There are some powerful wall warts out there. It could be a transformer block, which in fact is a wall wart with a wire on the mains side too.
Not from what I hear. The unamplified A/V multi out sounds better than the RCA jacks and have the same gain. There is humming in the RCA jacks that is not there with AV OUT and there's less feedback(?) / bass more detailed. There's as much noise tho.
Ain't the goal of using a PSX is to use it's internal DAC? A standard CDP would be a better choice if this was not the only reason to use it as CDP : It's a pain to control, modify, and it skips to nothing.
You just need an I2S to SPDIF converter. The I2S signal can be partially found on the parallel port and all of them can be found on the DAC.
An other thing to try would be to remove the muting transistors.
DragonMaster said:
So maybe I need to get me one of these ?
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Playstation-P...236688592QQcategoryZ38615QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
(not a plug for this ebay seller, just using it as an example)
It would seem to provide RCA sockets but based on the AV circuit path ? (assuming there are no caps in the adaptor !)
why don`t you solder a pair of good rca`s
it is better than the adaptor
http://www.hardwarebook.net/connector/av/playstationav.html
it is better than the adaptor
http://www.hardwarebook.net/connector/av/playstationav.html
Attachments
PS as DAC
I think the challenge would be the other way round: To use the PS as a DAC. Because the only thing that's excellent in the 100x is the DAC. The drive is really substandard - if I found a drive like this in a CD Player I spent money for I would reach for the axe...
I'm using the 1002 as a CD player for one year now (second drive/laser unit) and I am very content with the sound even though I use it without modifications, output stage etc. (was afraid to damage this little diamond). But I think mechannically the PS is a desaster, just listen to the sounds it makes while skipping and just have a look at the laser/drive unit.
The "perfect" budget CD player in my opinion would be the DAC of the PS with a better drive capable of reading old CDs, CDR etc. and perhaps some more comfort. O.K. there are better CD players around but you would have to spend more than 2000€/$ for them.
As far as I know, there are SPDIF to I2S converters on the market. And as far as I understood this thread right now, the DAC is fed with I2S. So is there a possibility to connect an external I2S (or SPDIF) source to the PS?
I think the result could be better than an ordinary PS.
Have a nice day
Floric
P.S: Thaks for the introduction to adjust the laser, Mick. This way I was able to restore the old laser of my PS, the "new" one is not usable any more.
I think the challenge would be the other way round: To use the PS as a DAC. Because the only thing that's excellent in the 100x is the DAC. The drive is really substandard - if I found a drive like this in a CD Player I spent money for I would reach for the axe...
I'm using the 1002 as a CD player for one year now (second drive/laser unit) and I am very content with the sound even though I use it without modifications, output stage etc. (was afraid to damage this little diamond). But I think mechannically the PS is a desaster, just listen to the sounds it makes while skipping and just have a look at the laser/drive unit.
The "perfect" budget CD player in my opinion would be the DAC of the PS with a better drive capable of reading old CDs, CDR etc. and perhaps some more comfort. O.K. there are better CD players around but you would have to spend more than 2000€/$ for them.
As far as I know, there are SPDIF to I2S converters on the market. And as far as I understood this thread right now, the DAC is fed with I2S. So is there a possibility to connect an external I2S (or SPDIF) source to the PS?
I think the result could be better than an ordinary PS.
Have a nice day
Floric
P.S: Thaks for the introduction to adjust the laser, Mick. This way I was able to restore the old laser of my PS, the "new" one is not usable any more.
The AK4309AVM is a DAC like an other. The only way to make it work somewhere else would be to steal it's DAC and make a board for it. You could connect to it's I2S signals but it's not worth doing.
The on-console CDP has a lot of features, that sadly are not available without a screen.
Here the goal is to make the PSX a better CDP. I don't think it's worth using it's DAC as you could use a TDA1541A that would be a lot better than the 4309 and cheaper to get.
So what's the point of using the PlayStation as a CDP? The overall cost is low.
I don't think the transport is too bad, there's just no buffer. It was made for games.
A really good transport would be the jitter-free I2S CDP which is a project at DIYaudio. The only thing is that it's not going anywhere, nobody's working on it. A computer CD Player would be used to do DAE and the I2S output would be made by the 450MHz CPU.
The on-console CDP has a lot of features, that sadly are not available without a screen.
Here the goal is to make the PSX a better CDP. I don't think it's worth using it's DAC as you could use a TDA1541A that would be a lot better than the 4309 and cheaper to get.
So what's the point of using the PlayStation as a CDP? The overall cost is low.
I don't think the transport is too bad, there's just no buffer. It was made for games.
A really good transport would be the jitter-free I2S CDP which is a project at DIYaudio. The only thing is that it's not going anywhere, nobody's working on it. A computer CD Player would be used to do DAE and the I2S output would be made by the 450MHz CPU.
THE thing with the PlayStation is that you don't have anything else to buy and it's a great, cheap CDP! If you just want just the DAC or just the transport, I don't think it's worth doing because getting just a DAC chip alone would be cheaper.
Well, the DAC is better than most commercial ones but I don't know if it's better than most of the ones used for DIY projects.
DragonMaster said:
i think that something else is going on.
it`s not just a great cheap cd player people put it next to sony xa-50es and that without modifications.
my guess is that the jitter is very low because of the 67mhz oscilator divided by 4 to give the clock frequency because the later models that don`t have it don`t sound so good.
back said:
A very Good question.
my thoughts are possibly
1) Possibly the distortion is 'euphonic'
the Motherboard is highly complex with as many components as a typical PC. It's hard to see believe that these are low noise/jitter/distortion devices . The CD capability has to have been an afterthought and not an intrinsic part of the original design.Maybe the noise pattern is warming up the sound ? I recall a long time ago that a cheap portable cd player sold through radio Shack was THE CD ref, despite not measuring very well (Think it was the CD3400 or something).
2) DSP. From the CD player functions on the TV screen it is possible to engage different effects modes, or set 'normal'. Does this mean DSP is always running ? Perhaps the normal mode is engineered to smooth out the usual shrill treble associated with cheap CD players. I have found that most CD players are improved by a single notch on my Quad44 tilt control (slight treble cut, slight bass boost with a slope across the whole spectrum)
3) We want it to sound good
We all like the cheap, the bargain, the unusual. Q: If a $100 CD/DVD player sounded the same , would we get so enthusiastic ?Maybe a bit of all of these /
Don't get me wrong, these sound great , and messing around is a lot of fun, but when trying to figure out why they are good we have to be honest
Just my opinion
jives11 said:
A very Good question.
my thoughts are possibly
1) Possibly the distortion is 'euphonic'
Maybe the noise pattern is warming up the sound ? I recall a long time ago that a cheap portable cd player sold through radio Shack was THE CD ref, despite not measuring very well (Think it was the CD3400 or something).
2) DSP. From the CD player functions on the TV screen it is possible to engage different effects modes, or set 'normal'. Does this mean DSP is always running ? Perhaps the normal mode is engineered to smooth out the usual shrill treble associated with cheap CD players. I have found that most CD players are improved by a single notch on my Quad44 tilt control (slight treble cut, slight bass boost with a slope across the whole spectrum)
3) We want it to sound good
Maybe a bit of all of these /
Don't get me wrong, these sound great , and messing around is a lot of fun, but when trying to figure out why they are good we have to be honest
Just my opinion
the euphonic distortion is 2nd order harmonic distortion and is created be valves not pc components.
pc components create noise.
you right about treble roll off it sounds good but it lacks detail too which isn`t the case here.
