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I mostly agree with you

On the rare occasions where I was able to compare a modded machine and an unmodded machine side by side, I was not convinced that the modded machine sounded better.

It is a pretty big call to place your trust on someone to make changes to a brand new machine, losing the warranty [not good when something unrelated to the mod breaks and the modder is unable to fix], that they even know what they are doing, and that the result is an improvement [esp. since most people are not in a position to do a side by side comparison]

It's easy to convince oneself that there is in fact an improvement when there isn't.

Swapping out cheap parts with more expensive ones may not necessarily result in an improvement in my opinion. Often the "improvement" turns out to be fatiguing in the long run because it's actually a form of distortion, such as an exaggeration of transients due to the new (more expensive) component being less of a match to the circuit than the cheap one.

And replacing the clock doesn't necessarily reduce jitter either - esp. in universal players where the master clock goes through a PLL to convert clock rate to an audio frequency.

Bypassing muting transistors or shorting DC caps may result in an improvement, but increases the risk of damage to equipment. Not everyone who has their player modded understand the risk involved or precautions to take. Bypassing output buffers can also result in impedance mismatch with passive switchers/volume controls.

Finally, improving voltage rail stability may offer an improvement, but simply replacing a switching supply with a linear one is not necessarily a good idea.

Like you, I have heard of horror stories where people get their machine modded, decided they don't like the sound, or it doesn't work with passive line stages, and suddenly the modder is not interested in talking to them or returning phone calls/email ... I won't name the modder, but it's not Ric [I have never experienced Ric's mods, or know anyone who has, so can't comment one way or another].


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