Marantz CD273

How are you getting on?
Interesting about the non oversampling. I may have to give it a go on my Marantz CD75.
Also want to see how you go on with the clock upgrade as I may do that too.
I'm guessing you have no headphones output on the player?

Yes sorry, no headphone output on the cd273, i have a philips cd373 which does but I took the board out as Id never use headphones in it.
 
To be honest I have a Parasound Pass Labs DAC and a Chord Mojo thing that I'm well happy with through a player with the CDM4/19 transport, or even the CDM2 in the Marantz CD75. I do like the TDA1541's though and I like the experience of playing around with these old machines. I have an Arcam in storage too but I can't remember which model, I need to check if it's the one with the double crown DAC. I know it's a TDA1641A, that's all I remember.

Thanks for keeping us updated thirteeneast and you all for your inputs.

I did increase the 47uF caps on the bottom right, sorry I've not got a schematic and forgot to check what they're there for but guessing it's to supply the TDA1541. I increased to 220uF 16v and swapped out two original Cerefines supplying the Opamps with some Nichicon Muse I had about, 100uF's. One of the best improvements so far with just those two changes. The Cerefines test good too.

I forgot to mention I replaced the 10uF caps after the regulators for 1uF electrolytic and added some 0.1uF ceramics to the legs of the regulators input and ground pins for the sake of good practice. Made a nice improvement it seemed. I prefer a higher ESR cap on regulators output.

The next change I'll try is increasing the 6,800uF smoothing cap to 10,000uF, all I have that'll fit well and the other 1000uF remaining cap in the power supply for the same value. Also the sockets are going in for the Opamps now I've made room
 
I would like to try the new Hugo M Upscaler (max. 705.6kHz @16bit) one day even if it is overkill for my application (max. 352.8Khz @16bit).
The price is very steep (especially if using only half of what it can do) and therefore having a go for the DIY version makes sence.

I sold the Chord 64 Dac some time ago as it just could not compete against the NOS DAC. It 'sounded" more "nerveus" and had less spacing information let's call it a "less analogue sounding experience".
 
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That is all very interesting and it will be an improvement of the sound but it will kill your player. And try to find the error then will be very difficult.

Maybe best thing to do here is contacting this guy and ask him if he still uses this player and how long it worked without issues in case he moved on.
 
Personally I'll be adding a 24 pin socket I now have but will just be giving the saa7020 it's own 7805 before bypassing it, as I don't want to change loads and then not really know what's made any differences.

My usual approach would be do everything at once, but here I'm going to treat this like fishing, and not with a net.
Unfortunately it seems the web has poisoned the recipe for NOS mod from what I can find, too many different options on what best, some say it's the best thing ever, some say it's awful, and agreed this is all up to personal taste, but causing damage to kit like speakers or CD player because of trying to squeeze some detail is no joke.
I can't even find an agreement of which value caps to decouple the tda1541.
 
Just do not change any caps yet on the TDA 1541 until you have heard what NOS does for you.

It is simply 3 wires that needs to bypass the SAA. The difference should be very clear.
For me it sounds more realistic and analogue. naturally one could argue that this has to do with the high frequency roll off. But the placing of instruments and especially voices are so much more detailed.

The instruments become "smaller" , by this i mean that they get the size they actually are and not smeared out between the speakers. (this is very difficult to explain but please let us know what You hear...

Best regards,
Frank
 
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I didn’t check this bit it sounds right. This chip should have a “tx/rx” for the crystal as wel. So just rewire it and you are done.

It can be that you will get some noise between the tracks as the “muting” is then missing. This can be solved as well naturally.
 
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