Posted by YCLee on August 15, 2004 at 19:44:21

Just added XO3 clock and the XO power supply to a Marantz CD95 and a Krell MD10 drive. The CD95 is based on a CDM1 while the Krell MD10 is a CDM3. Both drives are using SAA7220 and crystals are 11.2896Mhz. Removing the caps and old crystal is easy once the SAA7220 is found. (just snip them off). Clock input is taken from pin 11 of SAA7220 and digital out is taken from pin 14 (DOBM) and 13 (ground) to the XO3 board. Improvement is quite significant (30-40% overall inmprovement when used as a CD drive). The Krell user and I have independent listening sessions and we exchange listening notes 2 weeks later. Both of us come to the conclusion that the background is much quieter and therefore dynamics seems to be improved a lot. This especially shows when solo euqipment is playing, e.g. a sax is more present when playing. The soundstage also seems to be much "steadier". I was listening to some Sarah Brightman with orchestral background. The voice of Sarah seems to be very focused when singing from low to high volume with the orchestra background well spread out. It is hard to believe a more than 10 years old CDM1 will produce such a steady voice. The distance between the CD95 and the MD10 is much closer after the mod.
What seems a bit surprising to me is the removal of the glareness in the high frequency. I rather not to say softer but it is now with a much better palate.
I also did some comparison on the addition of the XO power supply as I made some jumpers to that I can add or remove the XO power supply easily for every disc. It improves the soundstage and dynamics further and even for the case of the MD10. It is a must for the mod.
Now when can Brian bring in some of the 1mH RF chokes from Guido so that I can mod the DAC? Also I think Brian should include an email address and a phone number in the new web site.
Thanks to Guido for the good work in the modules.
YCLee