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SCD-777ES Unbound: Part 1The short and sweet of it: A quantum-leap performance upgrade resulting in SACD playback that is quick, taut, Windex-transparent, dynamic, and suffused with the flow, liquidity, spaciousness, body, bloom, and, yes, the emotional connection we associate with analog. On the best recordings, you may forget that you’re listening to reproduced music. CD playback is more open, detailed, spacious, and relaxed.
My 777’s Mod History:
Since I acquired it new in August 2000, my 777 has journeyed four times to Richard Kern’s for him to install, successively, the “basic†Kern mod (reviewed at www.audioasylum.com/forums/hirez/messages/16187.html), the “mostly†Audiocom mod (www.audioasylum.com/forums/hirez/messages/38609.html), the original Audiocom Super Clock (www.audioasylum.com/forums/hirez/messages/44288.html), and now the Super Clock 2 and Kern’s own “transport†mod (along with the removal of two filter chokes from the 777’s power supply, as explained below). Each of the first three mods* elevated the performance of playback on the 777 to a significant degree. Forget “significant degree†for the latest mods. Once they’d burned in, I wished I’d pre-equipped my listening chair with a seat belt and nearby CD-bookcase with a stash of Pampers.
* Everything labeled here for convenience as a “mod†is in fact the replacement, or “upgrade,†of stock with higher-grade parts. None of the “mods,†including either version of the multi-component Super Clock, modify the 777’s circuit topology.
The Mods:
The Super Clock 2 is a newer, claimed-to-be lower-jitter version of the original Audiocom Super Clock. The “transport mod†is achieved by replacing 60 surface-mounted stock capacitors with Black Gate caps on the transport’s RF and decoder boards. Each of the stock caps is roughly the size of a pencil-mounted eraser. Their diminutive size and surface mounting virtually mandate that this mod be performed by a qualified technician with steady hands and lots of patience. The costs were $368 parts and labor for the Super Clock 2 and $300 parts and labor for the transport mod.
As Richard Kern relates it, the impetus for the “transport mod†was a listening demonstration at Positive Feedback editor David Robinson’s home which pitted the new Meitner DAC/Philips transport combination against a Sony SCD-1 equipped with the Kern/Audiocom mods and a Super Clock 2 (but, of course, sans the yet-to-be-implemented “transport modâ€). To Richard’s ears, the smooth, open, “analog-like†flow of the Meitner’s presentation made the SCD-1 sound harsh by comparison. He attributed the harshness to the SCD-1’s transport section and decided to see if he could “approach†the Meitner’s analog character by upgrading the capacitors in the RF and decoder boards of SCD-1’s and SCD-777ES’s.
I found out about the transport mod when a 777 owner asked me via e-mail what I thought about it. I queried Richard Kern and arranged to have that mod and the Super Clock 2 installed. Richard also suggested that since my 777 runs on conditioned power (via a Shunyata Hydra) I consider removing two filter chokes from the 777’s power supply. He indicated that doing so would preserve dynamics with the mod installed.
Turnaround and Burn-in:
I drove my 777 to Richard’s (he’s an hour-and-a-half away) on a Thursday morning. After installing the mods, Richard burned them in for about 40 hours before I picked up the player the following Monday. He indicated that the Super Clock 2 is a “quick†burn-in and that I would notice its effect immediately. The transport mod would require two weeks of burn-in, but that required only that the player remain “on,†as opposed to playing program. I played SACD’s and CD’s four to six hours daily during that period and for a while had to endure the brash forward presentation typical of early burn-in of the Black Gates.
Listening – SACD’s:
For reference, my listening room is a finished daylight basement 26’6†long by 14’3†wide by 7’8†high. Magnepan 1.6QR’s are placed 83†ahead of the front wall and 36†in from the side walls, with a four-inch toe-in and tweeters outboard. My seating position places my ears eight-and-a-half feet from the centers of the respective panels. Nineteen ASC Tube, Super, and Studio Traps control room modes and diffusion. The “business end†of the room can be seen at www.geocities.com/jimtranr/front_view.jpg.
This speaker, seating, and acoustic treatment placement, combined with the sonic improvements rendered by earlier mods, had already provided wall-to-wall and deep front-to-rear soundstaging, well-defined, palpable images, gut-thumping bass, natural tonality, and a reasonable sense of “being there†on well-recorded SACD’s and CD’s. Or so I thought.
As predicted by Richard, the Super Clock 2 strutted its stuff right off the bat. As effective as the original Super Clock is, the new one creamed it in terms of transient snap, image articulation, and bass heft and definition. The lateral soundstage widened a tad on most program material (whether the medium was SACD or Red Book, the venue a symphony hall, hotel ballroom, or jazz club), and the rear corners became even more detail-visible than they had following the earlier mods.
At about 115 hours, previously-unheard ambient cues began to emerge from their burial grounds in the pre-mod noise floor. They were accompanied by other low-level information that fleshed out the soundstage, expanding its reach and enhancing the palpability of it constituent instruments and voices. Had burn-in ended there, I would have termed the mods a “significant upgrade.â€
The real deal occurred at some point beyond 320 hours as I welcomed the combined Ellington/Basie aggregation (Duke Ellington Meets Count Basie, Columbia/Legacy SS 65571) into my listening room. That allusion is not exaggeration. As an indication of things to come, “Battle Royal†exploded out of the box, a combination of sonority, dynamics, openness, bloom, and three-dimensionality that rendered mechanical, compressed, and artificial everything I had listened to prior to these latest mods. Brass has bite (or when the program calls for it, sonorous warmth) _and_ reach, but never turns edgy, not even during solo or ensemble peaks. The ensemble itself never folds up, but remains cohesive and individually perceptible across and into the well-defined soundstage at high levels. And, always, there’s the “thereness,†the sense that I can reach in and shake the hands of jazz nobility. In part, that perception stems from the way the instruments “bloom†into the space around them, as they do when you hear them in live performance in anything other than an anechoic chamber.
Leonard Bernstein’s “Symphonic Dances from West Side Story†(Bernstein Conducts Bernstein, Sony SS 89043) is a brassy evocation of New York youth gang warfare, a 1961 Columbia recording many listeners consider “hot.†I’m persuaded by my listening with the new mods that this perception of “heat†stems at least in part from soundstage compression—and consequent ensemble “bunching upâ€â€”engendered by playback equipment that doesn’t extract the low-level cues that enable us to perceive space and bloom. With the mods, the soundstage broadens and deepens both internally and externally—and, for example, trumpet output isn’t confined to a single point (or single ensemble point, if you will) in space, but rather flows outward from its point of origin to “work the room.†The result is across-the-board tonal balance rather than the peakiness frequently associated with this recording. Some may consider the somewhat warmer, far more spacious result a “polite†rendering. I don’t. The work loses none of its drive or bite, its dynamics are enhanced considerably, and more of Lenny’s inner voicing becomes evident, leading me to suspect that this is the recording balance he, the producer, and the engineer intended.
(Continued)
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Topic - SCD-777ES Unbound: Kern Transport Mod & Super Clock 2, Pt. 1 - Jim Treanor 18:15:19 03/09/03 (0)
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