Marantz CD63 & CD67 mods list

[Fidelity Audio]

Of course you can seperate, more seperation the better

Brent

[RCruz]

Originally posted by SimontY
Ricardo,

You can separate them, it works fine.

The only thing I've found you really can't do is to have off-board power supplies for the add-on clocks!! Mine are now internal and as well as detail increasing (they are better power supplies and we did another mod) my noise problem pretty much dropped off.

Hi Simon

I´m glad your CDP is in working order again.
All my psu´s are internal (well... almost everything because I had to bolt the dac TX outside the back plate)
Maybe that´s why I never had any noise issues.

How do you compare the sound with the philips ?

Originally posted by rowemeister
Of course you can seperate, more seperation the better

Thank you for the very informative and explanatory e-mail Brent .

I finally decided:
1 TX winding will feed both decoder analog and HF/RF amp, using separate regs.
1 TX winding will be used for decoder digital pin15 + pin44, using only one reg.

I will do it in the weekend and report the results ....!!!

[SimontY]

Originally posted by RCruz
How do you compare the sound with the philips ?

Ricardo,

The Philips is warm and lush, having massive bass weight and a very chunky representation of instruments and vocals. Detail retrieval is average at best and treble is dull. It makes music interesting in spite of its obvious flaws.

The modded CD63KI, by comparison, is fairly bright and strident. The bass is lighter, but with excellent pitch, pace and detail. Vocals don't always seem as characterful. Treble is clean and sweet. Detail retrieval is stunning. The sound is balanced top to bottom.

Both players stock I think you can guess which I'd be listening to! But the CD63 is so darn modified it will take some beating. If you're curious about the TDA1541 I can say I've heard Lee's modded CD94, in my home, and it was just about preferable to my CD63. However, the bass was a bit thick at times and it wasn't as clear sounding on some material.

If I could start again it would be with a CD94. I also like Brent's modified CD17KI FWIW, it has all the (massive) bass weight of a CD94, but sounds much clearer. I've not heard it at home so can't really vouch for how it plays music.

I've also had a listen to some lower end Naim, some Rotels, Cambridge Audio, other Marantz players and DVD players (modified) and they all sound quite mid-fi compared to CD94, 63ki and 17ki (all v modified). I've not heard a player that isn't begging for mods yet

Simon

[Fidelity Audio]

Originally posted by RCruz

Hi Simon

I´m glad your CDP is in working order again.
All my psu´s are internal (well... almost everything because I had to bolt the dac TX outside the back plate)
Maybe that´s why I never had any noise issues.

How do you compare the sound with the philips ?



Thank you for the very informative and explanatory e-mail Brent .

I finally decided:
1 TX winding will feed both decoder analog and HF/RF amp, using separate regs.
1 TX winding will be used for decoder digital pin15 + pin44, using only one reg.

I will do it in the weekend and report the results ....!!!

No problem

Let us know how it sounds

Brent

[RCruz]

Originally posted by SimontY


Ricardo,

The Philips is warm and lush, having massive bass weight and a very chunky representation of instruments and vocals. Detail retrieval is average at best and treble is dull. It makes music interesting in spite of its obvious flaws.

The modded CD63KI, by comparison, is fairly bright and strident. The bass is lighter, but with excellent pitch, pace and detail. Vocals don't always seem as characterful. Treble is clean and sweet. Detail retrieval is stunning. The sound is balanced top to bottom.

I've not heard a player that isn't begging for mods yet

Hi Simon

As usual, your reviews are very well described.

I totally agree with your last comment.

[Fidelity Audio]

This is Simon and he writes with with a quill pen under candle light. LOL



Mine still needs a tweak or two and I don't seem to have the time to do so

I'm going to change my clock psu(s) BHC Aerovox caps to Mundorf types which we have found brings more detail than the BHC. I also need to remove the 4 remaining Audiocom super regs and replace with SPowers for the HF RF Servo digital and analogue supply + fitt them more direct to the circuit.

Brent

[SimontY]

Good good!

[RCruz]

Originally posted by SimontY


Good good!

I could not imagine that you looked like that

Nevertheless, your reviews are much more precise than the majority of informations I am used to read in Hi Fi News and other publications.

You seem to have a special gift regarding writing about how machines sound.

Hope I could be so fluent.

Regards

Ricardo

PS.... Here´s a pic of me and my son

[SimontY]

Ricardo,

I think that's a bit OTT but thank you, I am better with words than maths, earning money or keeping the magic smoke at bay.

Your own descriptions are very easy to understand, there's nothing lacking.

LOL @ your family holiday snap!

Simon

[6h5c]

Originally posted by jnewbold
Hi Ray, Brent, Martin and others,
...
Rotel uses a single NE5534 op-amp per channel in the output stage and I have changed this to an LME49710, which is the single version of the popular LM4562.

The SAA7323 DAC now has 6 regulators - 2 analog and 4 digital.

I have been watching the discussion about the Discrete Output Stage and have been wondering whether I could use part of it to replace the op-amp. I don't think I need the bessel filter part of the circuit so I'm thinking that I could leave that off the pcb and use everything from T1/T2.

Can I buy the DOS pcb anywhere?

Thanks for all the information and discussion and congratulations on such a useful thread.

Joe

Hi Joe,

Rotel makes some very decent players, I recently fitted a Flea clock and some opamps in a RCD991 .

The SAA7323 needs at least one opamp (or some other type of buffering) behind the internal switched capacitor network, which cannot be loaded too much. Maybe a FET output stage does the trick, but you probably need some kind of filtering. The device has only 60dB stopband attenuation. Loading the network with the passive version is out of the question .

I'm afraid I don't have any DOS PCB's left...

Regards,

Ray