocker has on signals from SatRadio (very high improvement) and the signals from my streamer (still a lot of improvement, but noticably less).

I am already using a 12.288 MHz Tent Clock with very low noise power sypply in the PDC, but was unable so far to verify ist (positive) effect on SPDIF signal sources...

Well, a Long Story short, I'd agree that the 12.288 MHz clock is (just) for the ADC (while a mod of that should clearly improve Sound of ADConverted analof signals!) and the PDC just uses a good ol' simple NOS DAC concept. Waht would be sooo bad about that? :rolleyes:

Therefore, a very nice mod. on the PDC would be replacement of the jitterey SPDIF Input device against a really low jitter part... yet, this looks hardly feasible due to lack of a compatible device?

Over long or short, I'll probably enhance the Mutec Reclocker in the SPDIF chain with a 10 MHz OCXO Masterclock, like Ulli is just testing :D, instead of doing the NeutronStar clock mod.

Winfried
Yet another guy from Germany
 
Hi kyrill,
the 12.28 Mhz clock is also for the DA part
replacing that sounds wonderful
=> DEXA is a 12.288.
Surprise ,-)
better SQ even with digital sources?...

What do you mean with Mutec MC-3+ is it a reclocker ? in front of the spdif in chip?
Yes.
digital_source --SPIDIF o. AES/EBU o. Toslink--> MC-3+ --SPIDIF o. AES/EBU-->DEQX
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.


and where does the noisefree 10 mhz comes from? I did not see a 10 mhz clock on the deqx.
10 MHz come from an external low noise oscillator connected to the respective MC-3+ input. Here a PoC setup in its very first stage ,-):
vv355dv5.png

LM7812 in the black box drives the oscillator, Mean Well 24V smps drives the oven. This was at the beginning of that nice journey - telling more here would be OT :cool:

You may find more here:
CA Mutec MC-3+
CA Reclocking

in case you can read German:
Mutec MC-3+ Smart Clock
Anwendungsbeispiel Rb-Clock an Mutec MC-3+

Fritz Fey: "My personal summary: this gizmo stays in my studio..."

Ulli

PS:
Have those green electrolytics a + and - side? And if not what kind of caps did they replace?
+/-? not sure... some bi-polar, as far as I remember...
replacing ordinary 100µ - same locaton as yours.
 
Hi Guys, good to see that this DEQX thread is maintained every now and then.

The 12MHZ neutron clock gave me significant SQ improvements but not without side effects: there seemed to appear a harshness in the mid-hi frequencies.
It is quite possible my loudspeakers were to blame, since then I've moved on to other designs(open baffle).

I had excellent resluts with the Dexa opamps, they are awesome.
Tried all opamps you could think of and the dexa beat them all.
Thet downside is, there are quite a few in the DEQX..

Unfortunately, shortly after doing the mods my DEQX died because the powersection on the board was blown, my own fault.
I've not been able to fix it and DEQX won't touch it because I modded the board.
I read a german thread somewhere with the same problem, but I can't find it again, maybe the're some answers for a fix.

Before the DEQX died I replaced the switching PSU for a linear one, but i didn't notice any real improvements.


I still have the clock for the DSP (30mhz?) lying around doing nothing ;-(

DEQX is still amazing, I might save up for a new one or try to get the old one fixed.

If any of you have read about the failing on board power section, I 'd love to hear it from you.

Cheers.
 
Is anyone here who modded older 2.6p unit? I am interested in changing opamps and caps to the PDC-2.6p HD / HDP-3 version.

I changed the IV filters after the DACs with a discreet build IV filters from LC Audio. Amazing change in the speakers details and even more micro dynamic.
But, i must admit it was very difficult to cut in the PCBs copper to disconnect it from its own IV filter. It was done by detaching the PCB and place it under a microscope.

I can take photos if you like?

I have changed all 3 IV filters, and have 3 individually linear PSU connected externally.

The next step is upgrading the 12.288MHz that i just receieved with the mil from NewClassD.

This should minimize jitter, and improve soundstage end depth perspective.
 
@ memo


Pictures of you IV mod. work would be very much appreciated to judge if this could be done by me ;)


Regarding the clock mod.: I have installed a Tent 12,288 MHz with a dedicated Supply Stabilization and Shunt Regulator. This has proven to be a substantial and well audible PDC AD converter improvement. BTW: The PDC internal clock does not clock the incoming digital signals (as far as I can tell): The PDC synchronizes on the incoming SPDIF/AES3 signal, so that has to be clean and therefore I am using a Mutec MC-3+ Reclocker for incoming digital signals which makes a nicely audible difference if the digital source signal is "originally not excellent".


Thanks for sharing your project!
Regards,
Winfried
 
Last edited:
Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.