The N. KW is a good cap in analog side, though sometimes a little mellow in the upper bass ! All is about the board, sometimes a cap will work sometimes not : you have to try in real life !
So clearly this is not about opinion as a result nore a cap is universal in each layout !
You are on a good side of the force by experimenting yourself in real life and check the result 🙂 . Here you had a positiv change for the better !
+1 with J Snell; when talking a bout capacitance of a cap, writes also the voltage value 🙂
So clearly this is not about opinion as a result nore a cap is universal in each layout !
You are on a good side of the force by experimenting yourself in real life and check the result 🙂 . Here you had a positiv change for the better !
+1 with J Snell; when talking a bout capacitance of a cap, writes also the voltage value 🙂
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Are you sure you heard all these improvements in sound? I mean, the C4 (10.000uF) is the smoothing capacitor for +5V line which goes entirely to the servo and logical circuits and has nothing to do with the sound, neither in digital nor in analogue domain. 🙂 Anyway, keep on doing, improvements are yet to come when you refresh the entire decoder PCB.
All these improvements are between now and before replacement of all PSU caps. After replacement of the 10000uF I felt like there was some improvement as well; must be my imagination. Feels a bit supid now to have put the only audio-grade cap in the servo section 🙂 I have some KW caps that are 2200uF, I bought them together with the 10000, but it sounds good as it is, I will leave the Nippon chem SXE in there. Don't wanna kill that poor board, it's not very solid compared to that super cheap sony player I learned soldering on (yup, still works, haha)
On a philips player when changing just the servo cap, you can hear a difference ! (dunno if we talk of the same servo? : laser tracking, ...?)
When tweaking, just change thing onece by once then check with the ears. It has no sense to change all at once, but if you recape with the same exact references because the player has more than 35 years !
When tweaking, just change thing onece by once then check with the ears. It has no sense to change all at once, but if you recape with the same exact references because the player has more than 35 years !
So I'm not crazy! Haha 😉
maybe having a new cap there puts less stress on the power transformer; maybe the CD1 drive needs good power to turn "right"... maybe the laser... who knows 🙂
Sometimes there is a psycho factor, you want to hear a difference ! But this is said most of the time easily to say I don't understand the reason (the whole reason) of the change !
Why is this a problem ? Because in a scientific point of view, experiment is to check the theory and not the opposite !
So most of the time you have this change but you can not yet make from this a theory to be sure to have a valid technic which works each time !
So in a certain margin, you can change some sounding parameters. It doesn't mean the change is always better, but there is a change you can appreciate in your particular conf.
for instance if not in a filter, you can change a little the capacitance value (ah, you need indeed the minimum the engineer planed in capacitance and voltage) , if you increase a little the capacitance value, or simply just the voltage (you can increase but not decrease of course) result at ears may change in a same cap line of the same brand !
Now I don't borring anymore : in a safe way : first same volrage and same value, I try just for the pleasure many topology and brand and sometimes (always in fact) some different values if I know the layout is not badly impacted... most of the time there is no correlation between the capacitance value and voltage value needed in a same brand line and model !
For instance : why in my DAC set up a Panasonic FC 1800/35V with a particular leads pitch (inductance) will works at ears twice beter than a FC 1800/16V or a 2200/25 V ? I don't know, as all the parameters wich changes are far above the minimum values the circuit is needing (in this case : 1500 uF/16V from the said better Panasonic FM range !)
So the experiment is not scientific as it's not checking a theory, but there is a change at ears ! Is it better for the theoric aspect : no ! Is it better for the music : yes at ears... but ears are subjective and this is a compensation in relation to the whole system : so I CAN NOT make a theory which says : Pan FC 1800/35V ; 5 mm pitch is better than Pan FM 1500/16V 5mm pitch : the tweak is not universal but just work very good in my system as if the DAC is twice better !
That's the difficulty of those conversations here, so feeling and experience with tweaking (+ technical understanding at minima) helps... but it's mainly try&errors system.... whith sometimes EXCELLENT surprises 😀/.... and bad ones, I tweaked tons of cd players and breaked certainly half a ton ! (Luckilly never paid more than few euros for all those second hand verygood cd players from the 80/90s !)
One has to be modest here : that's not saying a tweak is better than the engineering works... like with the cars, etc, etc ! There is a hystery about tweaking nowadays; try to explain your teen which want to be tweaked by a surgeon about her attribute that it's only a change and not surely an improvement ! The same for hifi !
Why is this a problem ? Because in a scientific point of view, experiment is to check the theory and not the opposite !
So most of the time you have this change but you can not yet make from this a theory to be sure to have a valid technic which works each time !
So in a certain margin, you can change some sounding parameters. It doesn't mean the change is always better, but there is a change you can appreciate in your particular conf.
for instance if not in a filter, you can change a little the capacitance value (ah, you need indeed the minimum the engineer planed in capacitance and voltage) , if you increase a little the capacitance value, or simply just the voltage (you can increase but not decrease of course) result at ears may change in a same cap line of the same brand !
Now I don't borring anymore : in a safe way : first same volrage and same value, I try just for the pleasure many topology and brand and sometimes (always in fact) some different values if I know the layout is not badly impacted... most of the time there is no correlation between the capacitance value and voltage value needed in a same brand line and model !
For instance : why in my DAC set up a Panasonic FC 1800/35V with a particular leads pitch (inductance) will works at ears twice beter than a FC 1800/16V or a 2200/25 V ? I don't know, as all the parameters wich changes are far above the minimum values the circuit is needing (in this case : 1500 uF/16V from the said better Panasonic FM range !)
So the experiment is not scientific as it's not checking a theory, but there is a change at ears ! Is it better for the theoric aspect : no ! Is it better for the music : yes at ears... but ears are subjective and this is a compensation in relation to the whole system : so I CAN NOT make a theory which says : Pan FC 1800/35V ; 5 mm pitch is better than Pan FM 1500/16V 5mm pitch : the tweak is not universal but just work very good in my system as if the DAC is twice better !
That's the difficulty of those conversations here, so feeling and experience with tweaking (+ technical understanding at minima) helps... but it's mainly try&errors system.... whith sometimes EXCELLENT surprises 😀/.... and bad ones, I tweaked tons of cd players and breaked certainly half a ton ! (Luckilly never paid more than few euros for all those second hand verygood cd players from the 80/90s !)
One has to be modest here : that's not saying a tweak is better than the engineering works... like with the cars, etc, etc ! There is a hystery about tweaking nowadays; try to explain your teen which want to be tweaked by a surgeon about her attribute that it's only a change and not surely an improvement ! The same for hifi !
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Yeah, I guess tweaking can become a threat for your mental health after a while. I take a 30 years old player with dried out capacitors and try to stick as close as possible to the original values, using what I feel will be best. If I start thinkering too much, I might put my love relationship at stakes... 😀
I did however chose 25V small values caps instead of 16V after reading that in most cases higher voltage ratings sound better.
To my surprise also, I just downloaded the service manual of the B226"S" to check the differences and the more expensive S version uses 2 x 1000uF in the PSU where my older, basic B226 uses 2 x 2200uF. I checked online the pictures of a B226S and indeed the PSU caps are 1000uF. Thats less than half the capacitance I have in mine. I wonder why they chose to reduce it and wether or not you can hear it. Seems a little bit weird from a company like Revox to save money on two caps for a machine that was 300US$ more expensive; there must be another reason...
Hi Kanedak,
I was doing the same thing as you many years ago. Caps will only improve the sound to certain level, and there are compromises between different caps. IMHO, I would focus on regulators, clocks and reclock circuits.
I was doing the same thing as you many years ago. Caps will only improve the sound to certain level, and there are compromises between different caps. IMHO, I would focus on regulators, clocks and reclock circuits.
Indeed,
but here I believe it's cheaper in SQ/P to invest on a (newer) DAC/layout 🙂
... because the performances will be limited by the jitter, the chips around the dac chip, the layout of the pcb itself as well...
but here I believe it's cheaper in SQ/P to invest on a (newer) DAC/layout 🙂
... because the performances will be limited by the jitter, the chips around the dac chip, the layout of the pcb itself as well...
Of course; that might be the next step. For now I'm focusing on making the player "healthy" again; I might replace the opamps while I'm at it but I'm not even sure. Then I will listen to it for a while "as is"; but I don't know what will come next. I've already checked clocks but the god ones are expensive; I've also checked a bunch of discrete regulators but same problem, too expensive for now. If I decide the Revox is worth it, I might invest later. First, fresh caps!
Excellent work. Panasonic FC and ELNA Silmics are what i also use for recapping. Do not worry about it. I know the feeling, you see one day a better cap out there and think if you should change it. I have gone that way and just ended up spending money without any actual gain in performance.
You received very good feedback from users here already.
You received very good feedback from users here already.
When I get the small value caps (during the coming week) I will start working on the B226 again. i'll try to make some decent pictures 🙂
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