Possible SMP upgrade
So I'm thinking that it's probably worth looking at Caps C103 & C104 (arrowed - both 180uF/16v) as a fairly easy starting point as these appear to form part of the final LC filtering of both the supply voltages. Looks like the cap diameter is 6mm. Might be tight to get an oscon in there. Any suggestions as to best High Freq cap for this space ?
So I'm thinking that it's probably worth looking at Caps C103 & C104 (arrowed - both 180uF/16v) as a fairly easy starting point as these appear to form part of the final LC filtering of both the supply voltages. Looks like the cap diameter is 6mm. Might be tight to get an oscon in there. Any suggestions as to best High Freq cap for this space ?
Attachments
I upgraded those caps and 2 more electrolytics, which have the same 16v rating. Unfortunately, I didn't hear much difference as compared to the stock caps. The biggest change I got was when I changed the diodes and the first big filter cap before the transformer. However, I'm thinking of changing those .048 400v caps that are in series with a resistor, right at the AC side. These form a filter right? What changes, if any, if I placed a higher value polypropelene cap, around .1uf in place of these? Will this help in improving the sound?
...no painting windows or building amps that's for sureBeware of black CDRs...
I'm a recent convert to the Playstation, so this is late. I found I was getting strange playback from black CDRs. The effects ranged from distortion (like a next-door neighbor with a ham transmitter or dying preamp tubes) to strong pulsing. The effect could be constant or intermittent but always disappeared when no song was playing. At first, I blamed it on the CD transport of the used unit -- actually 2 of them -- I'd bought. The weird part, though, was that commercial CDs played flawlessly. Then it occurred to me that about a year ago, I had begun to record on black CDRs. I'd heard those sounded better, and they did sound good and played fine on my old player -- a Marantz SA8260. So I just did an experiment. I took one of the offending CDRs and did a disk copy with Nero onto a standard silver CDR. Guess what, it plays perfectly. Who'da guessed it? What''s wrong with the Marantz? Not a dang thing. It's just that the Playstation does the "real live player in your room" trick just a little better (opinion subject to change). And for me, that's worth a lot.
I'm a recent convert to the Playstation, so this is late. I found I was getting strange playback from black CDRs. The effects ranged from distortion (like a next-door neighbor with a ham transmitter or dying preamp tubes) to strong pulsing. The effect could be constant or intermittent but always disappeared when no song was playing. At first, I blamed it on the CD transport of the used unit -- actually 2 of them -- I'd bought. The weird part, though, was that commercial CDs played flawlessly. Then it occurred to me that about a year ago, I had begun to record on black CDRs. I'd heard those sounded better, and they did sound good and played fine on my old player -- a Marantz SA8260. So I just did an experiment. I took one of the offending CDRs and did a disk copy with Nero onto a standard silver CDR. Guess what, it plays perfectly. Who'da guessed it? What''s wrong with the Marantz? Not a dang thing. It's just that the Playstation does the "real live player in your room" trick just a little better (opinion subject to change). And for me, that's worth a lot.
Hello, Mick. No I haven't used commercial black CDs; I assume you mean pre-recorded. In fact, many of my black burned CDRs play well. I was just having a strange playback problem with a few of them and traced it back to black. And I cannot say that those same CDRs might not play just fine on another PS1.
Re: improvements to existing SM PSU ?
Jives11,
Around post #876, I described some mods I did to the SMPS... replacing most of the caps with Rubycon ZL/ZA caps (going to the next size larger for most), replacing the initial filter cap with a Jensen 4-pole, replacing the initial diode bridge with high-speed 'stealth' diodes, replacing the input filter caps with a polyprop and adding polyprop filters across the diode bridge. Most of these parts I got from www.referenceaudiomods.com.
Sound is noticably improved... more dynamic and detailed, with deeper and stronger bass. The sweetness of the unit is retained, but only after a LOOONNNNGGGG breaking... 400 hours on or more. It was a bit etched and could be edgy with poorer recorded CDs at first.
Sound was also improved further by damping the caps with Dynamat (and a Herbie's Audio tube damper around the Jensen 4-pole).
One drawback for you is that with the Jensen, the SMPS doesn't fit under the lid anymore. OTOH, I found it to sound MUCH better without the lid... I endure the ugliness by not looking at it while I listen.
Well worth it if one isn't planning to do a linear or a battery supply... no, I haven't made one yet to compare, hope to this winter, but my experience with mods and building gear is biased towards linear supplies. OTOH, I'm pretty happy with the way my system sounds right now and all of my electronics use SMPSs... so go figure.
BTW, I'm using a modified Panasonic S47 DVD player as my CDP right now instead of the PS1... sufficiently sweet in my system compared to the PS1, but even moreso detailed, less veiled, and more dynamic with a slightly improved level of PRAT... it also has a modified SMPS, done by www.tweakaudio.com, with a few more tricks I intend to try on my PS1's supply someday.
Greg in Mississippi (usetabe Minneapolis)
jives11 said:
Jives11,
Around post #876, I described some mods I did to the SMPS... replacing most of the caps with Rubycon ZL/ZA caps (going to the next size larger for most), replacing the initial filter cap with a Jensen 4-pole, replacing the initial diode bridge with high-speed 'stealth' diodes, replacing the input filter caps with a polyprop and adding polyprop filters across the diode bridge. Most of these parts I got from www.referenceaudiomods.com.
Sound is noticably improved... more dynamic and detailed, with deeper and stronger bass. The sweetness of the unit is retained, but only after a LOOONNNNGGGG breaking... 400 hours on or more. It was a bit etched and could be edgy with poorer recorded CDs at first.
Sound was also improved further by damping the caps with Dynamat (and a Herbie's Audio tube damper around the Jensen 4-pole).
One drawback for you is that with the Jensen, the SMPS doesn't fit under the lid anymore. OTOH, I found it to sound MUCH better without the lid... I endure the ugliness by not looking at it while I listen.
Well worth it if one isn't planning to do a linear or a battery supply... no, I haven't made one yet to compare, hope to this winter, but my experience with mods and building gear is biased towards linear supplies. OTOH, I'm pretty happy with the way my system sounds right now and all of my electronics use SMPSs... so go figure.
BTW, I'm using a modified Panasonic S47 DVD player as my CDP right now instead of the PS1... sufficiently sweet in my system compared to the PS1, but even moreso detailed, less veiled, and more dynamic with a slightly improved level of PRAT... it also has a modified SMPS, done by www.tweakaudio.com, with a few more tricks I intend to try on my PS1's supply someday.
Greg in Mississippi (usetabe Minneapolis)
Re: Re: improvements to existing SM PSU ?
Thanks Greg. I think I might get a couple of ZA's and replace the final filters in the LC network (C103, C104). forgive me, but I'm a bit sceptical that replacing the diodes in the bridge would have any effect, isn't any noise from these utterly swamped by the noise from the chopper circuit? The 2 large diodes to the right of the Transformer look harder to replace, though they might be worth it ? Maybe also the big smoothing caps (C101, C102)
Greg Stewart said:
Thanks Greg. I think I might get a couple of ZA's and replace the final filters in the LC network (C103, C104). forgive me, but I'm a bit sceptical that replacing the diodes in the bridge would have any effect, isn't any noise from these utterly swamped by the noise from the chopper circuit? The 2 large diodes to the right of the Transformer look harder to replace, though they might be worth it ? Maybe also the big smoothing caps (C101, C102)
Re: Re: Re: improvements to existing SM PSU ?
Jives11,
I'm basing my choices on what several of the professional modifiers do (www.referenceaudiomods.com and www.tweakaudio.com, among others). They all pretty consistently replace that first set of diodes along with just about every other cap in the SMPS.
And given the cost of those Rubycon ZA/ZLs, it was an easy enough decision for me to do them all.
I didn't do the 2 large diodes because I wasn't sure of an equivalent high-speed/soft-recovery version.
The only thing you'll need to decide is what to use for the larger smoothing cap... there was no ZA/ZL equivalent, so it was that expensive and large Jensen 4-pole or an equally expensive Black Gate... and I see the modder's going more to the Jensen for that position.
Finally, I did two SMPSs... and they were different types... and they sounded slightly different before I mod'd them and continued to do so afterwards, with the one I preferred beforehand being the one I preferred afterwards.
Greg in Mississippi (usetabe Minneapolis)
jives11 said:
Jives11,
I'm basing my choices on what several of the professional modifiers do (www.referenceaudiomods.com and www.tweakaudio.com, among others). They all pretty consistently replace that first set of diodes along with just about every other cap in the SMPS.
And given the cost of those Rubycon ZA/ZLs, it was an easy enough decision for me to do them all.
I didn't do the 2 large diodes because I wasn't sure of an equivalent high-speed/soft-recovery version.
The only thing you'll need to decide is what to use for the larger smoothing cap... there was no ZA/ZL equivalent, so it was that expensive and large Jensen 4-pole or an equally expensive Black Gate... and I see the modder's going more to the Jensen for that position.
Finally, I did two SMPSs... and they were different types... and they sounded slightly different before I mod'd them and continued to do so afterwards, with the one I preferred beforehand being the one I preferred afterwards.
Greg in Mississippi (usetabe Minneapolis)
Listening to PS1 with cover off or cover on ?
Jives11. I thought I might have been imagining things, but I felt that the sound was better with cover off.
There have been a lot of things written over the years about stray laser light and how this may affect sound quality (you know, the green pen to colour the edges of CD's, Statmats etc)
I wondered if as a result of the lid being off, whether this meant that any stray light was not bounced around the lid ? Anyone have any thoughts ?
Jives11. I thought I might have been imagining things, but I felt that the sound was better with cover off.
There have been a lot of things written over the years about stray laser light and how this may affect sound quality (you know, the green pen to colour the edges of CD's, Statmats etc)
I wondered if as a result of the lid being off, whether this meant that any stray light was not bounced around the lid ? Anyone have any thoughts ?
Puffin said:
Well, I'm more inclined to think that heat dissipation is the cause. I'm highly dubious of the audio benefits many of the green pen/blue diode/absorbing paint tweaks . I AM impressed by black paint/blue diodes for aethetic reasons - i.e it looks good - no trouble with that , and some great examples in this thread
BUT I do know that the PS1 will get very warm AND taking the lid off will undoubtedly allow the metal frame over the DAC to dissipate heat better, also the SMP. The PS motherboard is closer to a PC motherboard than a conventional CD player. I run speedfan software on several PC's in my home datacenter and know how quickly the CPU temperature rises (i.e 20 degrees -> 50 degrees in 10 seconds - doubt my kettle can achieve that)....
So , I think you maybe on to something, but I think it's in the invisible spectrum rather than the visble
Puffin said:
I'm inclined to attribute the removal of the upper cover and the lid mechanism as sources of resonant materials as the main cause. I've done a good bit of damping on my PS1s and that has produced a significant improvement too.
I don't like having the CD out in the open where stray light can be picked up by the read mech... I'd like to fab an upper/lower case set machined out of blocks of wood (maple, likely) with a manually removable CD cover. That's a someday project for me, tho.
I'm not sure what heat buildup would do to the sound... I'd expect it to stabilize at some temperature and work ok at that temp. There may be something else going on that causes the temp to make a difference. But my experience points more to the removal of the resonant materials.
I have had good experiences with CD edge treatments, BTW
Greg in Mississippi (usetabe Minneapolis)
Hi
So far all the PS1 1002s I have
adjusted have been cooperative
all except one! This early unit seemed to have
something wrong with its gain control
trimmer. Do no seem to be able to get
it past 1.75v at best. On one extensive repair
site I came across it had a suggestion for fixing
the bias and gain permanently. I enclose a
picture from Mike_F"s excellent site and
from the other site showing resistors and
values being suggested. I only do this
so we know what we are talking about.
Anyone else had the trimmer blues?
Other site seems to be showing different part
of the motherboard near the crystal not
where the trimmers are! Maybe its not even a
1002 board at all!
regards
AnthonyPT
http://bearykirby.com/tech/ps1.htm (site where resistors suggested)
http://dogbreath.de/PS1/LaserAlignment/Laser.html
Mike_F's excellent site we all know!
So far all the PS1 1002s I have
adjusted have been cooperative
all except one! This early unit seemed to have
something wrong with its gain control
trimmer. Do no seem to be able to get
it past 1.75v at best. On one extensive repair
site I came across it had a suggestion for fixing
the bias and gain permanently. I enclose a
picture from Mike_F"s excellent site and
from the other site showing resistors and
values being suggested. I only do this
so we know what we are talking about.
Anyone else had the trimmer blues?
Other site seems to be showing different part
of the motherboard near the crystal not
where the trimmers are! Maybe its not even a
1002 board at all!
regards
AnthonyPT
http://bearykirby.com/tech/ps1.htm (site where resistors suggested)
http://dogbreath.de/PS1/LaserAlignment/Laser.html
Mike_F's excellent site we all know!
Attachments
sho3773 said:Hey folks,
ok i have finished the modding of the outputstage, i did everything after the instruction given on Mikes Homepage, but now the is no Sound coming out from the right -red- Output.
What can i do to find the mistake,
besides resoldering the solderpoints?
Help requested!
Did you follow Step 4) where you break the traces twice on the lower side of the board and once on the upper. I had the same problem where I had one channel but not the other. There is a shorting circuit in the PSone when you insert the TV modulator which sums the stereo outputs through one channel only to downmix stereo to mono for the TV output. Breaking the traces also disables this circuit.
Hello everyone,
I have just acquired my sons used Playstation model #1001. I would like to use this unit as a stand alone CD played in my two channel audio system. I searched through the various threads here trying to find modes for this unit. Can anyone tell me if there is one site/place where all the recommended modes are listed with good direction? I have done some kit building etc… and I do know how to use a soldering iron. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Johnny
I have just acquired my sons used Playstation model #1001. I would like to use this unit as a stand alone CD played in my two channel audio system. I searched through the various threads here trying to find modes for this unit. Can anyone tell me if there is one site/place where all the recommended modes are listed with good direction? I have done some kit building etc… and I do know how to use a soldering iron. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Johnny