Glenn2 said:
Hope your swede is ok Glenn.
The dac magic is ok. It is definately good value at £200. All my upgrades to the Dac magic offer an option upgrade to a pair of Bursons (a right pain in the A$$ to fit) and of course they look nicer in a picture than a pair smt opamp
I have one of those Maplin psu here at work and yes it does make a small improvement and is worth £16. I have been trying different transformers with the dac magic and found a 50VA toroidal offered good gain. It makes the dac more fluid and at first boring. The dacs balance improved no end.
Typical CA with the caps, they use complete rubbish.
Brent
6h5c said:Here's Ray...
Personally, I think the CD67 has a better PCB layout. Also, it uses regulated power for the drivers and has more room for big caps. The servo and decoder IC are combined in the SAA7372, so power layout is less complex.
My
I'm sure Lee has found this a problem much more than me but it seems the SA7372 hold back the CD67 and also the CD17. After plenty of mods this chip just seems to strangle/hold back the audio. Lee may explain better has he has been trying hard to get this chip to sing.
Brent
rowemeister said:
Damned forum isn't emailing me thread updates again!!
I've extensively modded a cd63, cd67 and cd17KI and I say with absolute certainty that the cd63 is MILES AND MILES better. All three players had exactly the same mods done, even using the same parts transferred between them.
Once that servo chip in the cd63 is clocked, the detail and level of separation is in a totally different league. The integrated servo/decoder chip just cannot compete I'm afraid.
Cheers, Lee.
Hey Brent,
Since you are going to ship the C2 anyway, could you sell me some SMD oscillators to go with it? Like 8.4672, 16.9344 and 33.8688?
I'd like to use them on my Flea PCB, but d@mn Farnell and Digi-Key don't carry them.
Also nice to see if there's a difference in jitter compared to the C2 when I mount them on the Flea.
Ray
Since you are going to ship the C2 anyway, could you sell me some SMD oscillators to go with it? Like 8.4672, 16.9344 and 33.8688?
I'd like to use them on my Flea PCB, but d@mn Farnell and Digi-Key don't carry them.
Also nice to see if there's a difference in jitter compared to the C2 when I mount them on the Flea.
Ray
rowemeister said:
Hope your swede is ok Glenn.
The dac magic is ok. It is definately good value at £200. All my upgrades to the Dac magic offer an option upgrade to a pair of Bursons (a right pain in the A$$ to fit) and of course they look nicer in a picture than a pair smt opamp
I have one of those Maplin psu here at work and yes it does make a small improvement and is worth £16. I have been trying different transformers with the dac magic and found a 50VA toroidal offered good gain. It makes the dac more fluid and at first boring. The dacs balance improved no end.
Typical CA with the caps, they use complete rubbish.
Brent
I won't deviate this thread too much so last word on the DM, but I found the 36VA Maplin tx made a very large improvement and I wasn't really expecting any. I'm really enjoying this DAC with an SB3 as a transport, by the way. It can sound a little bit clinical, but that's how I like it.
When I went to unplug the original wall-wart PSU, it came apart in my hands. The casework had partially melted! I think in order to squeeze it into a plug-top case they under-specced it voltage-wise. It gets blisteringly hot with no load at all so I think the core is saturating at my mains level, which is high at 250V but still within UK specs (230V -6%/+10%). To anyone who owns a DacMagic, get the Maplin PSU if only to not burn your house down. The CA one is just a bought-in item from Sunny Electronics so probably only a problem for UK users.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
