OK final touches for today...
I properly screwed the PCB to my test rig... No brainer... I should have done it weeks ago... Huge difference again...
Finally, I previously had some really bad experience with white and blue leds, so guess what...
R55 is history along with the backlight and imaging has noticeably improved.
I know this is really inconvenient, but my goal in this one is to remove anything that creates issues before trying more expensive parts.
I was thinking that perhaps we could wire a bigish cap in series with the leds. The leds will go out after a while and we would listen without issues. To kick the leds on again, we can use dpst buttons for the actions and use the second pole to short/empty the capacitor.
Prob would be that there would be no light when clicking the remote... Anyway... I ll probably leave it like this...
What I have noticed after all this is that the transport has become rather sensitive to disc imperfections. If there is some flaw, there is a faint but noticeable tik-tik-tik-tik-tik until it has moved past it.
I properly screwed the PCB to my test rig... No brainer... I should have done it weeks ago... Huge difference again...
Finally, I previously had some really bad experience with white and blue leds, so guess what...
R55 is history along with the backlight and imaging has noticeably improved.
I know this is really inconvenient, but my goal in this one is to remove anything that creates issues before trying more expensive parts.
I was thinking that perhaps we could wire a bigish cap in series with the leds. The leds will go out after a while and we would listen without issues. To kick the leds on again, we can use dpst buttons for the actions and use the second pole to short/empty the capacitor.
Prob would be that there would be no light when clicking the remote... Anyway... I ll probably leave it like this...
What I have noticed after all this is that the transport has become rather sensitive to disc imperfections. If there is some flaw, there is a faint but noticeable tik-tik-tik-tik-tik until it has moved past it.
It s sad seeing this thread so silent
So...
Today I m going to try replacing C8 with some 0,1uF and then with 0,22uF Russian FT-3 teflons I have available.
I have also ordered some FT-1s in 0,012uF
Unfortunately I could not find any 0,01uF FT-1 ones... Only K72Ps
Hopefully the imperfection sensitivity should go away...
This should be interesting
So...
Today I m going to try replacing C8 with some 0,1uF and then with 0,22uF Russian FT-3 teflons I have available.
I have also ordered some FT-1s in 0,012uF
Unfortunately I could not find any 0,01uF FT-1 ones... Only K72Ps
Hopefully the imperfection sensitivity should go away...
This should be interesting
It s sad seeing this thread so silent
Believe me, I'm trying to get the enclosure for my stock version done as quickly as possible so I can start working on my custom version!
Tibi, have those remaining parts been shipped off?
Believe me you have many many readers
I second that thought. You guys may feel like you are all alone, but you have hundreds looking over your shoulder and cheering you on. Go, man, Go!
Jac
OK 0.1uF FT-1 is in.
I ripped it from my phono and while it has seen some use, I consider it still in its beginnings of breaking in (50 hours tops), so take this as a rather rough estimate of the change from Tibi's cap, although the change was again neither borderline psychological nor small.
What is immediately obvious as a change is that mids and mid lows are not the center of the world any more. The entire spectrum now seems more even and everything has its own articulate voice that stands out if you choose to focus on it.
The change is very evident in violins which now sound very smooth while with Tibi's small cap were bitey, a bit grainy and even a bit distorted some times. The same with blues guitars. Highs have also cleared a lot. Cymbals and hats are very nice. Same with bass, where I could at some points (like the intro of Conan soundtrack) hear different timpani tones.
The stage has not widened any further (already was about a meter further from my speakers) but focus and depth placement are much more obvious.
I feel that things are a bit thin though and still a bit shy in very highs and deep lows and there seems to be some lack of attack power in them. Although this could be a side effect of the K75 PIOs (FT-3 bypassed) that are still breaking in on the output of my dcb1.
Overall it seems to be a nice step up, provided of course this is your kind of thing. If you are more of a "sweet, warm, fuzzy and mid-low is my god" sound guy, you might want to try something else, although things might still change after a couple of weeks of breaking in.
I don t think I will try the 0,22uF before I give the 0,1uF a couple of weeks. In the meantime I hope to receive my 0,012uF and 0,47uF ones to try (relax the big ones are for my dcb1 ).
My next step will be to try some Vishay CMF55s on the output L pad, and then try the 100-300-100 pi-pad.
I ripped it from my phono and while it has seen some use, I consider it still in its beginnings of breaking in (50 hours tops), so take this as a rather rough estimate of the change from Tibi's cap, although the change was again neither borderline psychological nor small.
What is immediately obvious as a change is that mids and mid lows are not the center of the world any more. The entire spectrum now seems more even and everything has its own articulate voice that stands out if you choose to focus on it.
The change is very evident in violins which now sound very smooth while with Tibi's small cap were bitey, a bit grainy and even a bit distorted some times. The same with blues guitars. Highs have also cleared a lot. Cymbals and hats are very nice. Same with bass, where I could at some points (like the intro of Conan soundtrack) hear different timpani tones.
The stage has not widened any further (already was about a meter further from my speakers) but focus and depth placement are much more obvious.
I feel that things are a bit thin though and still a bit shy in very highs and deep lows and there seems to be some lack of attack power in them. Although this could be a side effect of the K75 PIOs (FT-3 bypassed) that are still breaking in on the output of my dcb1.
Overall it seems to be a nice step up, provided of course this is your kind of thing. If you are more of a "sweet, warm, fuzzy and mid-low is my god" sound guy, you might want to try something else, although things might still change after a couple of weeks of breaking in.
I don t think I will try the 0,22uF before I give the 0,1uF a couple of weeks. In the meantime I hope to receive my 0,012uF and 0,47uF ones to try (relax the big ones are for my dcb1
).My next step will be to try some Vishay CMF55s on the output L pad, and then try the 100-300-100 pi-pad.
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Guess what other cap is rated [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]to have [/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]ESR down to 12mOhm (20°C/100kHz)....
Well my favorite... Panasonic FR
I guess I ll give them a try on C10 after all
Oh and since I am continuing my rant, I thought that if we want to improve the performance of the motors, we better have a proper look at them, and decide on caps or something to fix them properly rather than adding random components.
Here is a capture of how the spindle motor looks like while playing the start of the disc...
The swing seems pretty ugly.... 500mV
Any ideas?
I don t think caps in the spindle motor will affect it adversely. The negative impact reported by Eric and Jarek is probably because of slowing down the sled.
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Guess what other cap is rated [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]to have [/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]ESR down to 12mOhm (20°C/100kHz)....
Well my favorite... Panasonic FR
I guess I ll give them a try on C10 after all
Oh and since I am continuing my rant, I thought that if we want to improve the performance of the motors, we better have a proper look at them, and decide on caps or something to fix them properly rather than adding random components.
Here is a capture of how the spindle motor looks like while playing the start of the disc...
The swing seems pretty ugly.... 500mV
Any ideas?
I don t think caps in the spindle motor will affect it adversely. The negative impact reported by Eric and Jarek is probably because of slowing down the sled.
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Yes, that looks nasty. But it seems to support the idea that you want to separate out the digital IC power from the mech power, as you did and I plan to. As to how to deal with that motor nastiness, I'm not sure. Need to think about it a bit.
It s sad seeing this thread so silent
So...
Today I m going to try replacing C8 with some 0,1uF and then with 0,22uF Russian FT-3 teflons I have available.
I have also ordered some FT-1s in 0,012uF
Unfortunately I could not find any 0,01uF FT-1 ones... Only K72Ps
Hopefully the imperfection sensitivity should go away...
This should be interesting
Seeing as you intend to make your own cap, I would suggest to focus on that, rather than spend time and resources on stuff manufactured from plastic - unless you are doing that just to find out how much better your handmade cap will be
. A simple flat stack cap, made with good quality conductor and natural dielectric will handily beat all but the best plastic capacitors - and if you make it good enough, it might just beat all plastic caps, V-cap included. I'm not openly claiming that my caps beat V-cap because there are no independently published comparisons to back this claim - but they certainly belong up there with the best... So go make your own
I will have to agree with Tony. Not that there are no nice switching implementations, but they require much care to perform.
With a class A amp, super hotrod dcb1 and semi hotrod BiB for the digitals I don t think there is much point for me trying a switching solution... I m already doing my best to widen the ozone layer hole...
I would consider trying an LM1085 for the motors though, but I don t know how useful my testing will be for everyone since I have split the digital's psu
With a class A amp, super hotrod dcb1 and semi hotrod BiB for the digitals I don t think there is much point for me trying a switching solution... I m already doing my best to widen the ozone layer hole...
I would consider trying an LM1085 for the motors though, but I don t know how useful my testing will be for everyone since I have split the digital's psu
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Skylab, that's kind of nice looking. Any performance data you have on this? Noise, bandwidth etc?
I don't have any equipment to test it, I can only quote the reference data from TI, comments from other DIYer are very positive. I got the PCB from Ian.
Output noise is 4.17uV rms (10hz, 100khz)
Power supply ripple rejection is 82 db (100hz)
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