Marantz CD63 & CD67 mods list

The Bessel mod slightly rolls off the highs. I did that too when I was first tweaking this player and indeed it sounded better. But after a while, when I tweaked the player further, I went back to the standard filter because I started to miss the little 'bite' in the sound. It sounded too smooth to me.

It certainly doesn't sound too smooth to me. I'm still a bit annoyed by the highs. I just hope there aren't any bad contacts (touching the components doesn't reveal a loose contact though).

What would happen to the sound if one of the filter components I changed were badly connected? (C605/606, R605/606/611/612). Would there be no sound or would it be more subtle?


Well, you can always ask us 'howto' ;-). That's where we are here for! Your player has so much more potential, it would be a pity if that is left untouched. It will benefit a lot from a good clock, that is one of the must-do mods I think. A Discrete Output Stage will improve things as well, it will get rid of the opamps and filter in one go.

A better iron or station will get you better solder joints and less lifted pads. It will make the tweaking a lot easier with less chance of damage. You have to be very careful with the board anyway, because it's not very solid. A cheap-and-dirty fix for you iron could be an in-line light-dimmer. You know, the ones you use to put between the cord of a lamp in your living room. That way you can adjust the power and tune it back a little.

Thanks for the help! Actually I'm glad I already got this far with this player. I'll just leave it like this for a couple months and then we'll see 🙂
 
It certainly doesn't sound too smooth to me. I'm still a bit annoyed by the highs. I just hope there aren't any bad contacts (touching the components doesn't reveal a loose contact though).

What would happen to the sound if one of the filter components I changed were badly connected? (C605/606, R605/606/611/612). Would there be no sound or would it be more subtle?

Thanks for the help! Actually I'm glad I already got this far with this player. I'll just leave it like this for a couple months and then we'll see 🙂

If there would be a really bad connection, the sound would probably be intermittent. What kind of opamps are you listening to at the moment?

Ray
 
Ok, here are some pictures of the new DOS-CFP board.
 

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I'm leaving my CD53 the way it is for the next few months. The mods I've done involved the PSU, output, DAC filter and opamps nothing else. I've made a short .wav recording of Stevie Wonder's Sir Duke to show how it sounds:

https://rapidshare.com/files/252319741/CD53.wav

Feel free to share your opinion. I think it sounds pretty good, but there's always room for improvement.

There's some noise in the recording, but my mixing desk is to blame for that.
 
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Hey Stabby,

I'm fully prepared for the possibility that I may have missed the point of what you're trying to do here, and I hope you don't mind me saying this - I absolutely do not want to come across as rude or unappreciative of you taking the time to share the fruits of your labour - but I don't think there's really any way for anyone to get an impression of how good your CD53 sounds from a WAV file.

Even if we ignore for a moment the degradation of the analogue signal caused by whatever cables, mixing desk and other equipment that you used to record this (a computer, perhaps?) - and even ignoring any loss caused by the analogue-to-digital conversion - the bottom line is that the highest fidelity method of playing this file that I personally have at my disposal would be to downsample it back to 16-bit 44.1khz, burn it onto a CD-R and play it on my own CD63 🙂

I guess this is why audiophiles spend so much time writing about the sound of their equipment. Anyway, I'm glad you're happy with the sound and I wish there was actually a way to share the sound of everybody's players over the web. I'd love to hear a highly modded player in person.

Cheers,

Ben
 
The boards look good Ray, you did a thorough job !
Can it work on 15V and when can I order the cfpdos ? :lickface:

Wonderfull Ray !!!

I am already saving some €€ to get one of those.

Great stuff!

Thanks everyone!

Erik, the boards have on-board 12V regulators, so minimum input voltage is +/-15V.

I just updated my DOS-CFP page with the latest schematic and partslist PDF.

Boards are ready to ship now, so if anyone's interested, just send me an e-mail to:
 

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Hey Stabby,

I'm fully prepared for the possibility that I may have missed the point of what you're trying to do here, and I hope you don't mind me saying this - I absolutely do not want to come across as rude or unappreciative of you taking the time to share the fruits of your labour - but I don't think there's really any way for anyone to get an impression of how good your CD53 sounds from a WAV file.

Even if we ignore for a moment the degradation of the analogue signal caused by whatever cables, mixing desk and other equipment that you used to record this (a computer, perhaps?) - and even ignoring any loss caused by the analogue-to-digital conversion - the bottom line is that the highest fidelity method of playing this file that I personally have at my disposal would be to downsample it back to 16-bit 44.1khz, burn it onto a CD-R and play it on my own CD63 🙂

I guess this is why audiophiles spend so much time writing about the sound of their equipment. Anyway, I'm glad you're happy with the sound and I wish there was actually a way to share the sound of everybody's players over the web. I'd love to hear a highly modded player in person.

Cheers,

Ben

Actually I was hoping if someone could hear if my player sounds too bright. Shouldn't that be hearable in the recording? I think my ears might just be more sensitive to high frequencies.

I understand what you're saying though, not at all offended 🙂