FrankenZERO - A bang for buck exploration with a DIY Heart ! - Page 15

This is what i'm contemplating to buy:

4700uF 16V Rubycon ZL (In place of 4700uF 25V Nichi PW, would the lower voltage rating matter?)
1500uF 16V Rubycon ZL (In place of 1200uF 16V Nichi PW)
330uF 25V Panasonic FM
47uF 25V Panasonic FM
100uF 20V Sanyo Oscon SA (These are expensive!)
330uF 16V Panasonic FM

Would this be adequate? I'm mainly concerned about the rubycon selection, haven't seen anyone using these caps in place of the nichicon pw. I could also change them to panasonic FM/FCs; which would be better?

Rubycon ZL are OK, Panasonic FM - I don't know, I prefer FA to FC, FG to FA and PX above all of them but they are strictly for audio. For digital - Sanyo WG are IMHO the best, Nippon Chemicon KZJ second. If OScon - the SP series only, with OFC wires.

Thanks for the help. Unfortunately Farnell has a really limited supply of caps. The most readily available ones are the panasonic FM/FCs. I'll try source for the caps you've mentioned. My budget is pretty tight though.

However, I'll be bypassing most of these caps with mil-spec PIO caps, as recommended by PP. He says that once the electrolytic caps are bypassed, the difference in quality between the panasonic and higher quality caps are almost negligible?

Panasonic FA seems to be discontinued.. Farnell doesn't have FG and PX either.

Sanyo WG isn't available either. Sanyo SP doesn't have the 100uF 20/25V value that can replace the 100uF 25V cap..
But there's rubycon ZL, ZA, YXF, Nichicon HD, PM, TVX... Vishay sprague, multicomp, cornell dibilier, NTE, and lots of Vishay BC caps.

Are Vishay BC caps any good? They seem to be the most readily available at farnell.

and Farnell doesn't stock Nippon Chemicon.

Didn't think sourcing for caps for the frankenzero was going to be such a tough job.

4700uf and 1500uf must be at least 25v. Someone measured voltage around those caps, it was c.a 23-25v.

Oh. In that case I'll have to use panasonic FC instead of rubycon ZL for the 4700uF cap, rubycon doesn't have it in that value. Unless I go multicomp/vishay BC/United chemicon, but there doesn't seem to be much info on these capacitors.

Thanks for your help.

i use vishay BC Components in my zero as a 4700uf 25v cap.
Its warmer, more analog like. In my opinion BC mixed with Panas FC are really good pair. You should Try

My FRANKEN impressions

I had my zero Franken'ed a while back. however, due to unforseen circumstances, I had to stop the burn-in

Propos to P.Peete who was there to assist me at every turn. His responses were thorough and educational.

I took at few additional modifications, namely:

* on the PSU section, I upgraded the 2 x 1000uf with 2 x 2200uf, doubling the capacitance offered to the PSU.

* I isolated chassis ground from audio (PCB) ground. The eath HDAM was grounded to audio ground.

* on the V+ and V- to the HDAM, I soldered a 1000uf cap to each voltage leg (total 2 caps) using audio ground for common ground. Idea is to stabilize further the voltage to the HDAM.

with that, I powered on the Zero -

Wow. bigger soundstage but not by much. Then I noticed the bass is less. Much less. I had to take it apart again to see if I grounded wrong some of the caps. Nope, everything checks out. I listened to it throughout to monitor the changes. At around 70 hours, when things were not changing, I PM'ed Peete. True enough, he predicted that I was at about 75 hours. What can I say - he's done this many times that he knows the behavior of the Franken already. Then he also gave me the other behavior to expect as I go through the burn-in process.

I was so excited about this that I told myself: Heck, let it burn in without further monitoring. So I did. Let it sit there for another 40+ hours. Now at 125 hours, the separation is even wider - I mean bigger soundstage. I'm liking this. Bass is back is where I started before the mods. But the details in the music - amazing. GREAT mids. Timbre is much better. I used hi-res CD from Santana's Oye Como va. Instrument layering is amazing. I've had the Keces 151, MD-10, Yulong - they all sound very digital compared to the Franken. The Franken is that good.

I have another 120 hours to go through before it finally stabilizes. Can't wait to complete it. Peete has told me what to expect further - more bass (Yes!), even bigger soundstage (Yes!) and sparkling highs (Yes!)

If everything works out, then this raised the bar significantly for my next source. I'm excited.

my zero has over 200h of burn in. Sound's changing all the time. I'm waiting for settling down those PIOs .
My edition of Fraknen mod is quite different than from FAQ on 1st page. Today probably i'll recieve few Black Gates STD ( N are too expensive), Silmics II and Nichicon FG. I'll post pictures and write few words about SQ and my observations on Sunday.
Stay tuned

PP - I'm been wondering about that for quite sometime now. if the cap is added on the v2 to help on the voltage delivery, how could 1uf do it? my 1000uf were just spares, so no cost was considered for it. worst case, how can it degrade sound? those pins are supply rails for the HDAM. see my wiring below (note they are the same thing, just trying to visualize for everyone)


pin 4 (V+) ----- GND ----- pin 8 (V-)

+15 volts ------- 0v ----- -15 volts

+ 1000uf ---- audio gnd ---- -1000uf


what do you think?

PP - 100uf Pana FM

solder one cap directly to V+ and hdam ground

then the other cap to V- and hdam ground

then connect hdam ground to audio ground (output RCA leg), which is isolated from chassis ground.

hope it works for you, too, like it did for me.

Has anyone done a comparison of the FrankenZERO to more expensive DACs like the Zapfiltered Zhaolu, Oritek OMZ, Musical Fidelity V-DAC, Cambridge DacMagic, Apogee Duet, DIYEDEN Great March 2, Stello DA100, Lavry DA10, Benchmark DAC1, etc.?

Or even a direct comparison to the Zero with HDAM upgrade?