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In Reply to: RE: changes from stock posted by jusbe on March 26, 2015 at 13:49:04
And the amount of time and thought that you exert in chasing down your digital gremlins. Having said that, I am very glad that I do not seem to mind the sound of the Sabre DACs. In fact, I find that most decent quality digital playback systems nowadays sound very, very good to me and I cannot imagine sweating the, what are to me, infinitely small details as you do. Nonetheless, I am glad that there are folks such as you so that I and others might benefit from your efforts.
Please understand that I am not criticizing you, merely critiquing. In my world, the sound of the room and the speakers in that room, as well as the quality of the source material are of MUCH greater importance. And until I manage to get those aspects right - and they most assuredly are not (yet), I will not spend any of my time or money trying to improve the quality of sound from my digital playback chain.
To each his own, I suppose...
-RW-
Follow Ups:
And since we so various and variable, it's easy to see why some things appeal to some and not to others. I like my present speaker/room combinations. And my music is what it is: some of it is well-recorded, some not. The performance is my guide. Good production is just a bonus.By the way, I strongly recommend having a listen to a JLTi 105D, if you get the chance. It is really good, and probably very good value too, for the sound it generates. I would never be so foolish as to suggest that since it didn't please me in the final analysis, it wouldn't suit others.
The other thing to mention - although we didn't see it demonstrated - is that just before the audio meeting, Joe Rasmussen took his 105D to a local dealer and they compared the video output too. Apparently the other improvements he makes to the player (which he didn't discuss) compete rather well with the Darbee Edition of the 105D. Perhaps this is related to the clocks.
Lastly, Joe also makes a version of the 105D with the Vacuum State Uberclock. This, however, costs a lot more...
Big J
"... only a very few individuals understand as yet that personal salvation is a contradiction in terms."
Edits: 03/27/15
Modders have been modding Oppos for years. You got your new fangled clocks, analog mods, digital mods, aftermarket fuses, or no fuse at all, linear power supply, WA Quantum Chips, my metal and cork to isolate the transformer and reduce that very toxic magnetic field, Audio Magic Pulse Gen ZX, pwb foils up the wazoo, 3M AB5100S RFI/EMI absorbing material on all semiconductor chips, Marigo dots, damping for the CD tray. Where does it all end? Lol
Perhaps some new clocks would improve my player (not an Oppo). Perhaps not. Seems the aftermarket clock industry has cooled off a little.
Still, the main event at Joe's presentation was his filter circuit and the effects were significant. Let's see where this leads.
Big J
"... only a very few individuals understand as yet that personal salvation is a contradiction in terms."
The aftermarket clock industry has probably cooled off because the original motivation for this tweak has now largely gone! In the 90s, stock designs were comparatively poor compared to the "modded" version partly due to the (often) poor clock stability, but also due to board layout. Additionally, when digital filters were only available in separate ICs they often degraded the bitclock (for example PMD-100 digital filter). There is now little benefit from retro-fitting a clock PCB into a "modern" CD player partly due to the fact that CDP product category is now very niche, and secondly because it is now comparatively well understood how to minimise jitter through various strategies such as distributed PLL, reclocking, SRC etc. Often grafting a second board with flying wires etc will often make things worse no matter how good the specification of the clock!
If using a separate DAC, a real benefit can still be had by using a separate master clock between the source and DAC (with the shortest possible connection and preferably AES balanced between clock and DAC). Then it *almost* doesn't matter what you have upstream.
I now use an Oppo 103 (completely stock) exclusively as a transport and fileserver between a Grimm CC1 and NAD M51. I wouldn't bother touching anything inside the Oppo as the gains would be insignificant.
Regards Anthony
"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.." Keats
With respect to the Oppo 103 you might be surprised what a little mu metal, AB2100S, Audio Magic Super Fuse, WA Quantum Chips, and damping the transport will do for transparency, detail and bass performance. Guess it all comes down to where one is satisfied with the sound. These are things I did myself AFTER I received my Modded Oppo 103. Otherwise, the Oppo 103, even the modded one, sounds rather generic and blah.
Good grief! There's a lot of tweaking going on there! What were the original mods on the unit before you actioned the extras?
I am very impressed with the 103 as a product - nicely made and a very good feature set.
You are quite right - everyone has different requirements, tastes and preferences. In my case, the Oppo is only for network audio streaming and audio disc playback (CD, and home produced DVD Audio) and my downstream components are such that the source is effectively irrelevant.
I don't use the Oppo as a video source and haven't listened to my Oppo via the analogue outputs as my reference playback system is entirely digital feeding up to the power amp...and so have no idea how "bad" it would sound and therefore no motivation to do any internal mods. Others may find that they need to tweak their Oppo to improve the sound. In my case, given the downstream configuration, tweaking the Oppo would achieve nothing that justified the effort and expense.
As an audio transport, the stock unit performs very well (suggesting solid engineering). Even the HDMI output (which as an interface is reknowned for high levels of jitter for audio) is not bad when feeding my M51 DAC directly. The M51 uses a 108MHz reference clock (which happens to conveniently be a standard pixel clock) so I wouldn't be surprised if the HDMI input is reclocked with respect to the internal reference of the M51 but still nowhere near as good as a Grimm CC1 or Apogee Big Ben! However, to listen to an SACD layer with an external DAC I have to use HDMI.
Regards Anthony
"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.." Keats
It was all planned, I never actually listened to the Oppo prior to mods by EVS. Then as time passed here were some interesting things that happened along the way, many things really. It's all a question where one chooses to get off. I'm more experimental perhaps than most. For me, it's more or less a never ending saga. Hopefully never ending. Everything is relative. I can certainly understand why someone would prefer not to touch the Oppo.
Edits: 04/02/15
There's some re-clocking going on in my Lite arrangement but, you never know. Perhaps a better clock would improve things. That said, the Grimm is a bit 'spendy' for me. Glad you like it, though.
Big J
"... only a very few individuals understand as yet that personal salvation is a contradiction in terms."
I needed the Grimm primarily for my digital recordings. However, I started off with an Apogee Big Ben which also works well as a reclocking digital hub since you can convert between formats (eg. optical to AES). The Grimm is certainly discernibly better. However, it certainly doesn't justify the price difference if the primary aim is "reclocking" for the sake of it.
Most DACs these days do internal reclocking of one sort or another, so I certainly wouldn't advocate a Big Ben as an essential component in your case. However, if you are stuck with an optical output from a Network Streamer for example, the Big Ben will transform it into something sounding more like a reference source when you feed the AES output to your reference DAC!
Regards Anthony
"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.." Keats
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