Have you seen this:
http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/cd67.html
http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/cd67mods.html
I have Marantz 67 SE and Iäm planning to do some modifications for it.
But before that I have few projects still ongoing.
http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/cd67.html
http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/cd67mods.html
I have Marantz 67 SE and Iäm planning to do some modifications for it.
But before that I have few projects still ongoing.
One of the very significant mods that I did on this player (apart from clock and op-amps) is to power the analogue stage using another tx rated about 30va 18v-0-18v. Simply cut the 3 traces on the existing pcb and replace it with the tx, and you'll be amazed with the amount of bass drive this player has.
regards,
will.....
regards,
will.....
I have modded a lot on my CD63KI player, but be carefull, it's quite easy to make it sound worse. In the beginning I changed all the small 47uF caps to 1000uF as a lot of people seem to do with CD mods. DON"T DO THAT !!!!, it makes the player sound a lot worse. Stick to the same value's but buy better quality.
As for the ouput mod. I had build a external battery powered PSU for it wich made some difference (not as much as I expected) but after changing the power supply caps closely to the opamps and HDAM units with Black Gates I (and two other people) really could not hear any difference anymore between the battery power supply and the internal regulated supply. Also here, do not change the power supply caps with higher value. It's the same effect as with the gainclone amps. To much capacitance will make the sound slower and heavy on the bass.
Also be carefull with chassis damping. It helps, but to much damping will make the highs sound grained.
A friend of mine owns the same player so I had the opportunity to compare my player to a unmodified one every time I did a mod. That was really usefull to find out if it really made any changes. I think that with about 30% of the mod's I only made it sound worse and changed them back.
these days I'm only using it as a transport.
As for the ouput mod. I had build a external battery powered PSU for it wich made some difference (not as much as I expected) but after changing the power supply caps closely to the opamps and HDAM units with Black Gates I (and two other people) really could not hear any difference anymore between the battery power supply and the internal regulated supply. Also here, do not change the power supply caps with higher value. It's the same effect as with the gainclone amps. To much capacitance will make the sound slower and heavy on the bass.
Also be carefull with chassis damping. It helps, but to much damping will make the highs sound grained.
A friend of mine owns the same player so I had the opportunity to compare my player to a unmodified one every time I did a mod. That was really usefull to find out if it really made any changes. I think that with about 30% of the mod's I only made it sound worse and changed them back.
these days I'm only using it as a transport.
The mod I liked most was actually also the cheapest one. It's the replacement of all the digital signal/clock/wordclock/dig.out/ with properly terminated miniature coax. It's a pretty hard job to do but the cost is close to nothing. without doing this it's not worth the money to buy an expensive clock upgrade for it.
Second was the clock upgrade. I used a LCAudio XO2 clock with it's own power supply. without mod 1 it doesn't do that much.
third one also does not cost you anything at all. It's to make changes to the ground plane to make a clear seperation between analog and digital ground. I have also bypassed some off the ground lines with some 2mm solid wire. This one is even harder to do then the first one and you need to study on this subject a lot. It's not easy to explain how I did it, I do not have pictures of it and it was a work in progress kind of thing. Took me a couple of months (and some highly technical books) to figure it all out.
Well there where a lot more changes but let me tell about the changes that didn't work:
1: changing all the 47uF caps to 1000uF ones.
2: Replacing the rectifier diodes, no change at all.
3: Putting too much damping panels to the transport, the bottom, the sides and the top cover. I didn't leave an inch undamped. Makes the player sound very sharp and edgy. removed it all and damped only the bottom and a little bit of the top cover.
4: Bought some expensive feet, no change at all.
5: etc. etc
I don't remember all the details of the impact of the various mods I have made. I have made the last mod about two years ago and all the mods where done in a period of almost three years. I'm not using the analog ouput anymore for about a year now, and in fact I have just found out that my PC with an external USB/SPDIF converter sounds better as a transport when the music is played from the harddrive (not via the CDrom drive) Time to invest in a quiet PC.
4:
Second was the clock upgrade. I used a LCAudio XO2 clock with it's own power supply. without mod 1 it doesn't do that much.
third one also does not cost you anything at all. It's to make changes to the ground plane to make a clear seperation between analog and digital ground. I have also bypassed some off the ground lines with some 2mm solid wire. This one is even harder to do then the first one and you need to study on this subject a lot. It's not easy to explain how I did it, I do not have pictures of it and it was a work in progress kind of thing. Took me a couple of months (and some highly technical books) to figure it all out.
Well there where a lot more changes but let me tell about the changes that didn't work:
1: changing all the 47uF caps to 1000uF ones.
2: Replacing the rectifier diodes, no change at all.
3: Putting too much damping panels to the transport, the bottom, the sides and the top cover. I didn't leave an inch undamped. Makes the player sound very sharp and edgy. removed it all and damped only the bottom and a little bit of the top cover.
4: Bought some expensive feet, no change at all.
5: etc. etc
I don't remember all the details of the impact of the various mods I have made. I have made the last mod about two years ago and all the mods where done in a period of almost three years. I'm not using the analog ouput anymore for about a year now, and in fact I have just found out that my PC with an external USB/SPDIF converter sounds better as a transport when the music is played from the harddrive (not via the CDrom drive) Time to invest in a quiet PC.
4:
I've spent alot of time modifying my CD67SE and I'm at the point now that I'm very pleased at the outcome. I first started by doing:
- Some LC Audio AD8065 opamps
- Kwak clock v7
- Cabinet dampening
- Nichicon FX 4700uf/63v Muse caps where C803, C804, C805 and C806 use to be. These caps were all bypassed with some Wima 22nF/63v electroytics.
- PS diodes D801-D804 and D811-D812 replaced with Hexfred soft recovery diodes.
- Output caps C655, C656, C657, and C658 were removed and replaced with a jumper.
- The muting transistors QN05, QN06, QN07, and QN08 are removed.
This showed a definite improvement right away but was not a quantum leap. Next I went on to listen to Zombie by doing the following:
Replaced CD21, CD22, Replace first opamp resistors RD21-RD28 with hand matched 10k 1% resistors
CD23, and CD24(120pF) with 120pF 630V 2% Philips caps
Replaced first opamp resistors R601-R604 with hand matched 27k 1% resistors
Replaced first opamp resistors R605 and R606 with hand matched 10k 1% resistors
Replaced C605 and C606 (1000pF) with 1000pF 400v 1% Philps
Replaced C607 and C608 (100pF) with 150pF 630v 2% Philips
This once again made a nice difference but no quantum leap again.
During that same upgrade I also:
Bypassed C611, C612, C613, and C614 with .022nF Wimas.
Bypassed C651, C652, C653, and C654 with .022nF Wimas.
Replaced R613 to R616 and R651 to R654 replaced by M5934-ND 2200uH Chokes
Replaced RD01, RD04, R117, R118, and RF01 with M9251-ND
1000uH Chokes and Ferrite Beads M2306-ND per TNT directions.
Replaced and CD04 and CD07 with 220uF/10v Panasonic FC P-10220-ND
Replaced CD15 and CD16 with leftover 470uF Silmics and bypassed with 100nF Wimas
I also installed a set of Cardas RCAs.
And last but not least I built and installed Jon Risch's AC line filter complete with IEC socket.
I'd like to repeat myself again by saying it's been alot of worked but I'm blown away by the sound of this player now and I can't wait to do some further tweaking.
Regards,
Dan
P.S. Thanks to all my fellow forum members that gave me some great suggestions.
- Some LC Audio AD8065 opamps
- Kwak clock v7
- Cabinet dampening
- Nichicon FX 4700uf/63v Muse caps where C803, C804, C805 and C806 use to be. These caps were all bypassed with some Wima 22nF/63v electroytics.
- PS diodes D801-D804 and D811-D812 replaced with Hexfred soft recovery diodes.
- Output caps C655, C656, C657, and C658 were removed and replaced with a jumper.
- The muting transistors QN05, QN06, QN07, and QN08 are removed.
This showed a definite improvement right away but was not a quantum leap. Next I went on to listen to Zombie by doing the following:
Replaced CD21, CD22, Replace first opamp resistors RD21-RD28 with hand matched 10k 1% resistors
CD23, and CD24(120pF) with 120pF 630V 2% Philips caps
Replaced first opamp resistors R601-R604 with hand matched 27k 1% resistors
Replaced first opamp resistors R605 and R606 with hand matched 10k 1% resistors
Replaced C605 and C606 (1000pF) with 1000pF 400v 1% Philps
Replaced C607 and C608 (100pF) with 150pF 630v 2% Philips
This once again made a nice difference but no quantum leap again.
During that same upgrade I also:
Bypassed C611, C612, C613, and C614 with .022nF Wimas.
Bypassed C651, C652, C653, and C654 with .022nF Wimas.
Replaced R613 to R616 and R651 to R654 replaced by M5934-ND 2200uH Chokes
Replaced RD01, RD04, R117, R118, and RF01 with M9251-ND
1000uH Chokes and Ferrite Beads M2306-ND per TNT directions.
Replaced and CD04 and CD07 with 220uF/10v Panasonic FC P-10220-ND
Replaced CD15 and CD16 with leftover 470uF Silmics and bypassed with 100nF Wimas
I also installed a set of Cardas RCAs.
And last but not least I built and installed Jon Risch's AC line filter complete with IEC socket.
I'd like to repeat myself again by saying it's been alot of worked but I'm blown away by the sound of this player now and I can't wait to do some further tweaking.
Regards,
Dan
P.S. Thanks to all my fellow forum members that gave me some great suggestions.
I've read alot about the coax upgrade and I'm very interested in trying it. One snag though. I'm not super tecnically inclined. I'm very good at following explicit instructions but if I stray too far from that I really start to struggle. So far I've seen some pretty good writeups about the coax upgrade but I'll have to do some more reading before I'm ready.
Regards,
Dan
Regards,
Dan
The coax ..is worth doing only if you have a lot of time on your hands. There's nothing technically difficult about it, but it is rather fiddly to execute well.
The other thing to bear in mind is that the machine is made rather more fragile as a result - when you pull the motherboard to play in future, you have to be very careful you don't crack a coax connection, or the thing just won't work (typical symptom is the disc motor spinning up / out of control). Chasing down this kind of problem is a pain that wastes listening time.
So, $64,000 question: would I bother again, having heard it? Truthful answer is: very probably not. The change is marginal at best, and there are much softer targets for improvement (the clock etc.) after which the idea is listen to music, rather than worry about sound
The other thing to bear in mind is that the machine is made rather more fragile as a result - when you pull the motherboard to play in future, you have to be very careful you don't crack a coax connection, or the thing just won't work (typical symptom is the disc motor spinning up / out of control). Chasing down this kind of problem is a pain that wastes listening time.
So, $64,000 question: would I bother again, having heard it? Truthful answer is: very probably not. The change is marginal at best, and there are much softer targets for improvement (the clock etc.) after which the idea is listen to music, rather than worry about sound
While I'm intrigued about possible further improvements I'm very, very pleased with the sound of my CD67SE right now. I'm experiencing soundstage, depth, and subtle details that I've never heard before. As an added bonus the improvements to the CD67SE have brought my DIY ProAC 2.5's into their own as well. Before the CD67 mods all the modest players I had in my system painfully showed their weaknesses through the 2.5's.
As possible further mods I'm considering for my CD67 I think I'll do the last few capacitor upgrades and the additional bypass caps recommende by the TNT site. And then I'm going to venture into some SuperRegulators for the analogue and digital supplies.
Regards,
Dan
As possible further mods I'm considering for my CD67 I think I'll do the last few capacitor upgrades and the additional bypass caps recommende by the TNT site. And then I'm going to venture into some SuperRegulators for the analogue and digital supplies.
Regards,
Dan
that's because the 67 and the 63 are highly identical machines.
In fact, the CD43, CD53 and CD63/63SE/63KI are exactly the same players, they only differ in component quality. The CD57/67 uses the same chipset, same output section, same transport etc. it's only a bit different in the power suplly section and the circuit layout. Almost all the mods discribed for the CD67 can be done exactly the same on the CD63 with the same results.
In fact, the CD43, CD53 and CD63/63SE/63KI are exactly the same players, they only differ in component quality. The CD57/67 uses the same chipset, same output section, same transport etc. it's only a bit different in the power suplly section and the circuit layout. Almost all the mods discribed for the CD67 can be done exactly the same on the CD63 with the same results.
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