A few questions i have are:
Has anyone had any experience leaving the power on all day/night.? I have been and no trouble as yet, but do not want to wreck all my hard work. I am looking for a third party standby device or a why to create a standby mode?
Has anyone a location for purchasing 40mm grommets or rubber buttons?. i am struggling.
I have read a bit about attaching ballast/weight to the transport does this have good results?
Thanks for your time.
Has anyone had any experience leaving the power on all day/night.? I have been and no trouble as yet, but do not want to wreck all my hard work. I am looking for a third party standby device or a why to create a standby mode?
Has anyone a location for purchasing 40mm grommets or rubber buttons?. i am struggling.
I have read a bit about attaching ballast/weight to the transport does this have good results?
Thanks for your time.
Comedy multiple posting...
It was my '£500 Marantz Universal Player' we tested against. It was actually a Marantz DV6200, which was £500 when it was released around 4 or 5 years ago. According to the reviews I read it was also a good cd playback machine.....(just to clear that up before you all start asking about the current Marantz range of universal players)
Anyway, we tested them side by side using the same cable and they were very similar in quality. Like bungy said there were differences, well one main difference, in that the treble sounded brighter/clearer/more forward on the PS1. The problem is we are not experienced listeners so we really couldn't tell if this was an improvement or not!
It's worth mentioning that this was just using the analogue cables. When the DV6200 was played through a Coax into my Marantz SR5300 there did seem to be a noticable improvement over the PS1 (on one particular KT Tunstall track at least, can't remember which one). This is more of a reflection of the quality of DAC in the Sr5300 though.
I'm just bloody glad it wasn't noticably better so I don't have to build one. Although it does pave the way for a CDPRO-M (?) project somewhen!
It was my '£500 Marantz Universal Player' we tested against. It was actually a Marantz DV6200, which was £500 when it was released around 4 or 5 years ago. According to the reviews I read it was also a good cd playback machine.....(just to clear that up before you all start asking about the current Marantz range of universal players)
Anyway, we tested them side by side using the same cable and they were very similar in quality. Like bungy said there were differences, well one main difference, in that the treble sounded brighter/clearer/more forward on the PS1. The problem is we are not experienced listeners so we really couldn't tell if this was an improvement or not!
It's worth mentioning that this was just using the analogue cables. When the DV6200 was played through a Coax into my Marantz SR5300 there did seem to be a noticable improvement over the PS1 (on one particular KT Tunstall track at least, can't remember which one). This is more of a reflection of the quality of DAC in the Sr5300 though.
I'm just bloody glad it wasn't noticably better so I don't have to build one. Although it does pave the way for a CDPRO-M (?) project somewhen!
Mick F...
Thanks for the reminder... I too need to say 'Thanks!' for your website. It is one of the most clear and concise sites detailing mods to audio gear I've ever seen.
And with that in mind, I have a question for you... what type of sonic differences did you hear when you outboarded the power supply? Just deciding if it's worth it for a quick improvement or should I just go the whole hog and do a linear PS now.
TIA!
Greg in Minneapolis
P.S. I have to say that mine opened up a LOT when I started playing it with the case top off... to my ear it was a different beast then. More dynamic, better deliniation of fine details, better PRAT. If you haven't tried it this way, at least pop it off and give it a listen.
Thanks for the reminder... I too need to say 'Thanks!' for your website. It is one of the most clear and concise sites detailing mods to audio gear I've ever seen.
And with that in mind, I have a question for you... what type of sonic differences did you hear when you outboarded the power supply? Just deciding if it's worth it for a quick improvement or should I just go the whole hog and do a linear PS now.
TIA!
Greg in Minneapolis
P.S. I have to say that mine opened up a LOT when I started playing it with the case top off... to my ear it was a different beast then. More dynamic, better deliniation of fine details, better PRAT. If you haven't tried it this way, at least pop it off and give it a listen.
Re: Re: DAC Offset Voltage... Oh, and SMPS mods too!
Thomas,
I have seen people mod SMPS's for sonic improvements. The example I am most familiar with is the Panasonic S-47 DVD player that I had modified by www.tweakaudio.com. He did all of the things I mentioned... soft-recovery diodes and upgraded caps. I've seen similar mods mentioned by several other companies that modify recent CD/DVD players.
Even though SMPSs have to have pretty good parts to begin with, I assume that better parts produce better sound even in them.
If I do spend the time to play with that, I will definitely report on my findings here.
Greg in Minneapolis
thokra2003 said:
This is a SMPS. Thus the measures won´t work as suspected. For example have a look at the low voltage diodes
Whatkindofdoyathink they are ?
Best,
Thomas
Thomas,
I have seen people mod SMPS's for sonic improvements. The example I am most familiar with is the Panasonic S-47 DVD player that I had modified by www.tweakaudio.com. He did all of the things I mentioned... soft-recovery diodes and upgraded caps. I've seen similar mods mentioned by several other companies that modify recent CD/DVD players.
Even though SMPSs have to have pretty good parts to begin with, I assume that better parts produce better sound even in them.
If I do spend the time to play with that, I will definitely report on my findings here.
Greg in Minneapolis
Greg Stewart said:
Greg, I must confess, I dont remember in detail what kind of improvement outboarding of the PSU brings. It is more than a year ago that I did it. I just kept in mind that it sounded better afterwards and the improvements were clearly audible.
There are some obvious additional arguments to do this mod anyway. In particular at the end of a CD, the laser is very close to the SMPS in the stock version. This will surely induce some problems with heat and stray signals. (That's why Sony introduced the rotated laser unit in later models).
Thanks for the tip of removing the cover. I will try it out soon. Of course I have frequently ran the PS1 open during testing but I never listened carefully and consciously to the differences in sound.
Mick
Weekend Labors
I spent some quality time dinking with my PS-1's this weekend... With some triumphs and some disappointments.
The worse of the disappoints came when I started to bypass the output stage on the best-sounding of my mainboards. I have three units, one a bit newer than the others and to my ear, it sounds a bit better too. As I've been modifying the units, I always do the mods to one of the other units first... my 'tester' unit... And if I like the effect there, then I do the same to my 'primo' unit.
I did a quick & dirty output stage bypass on my 'tester' unit and of course, liked the improvements... A little more transparent with slightly lowered digital hash. All I did was pull out the three pairs of coupling caps and reuse one pair at the output of the DAC with a jumper to the pads going to the output jacks... I know there's more to be bypassed, but I wanted to do something I could easily undo. I also lifted the muting resistors at the same time.
When I went to do my 'primo' unit, I immediately had problems getting the caps off... I started with the pair going to the output jacks... They didn't move as easily as the ones on my 'tester' unit, so I applied heat a little longer and pried a bit... And one of the pads came loose! Bummer.... But I could work around it by connecting to the pad at the chip resistor next in line.
But all the rest of the caps were also harder to remove on this unit... And four more pads came up, including one at the output of the DAC!
I can see on this board that the surface-mount components appeared to be glued to the board in addition to being soldered. Whether it was intentional or just the result of hardened flux, it's a lot harder to remove components on this board.
So I put it aside... I'll strategize how to reconnect the output via the remaining trace and the DAC output legs... But I'm gonna be VERY careful when I do that. I'll also probably go to a new set of output jacks when I do this... I expect the muting transistors will be as hard to lift on this mainboard, so it makes sense just to creatively ignore them and go off the board entirely from the output of the DAC.
My second disappointment was in remoting the power supply. All I did here was to lengthen the cable (I used Mogami 2534 mike cable I had sitting around), pop out the supply, and lay it on the floor. I did try the cable first with the supply still mounted on the unit... It seemed a bit less dynamic and less 'coherent'... Sounds didn't come together as instruments or voices as well. Pulling the PS out and making it remote didn't help either... To me it's pointing to my cabling. Mick and others... What did you use for cable when you remoted the PS?
On the triumph side, damping the case bottom, metal shields, selective areas of the laser unit, and the three components on the board that look like crystals did provide greater deliniation of details and a bit more solid bass. Interestingly enough, the improvements were not as dramatic as when I've done damping to regular drawer-loading CD/DVD players... As I expected, since the PS-1 is so much more 'solid' to begin with than those types of unit.
Also, inspired by Mick's installation of the remote receiver in the controller slot, I disassembled the controller connector board from the connectors and hard-wired the board from my remote recever onto the board... I even cut off the unused side to eliminate a bit more potentially-vibrating material (Had to put in some wire jumpers to replace some connections to the flex cable connector that went through that side of the board).
This also increased the deliniation of details and lowered the digital hash... But at the expense of moving the frequency balance from slightly on the dark-side of neutral to slightly on the bright-side of neutral. I suspect removal of the shielding around the controller connectors caused this... I'll fab up a piece of metal I can bolt in over the remote receiver and remains of the controller connector boards to see what effect that has.
All in all a worthy effort... But I'll have to carefully recover my 'primo' unit when I tackle that again. Definitly fun and rewarding, though!
Greg in Minneapolis
P.S. Here's the serial numbers/part numbers of the two units I mention above:
Tester unit:
Serial #: U7058439
Mainboard: 1-658-467-22 PU-8
PSU: 1-473-381-13 / SR670
Primo unit:
Serial #: U8449907
Mainboard: 1-658-467-23
PSU: 1-473-380-12 / EAMX5
One thing I'll try today is to swap the PSU's and see if I have a preference for one over the other.
I spent some quality time dinking with my PS-1's this weekend... With some triumphs and some disappointments.
The worse of the disappoints came when I started to bypass the output stage on the best-sounding of my mainboards. I have three units, one a bit newer than the others and to my ear, it sounds a bit better too. As I've been modifying the units, I always do the mods to one of the other units first... my 'tester' unit... And if I like the effect there, then I do the same to my 'primo' unit.
I did a quick & dirty output stage bypass on my 'tester' unit and of course, liked the improvements... A little more transparent with slightly lowered digital hash. All I did was pull out the three pairs of coupling caps and reuse one pair at the output of the DAC with a jumper to the pads going to the output jacks... I know there's more to be bypassed, but I wanted to do something I could easily undo. I also lifted the muting resistors at the same time.
When I went to do my 'primo' unit, I immediately had problems getting the caps off... I started with the pair going to the output jacks... They didn't move as easily as the ones on my 'tester' unit, so I applied heat a little longer and pried a bit... And one of the pads came loose! Bummer.... But I could work around it by connecting to the pad at the chip resistor next in line.
But all the rest of the caps were also harder to remove on this unit... And four more pads came up, including one at the output of the DAC!
I can see on this board that the surface-mount components appeared to be glued to the board in addition to being soldered. Whether it was intentional or just the result of hardened flux, it's a lot harder to remove components on this board.
So I put it aside... I'll strategize how to reconnect the output via the remaining trace and the DAC output legs... But I'm gonna be VERY careful when I do that. I'll also probably go to a new set of output jacks when I do this... I expect the muting transistors will be as hard to lift on this mainboard, so it makes sense just to creatively ignore them and go off the board entirely from the output of the DAC.
My second disappointment was in remoting the power supply. All I did here was to lengthen the cable (I used Mogami 2534 mike cable I had sitting around), pop out the supply, and lay it on the floor. I did try the cable first with the supply still mounted on the unit... It seemed a bit less dynamic and less 'coherent'... Sounds didn't come together as instruments or voices as well. Pulling the PS out and making it remote didn't help either... To me it's pointing to my cabling. Mick and others... What did you use for cable when you remoted the PS?
On the triumph side, damping the case bottom, metal shields, selective areas of the laser unit, and the three components on the board that look like crystals did provide greater deliniation of details and a bit more solid bass. Interestingly enough, the improvements were not as dramatic as when I've done damping to regular drawer-loading CD/DVD players... As I expected, since the PS-1 is so much more 'solid' to begin with than those types of unit.
Also, inspired by Mick's installation of the remote receiver in the controller slot, I disassembled the controller connector board from the connectors and hard-wired the board from my remote recever onto the board... I even cut off the unused side to eliminate a bit more potentially-vibrating material (Had to put in some wire jumpers to replace some connections to the flex cable connector that went through that side of the board).
This also increased the deliniation of details and lowered the digital hash... But at the expense of moving the frequency balance from slightly on the dark-side of neutral to slightly on the bright-side of neutral. I suspect removal of the shielding around the controller connectors caused this... I'll fab up a piece of metal I can bolt in over the remote receiver and remains of the controller connector boards to see what effect that has.
All in all a worthy effort... But I'll have to carefully recover my 'primo' unit when I tackle that again. Definitly fun and rewarding, though!
Greg in Minneapolis
P.S. Here's the serial numbers/part numbers of the two units I mention above:
Tester unit:
Serial #: U7058439
Mainboard: 1-658-467-22 PU-8
PSU: 1-473-381-13 / SR670
Primo unit:
Serial #: U8449907
Mainboard: 1-658-467-23
PSU: 1-473-380-12 / EAMX5
One thing I'll try today is to swap the PSU's and see if I have a preference for one over the other.
Wow, what a long and detailed post. Seems that you have gained quite some insight from all this.
I was not aware that the additionally glue the SMD components. Strange, this is an additional step in the production, the sense of which is not clear to me. But maybe it really was just some solidified solder flux. Hope you will still be able to fix the unit. I think, soldering wires directly to the pins of the DAC is difficult but not impossible. The wires of the cheating chips are also often soldered to the pins.
As for your questions. For my first outboarded SMPS I used an ordinary unshielded 12 wire cable. Later I used a seven wire cable of the same sort. The leads are something like 0.75 mm2. I have also a 5 wire shielded cable (shield grounded at the PSU case) but I could hear no sonic difference.
A comment to the shielding of the controller unit: I left the shield in place. I have stuffed the cables under it and the shield bends a bit but its still there. The cables come out at the side.
I will also try your (and Jives') internal damping options. Please dont forget to try external damping with a low resonance frequency. That changed A LOT in my case.
Mick
I was not aware that the additionally glue the SMD components. Strange, this is an additional step in the production, the sense of which is not clear to me. But maybe it really was just some solidified solder flux. Hope you will still be able to fix the unit. I think, soldering wires directly to the pins of the DAC is difficult but not impossible. The wires of the cheating chips are also often soldered to the pins.
As for your questions. For my first outboarded SMPS I used an ordinary unshielded 12 wire cable. Later I used a seven wire cable of the same sort. The leads are something like 0.75 mm2. I have also a 5 wire shielded cable (shield grounded at the PSU case) but I could hear no sonic difference.
A comment to the shielding of the controller unit: I left the shield in place. I have stuffed the cables under it and the shield bends a bit but its still there. The cables come out at the side.
I will also try your (and Jives') internal damping options. Please dont forget to try external damping with a low resonance frequency. That changed A LOT in my case.
Mick
Mick,
Thanks for the info on the cable you used. I'm going to look around and see what else I have or can easily get... and I'll try pulling it out again and make sure of what I thought I heard. At this point though, I don't plan to spend tons of time with this... I still want to try a serious linear PS.
Also thanks for the words of encouragement on repairing my 'primo' unit. I've soldered stuff this small before... always a pain, but do-able. What is going to be challenging is providing a good strain-relief. I'm thinking I'll glue a bit of the wires onto the board near the DAC where the coupling caps were removed... not an ideal solution sonically, but better than having the wires move and potentially damage the DAC.
I have seen other surface-mount boards where the components were glued to the board... I don't see it as much anymore, but that was common earlier in SM boards. But normally, the soldering iron heat loosens things enough to avoid board damage.
Also, I'll play around with damping more to see what I can achieve. Currently, I have the unit on Navcom pucks... I tried Herbie's dampers in place of the Navcom and I was very surprised, this was the first unit I preferred the Navcom ones to Herbie's. Then it is on a nothing-special birch-plywood shelf that' sitting on a maple stand that spiked to the floor. Except for the shelf, I've had great luck with this combo for other gear. In most cases, I dispense with a shelf altogether... but the stands I have aren't sized for this unit, so I'll either hhave to make one to fit or do a better shelf... my turntable's on a Sicomin carbon-fiber sandwich shelf from France and that works well, but I don't think they are available anymore.
I did make a quick & dirty shield with some metal out of my scrap box... it did make a difference and the tonal balance is back towards neutral... maybe just a hair to the bright side, but nothing objectionable. I'll try to pickup another piece of metal today... the one I just made is so ugly it hurts!
I'm also playing with swapping the PSU's as I mentioned... so far, I slightly prefer the SR670 board... but with my Primo mainboard, I remember slightly preferring the EAMX5. I'll listen to them back and forth over the next couple of days to get a baseline on this.
Greg in Minneapolis
Thanks for the info on the cable you used. I'm going to look around and see what else I have or can easily get... and I'll try pulling it out again and make sure of what I thought I heard. At this point though, I don't plan to spend tons of time with this... I still want to try a serious linear PS.
Also thanks for the words of encouragement on repairing my 'primo' unit. I've soldered stuff this small before... always a pain, but do-able. What is going to be challenging is providing a good strain-relief. I'm thinking I'll glue a bit of the wires onto the board near the DAC where the coupling caps were removed... not an ideal solution sonically, but better than having the wires move and potentially damage the DAC.
I have seen other surface-mount boards where the components were glued to the board... I don't see it as much anymore, but that was common earlier in SM boards. But normally, the soldering iron heat loosens things enough to avoid board damage.
Also, I'll play around with damping more to see what I can achieve. Currently, I have the unit on Navcom pucks... I tried Herbie's dampers in place of the Navcom and I was very surprised, this was the first unit I preferred the Navcom ones to Herbie's. Then it is on a nothing-special birch-plywood shelf that' sitting on a maple stand that spiked to the floor. Except for the shelf, I've had great luck with this combo for other gear. In most cases, I dispense with a shelf altogether... but the stands I have aren't sized for this unit, so I'll either hhave to make one to fit or do a better shelf... my turntable's on a Sicomin carbon-fiber sandwich shelf from France and that works well, but I don't think they are available anymore.
I did make a quick & dirty shield with some metal out of my scrap box... it did make a difference and the tonal balance is back towards neutral... maybe just a hair to the bright side, but nothing objectionable. I'll try to pickup another piece of metal today... the one I just made is so ugly it hurts!
I'm also playing with swapping the PSU's as I mentioned... so far, I slightly prefer the SR670 board... but with my Primo mainboard, I remember slightly preferring the EAMX5. I'll listen to them back and forth over the next couple of days to get a baseline on this.
Greg in Minneapolis
Thinking about it, which I didn't do last night, not much.
I guess I were thinking that the PSU gets quite hot, that it's quite undersized. I guess I were thinking type paralleling batteries. But considering none of the much smarter people here has mentioned it in 66 pages, it seems it was indeed an ignorant question.
I guess I were thinking that the PSU gets quite hot, that it's quite undersized. I guess I were thinking type paralleling batteries. But considering none of the much smarter people here has mentioned it in 66 pages, it seems it was indeed an ignorant question.
Well... good thought. I suspect with many things like that, in a thread this long, if it was a good idea, someone would have suggested it already.
BTW, there are only a limited set of cases where you can safely parallel power supplies... and the same goes with batteries!
Take care!
Greg in Minneapolis
BTW, there are only a limited set of cases where you can safely parallel power supplies... and the same goes with batteries!
Take care!
Greg in Minneapolis
A few days on...
It's been a couple of days since I bypassed the output stage in my 'tester' PS-1 and pulled a few solder pads off my 'primo' unit, sidelining it until I could affect a repair.
I've listened to the 'tester' at length... While it still doesn't have the 'toe-tapping bounciness' of my 'primo', it has been very listenable and a bit addictive as it has warmed up and broken in a bit. Through this, I've been trying to get a grip on what's special about the PS-1's compared to my other CDPs... A www.tweakaudio.com - modified Panasonic S47 and a well-damped Njoe-Tjoeb w/upsampler.
I'd say the main quality that sets the PS-1's apart is a sense of 'transparency'. Top to bottom in the spectrum, I hear subtle details that are not clear or missing on the others... And they are presented in a 'blackness of background' that lets me hear them as an 'organic' part of each performer or instrument's sound. The details aren't being pushed at me... They are just 'there' as I'd expect to hear them at a live event. And I'm hearing things I haven't heard before... Instruments previously lost in the mix, reverberant tails into the quiet, things like that.
A complementary quality that I alluded to above is a 'coherency' and 'focus' to the sounds... Each instrument or performer is presented without being tangled up with the others. I can more easily pick out and follow the musical line of any of the instruments or performers in a piece... While at the same time, the presentation is of a musical whole, not just separate instruments and performers. One interesting effect of this and the greater transparency is being able to clearly hear segments where instruments/performers were doubled or tripled up in the mix, but sounded like a single instrument/performer before.
Dynamics are well delinated too... Not only gross loudness or quiet, but subtle changes in level like places where you can hear the performers purposefully getting just 'so much louder' to emphasize a line just-so or allow themselve room to get even LOUDER!.
All of this shows up well when it's played loudly, but I'm able to hear things so much more clearly that I can listen at a lower level than before and not feel I'm losing the musical experience.
CD's that were merely 'good' before are now 'audiophile-quality'... and the very good ones become astounding. But the bad ones are still at least listenable.
Finally, the PS-1's seem to be very even-handled across the frequency specrum... The above qualities are audible across the frequency spectrum... I hear greater transparency in the highs... And in the highs.
And what I find so rewarding is that there are so many more things that I can do to the little beasts... Better coupling caps, real output jacks, more comprehensive vibration control, part-treatments (TRT Musicoat), SMPS upgrades or replacement with linears, AC power filtering, and more. It can even get better!
Everyone who did the groundwork for all of this, THANKS! Your comments in this thread sharing the results of your work, your links to various resources, your own pictures and websites (MICK!), have all made this an extremely painless and very rewarding experiment!
Greg in Minneapolis
It's been a couple of days since I bypassed the output stage in my 'tester' PS-1 and pulled a few solder pads off my 'primo' unit, sidelining it until I could affect a repair.
I've listened to the 'tester' at length... While it still doesn't have the 'toe-tapping bounciness' of my 'primo', it has been very listenable and a bit addictive as it has warmed up and broken in a bit. Through this, I've been trying to get a grip on what's special about the PS-1's compared to my other CDPs... A www.tweakaudio.com - modified Panasonic S47 and a well-damped Njoe-Tjoeb w/upsampler.
I'd say the main quality that sets the PS-1's apart is a sense of 'transparency'. Top to bottom in the spectrum, I hear subtle details that are not clear or missing on the others... And they are presented in a 'blackness of background' that lets me hear them as an 'organic' part of each performer or instrument's sound. The details aren't being pushed at me... They are just 'there' as I'd expect to hear them at a live event. And I'm hearing things I haven't heard before... Instruments previously lost in the mix, reverberant tails into the quiet, things like that.
A complementary quality that I alluded to above is a 'coherency' and 'focus' to the sounds... Each instrument or performer is presented without being tangled up with the others. I can more easily pick out and follow the musical line of any of the instruments or performers in a piece... While at the same time, the presentation is of a musical whole, not just separate instruments and performers. One interesting effect of this and the greater transparency is being able to clearly hear segments where instruments/performers were doubled or tripled up in the mix, but sounded like a single instrument/performer before.
Dynamics are well delinated too... Not only gross loudness or quiet, but subtle changes in level like places where you can hear the performers purposefully getting just 'so much louder' to emphasize a line just-so or allow themselve room to get even LOUDER!.
All of this shows up well when it's played loudly, but I'm able to hear things so much more clearly that I can listen at a lower level than before and not feel I'm losing the musical experience.
CD's that were merely 'good' before are now 'audiophile-quality'... and the very good ones become astounding. But the bad ones are still at least listenable.
Finally, the PS-1's seem to be very even-handled across the frequency specrum... The above qualities are audible across the frequency spectrum... I hear greater transparency in the highs... And in the highs.
And what I find so rewarding is that there are so many more things that I can do to the little beasts... Better coupling caps, real output jacks, more comprehensive vibration control, part-treatments (TRT Musicoat), SMPS upgrades or replacement with linears, AC power filtering, and more. It can even get better!
Everyone who did the groundwork for all of this, THANKS! Your comments in this thread sharing the results of your work, your links to various resources, your own pictures and websites (MICK!), have all made this an extremely painless and very rewarding experiment!
Greg in Minneapolis
Re: A few days on...
Hi Greg, pleased you are finding this so useful. I have ceased modifying my player for the moment. I decided to keep the original box (I like the novelty) and original SMPS inside. One area that does hold a fascination for me are the tiny caps that remain close to the DAC.
see http://feuerbacher.net/DogBreath/PS1/output/OutputBoardTop.jpg
One is above the DAC, the other below is Micks wonderdful photo
Almost impossible to replace, except that surface mounts OSCONS exist. I figure one of the two tiny cans near the DAC decouples the whole thing (plus a few ceramics). Now I'm not sure my soldering is up to removing the existing cap and replacing it with an similar sized oscon SMD but it would seem a possible tweak for the brave hearted
Greg Stewart said:
Hi Greg, pleased you are finding this so useful. I have ceased modifying my player for the moment. I decided to keep the original box (I like the novelty) and original SMPS inside. One area that does hold a fascination for me are the tiny caps that remain close to the DAC.
see http://feuerbacher.net/DogBreath/PS1/output/OutputBoardTop.jpg
One is above the DAC, the other below is Micks wonderdful photo
Almost impossible to replace, except that surface mounts OSCONS exist. I figure one of the two tiny cans near the DAC decouples the whole thing (plus a few ceramics). Now I'm not sure my soldering is up to removing the existing cap and replacing it with an similar sized oscon SMD but it would seem a possible tweak for the brave hearted
Hi at all,
@Greg
i can confirm all that you wrote about sounding of the PS. If you have a subwoofer there is also a deep and verry clean Bass without any contorsions.
All in one there is a sound like an analog player. This is it what i prefere.
On my homepage you can see some pictures of my modifications and new housing.
http://www.highend-info.de
Regards Dommi
@Greg
i can confirm all that you wrote about sounding of the PS. If you have a subwoofer there is also a deep and verry clean Bass without any contorsions.
All in one there is a sound like an analog player. This is it what i prefere.
On my homepage you can see some pictures of my modifications and new housing.
http://www.highend-info.de
Regards Dommi
If the blue LED isn't doing anything for the sound, then it does for the look!
There could be a possibility that blue LEDs really work, but I really doubt of that :
People tell that a copied pressed CD sounds better on CD-Rs. Well, a good part of the CD-Rs(Especially the Taiyo Yuden which are known to be really good) have a cyan layer under them. Could the blue LED be used to "copy" that cyan layer under the disc???
There could be a possibility that blue LEDs really work, but I really doubt of that :
People tell that a copied pressed CD sounds better on CD-Rs. Well, a good part of the CD-Rs(Especially the Taiyo Yuden which are known to be really good) have a cyan layer under them. Could the blue LED be used to "copy" that cyan layer under the disc???