CD Player upgrade opinions please.

[markgall]

I attached pics of the guts of my stock cd player. It is a Yamaha CDX-1100U manufactured in 1988 and weighs in at 30 pounds. I listed the specs from the manual below. It has dual power supplies, the transport is metal except for the drawer, the two big caps are nichicon gold, the two small black caps are blackgates, the purple caps are elna and the green caps are nichicon muse. The dacs are Burr-Brown 56p. The pcb's are all mounted on a .12 thick solid copper plate.

I would like you to give me your opinions on upgrades. Do you think that any of these components would benefit from an upgrade? Do you think I would benefit from an outboard dac?


Frequency Response: DC - 20kHz +/- 0.3dB
Harmonic Distortion: Less than 0.002% (@ 1kHz)
S/N Ratio: 115 dB
Dynamic Range: More than 100 dB
Wow & Flutter: Unmeasureable
Channel Separation: More than 100 dB (@ 1kHz & 20kHz)
Optical Pickup: 3-beam laser
Error Correction: CIRC
Filtering:
Digital: 4X Oversampling High-bit
Analog: 5th order active analog filter
DAC: Burr-Brown 56P (16-bit)
Separate logic boards for analog output, digital (DAC), motor control & power supply (provides for better signal integrity and fidelity)
Headphone jack (1/4")
Headphone Output: 3V / 150 ohms
Variable-level output control (digital) - headphones and analog outputs
Solid Brass output jacks
Digital and analog stereo output (coaxial RCA connections)
Output Voltage: 2V
Output Impedance: 47 ohms
Power: Universal 120/220V (built-in 2-prong power cord)
Power Consumption: 30W
Dimensions: 17 1/8" Wide x 16 3/8" Deep x 4 13/16" Tall
Weight: 30 lbs 14 oz

[markgall]

nt

[Leolabs]

Qusetion:Any coupling caps at the outputs???

If any,u may replace them with good film caps,but me will certainly throw away them as along as DC offset is not a problem.

[markgall]

nt

[markgall]

Nobody has any opinions or thoughts on upgrading this cd player? I figured there would be a bunch of replies. Is it already as good as it's going to get? I think it is pretty good myself but I'm just curious if it can be improved.
Mark

[renes3]

Markgall,


Of course this player is tweakable. It is already very good but can be modified to give a much better performance.

Change diodes and regulators for better types, maybe change some capacitors on the supply board, maybe shield this board
with a seperate shielded box (copper or aluminium). Dampen the inside and the transport with some bitumen sheets. Shield the supply cables, they are a source of rfi/emi inside the player.

Add a clock and seperate supply for it, better decoupling of the pcm56P, and shield all ic's with copper foil. Get a shaffner filtered IEC mains inlet to get rid of rfi/emi and a shielded mains cable.

You could look at changing some resistors to better ones. And try to get a spare drive as well!

René

[mikesnowdon]

You might get some ideas from this post:

Cambridge Audio 640C v1 Mods

[kevinkr]

Take a look at the op-amps in the signal path, op-amps have improved considerably since this player was made.

NE5532 and most similar duals can be replaced with quite a few other duals from BB, but my current favorite would be the National LM4562 or one of its variants, all of which are available in dip as well as soic packages.

The player is 20 yrs old and frankly it would not be a bad idea to replace all of the electrolytics at this point. My preference is for Black Gates across the board. Even the modestly priced PK are a significant improvement over most currently available competitors.

New discrete I/V converters and tube analog stages are discussed at length on other threads here. Worth considering, as is upgrading passives in the signal path.. (Caps and resistors)

The advice to locate a spare mechanism now is probably a good one.

Clock upgrades are pretty standard fare these days, but look at what your player is using first. Gate based ones are good targets for upgrade, discretes and osc modules are candidates for improved power supplies. I have not found universal improvement with clock upgrades, depends on the quality of the original clock source.

[wsjoe]

What are PK capacitors? Who sells these?