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RE: Juli@ Follies... the epilogue

I say the epilogue because I'm basically out of significant mods to the Juli@.

The last thing I did this week was to remove the redundant Dexa regulators between the raw DC and the on-board Dexa regulators... so now I:

1. come directly from the a raw +-18v supply to the on-board +-9v regulators for the output stages (this used to be fed from a +-12v regulator pair)...

2. come directly from a raw +11v supply to an on-board +5v regulator for the DAC (this used to be fed from the same +12v regulator above)...

3. come directly from another raw +11v supply to an off-board +5v regulator for the digital board which then feeds the on-board +3.3v regulator.

My goal here was to reduce the number of cascaded regulators, which one of my tweak-mentors suggests will not sound as good as these regulators used solo per voltage rail. I need to go back and forth a couple of times to confirm which I think is better, but both are very good.

At this point, the sound I'm getting is breakthrough compared to what I had at the beginning of this odessey. Detail, naturalness, impact, density, dynamics, complexity, composure when things gets loud and/or complex are all several levels above using the stock Juli@... which was no slouch itself in the linear/hybrid-powered cMP environment.

I have a few more tricks to try at this point...

1. Finding & cutting superfluous +-12v & +-9v links... I don't use the balanced outputs, so I could un-power those chips. Also since I'm feeding the input voltages directly into the regulators, all of the upstream on-card bus traces are now just sources for interference and noise pickup.

2. Alternative RCA outputs, such as the WBT Next-gen's.

3. Determining if there are transistor-switched muting circuits & disable them.

4. Adding a fourth raw DC supply to feed the 3.3v regulator separate from the digital 5v.

5. Battery-power, especially direct battery power for the 3.3v digital supply as suggested by Alfred.

6. Alternative regulators, such as the Paul Hynes & Teddy Reg units.

7. Physically shield the card within the PC environment.

While I think these are all worthwhile avenues to pursue, I strongly suspect I have made the changes which will provide the greatest improvements... except possibly the battery power and shielding.

So I'll continue to tweak my Juli@ as time allows, but given where I've gotten, I will start to turn my attention to other areas of possible improvement... First, I have some ideas for a custom-fabricated case that will provide better physical and electrical isolation... and second, start to look at the up-coming alternative motherboards and possibly motherboard tweaking.

And of course, watch for SSD prices to fall.

Any other suggestions?
Greg in Mississippi

P.S. I'll try to post some pictures of the seperately-powered Juli@ this weekend.


Edits: 05/01/09
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