More Tascam DA-3000 impressions
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| Posted on February 20, 2018 at 05:23:37 | ||
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Posts: 2448
Joined: June 14, 2005 |
    I'll sum up my experience after nine months with a DA-3000. The stock unit is capable of very good DSD128 recordings. It's quite convincing, if recordings are played back through a better DAC than the one that's incorporated in the unit. With lite internal modifications to the ADC and power supply sections, the recordings become nearly indistinguishable from the LP source. Externally, the unit responds to a better power cord, footers(Stillpoints Minis), and above all, synchronization to a good Word Clock(Antelope LiveClock powered by a Hynes LPS). Tascam is unresponsive to requests for schematics, so I limited the scope of internal modifications to what I could understand from inspection and a manual trace of the ADC section. The simplest upgrade is to replace the three-pin regulators on the power board with Belleson +/-12V discrete regulators. This is an improvement, but nothing like digging into the ADC section. The ADC section is a simple circuit, comprised of two stages of electrolytic coupling caps and NE5532 SOIC op amps, a balanced JRC NJW1195A volume control chip, and a Burr Brown PCM4202 ADC chip. The NE5532 is a generally well-respected op amp. The twenty or so coupling and power supply filtering caps in the ADC section are mediocre Suncon/Sanyo parts. I replaced them all with Panasonic FM and raised the value of the op amp filtering caps from 22uf to 100uf. I bypassed eight 47uf electrolytic coupling caps with a combination of small film caps (.01uf MIT RTX polystyrene and .01uf Russian FT-1 teflon.) This was a bit of work, but nothing beyond what a basic technician could do in 2-3 billable hours. The modified ADC and power supply section takes the unit up several notches. Now it's close enough to the analog source to confuse me as to which is which. You sit on the couch, stroking your beard, musing that what looks like and prices out for the Pro Audio market, is really anything but. There is little on the DIY or Pro forums about modifying the unit. The DECware mod addresses just the DAC section. Lampizator tried converting the DA-3000 ADC section to tubes, but doesn't appear to have productized the modifications. In any case, the above mods are within the reach of anyone with good soldering skills and a spare afternoon.
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