Chameleon DAC listening and modifications - Page 26

do these texas resisters change much with burn in? Michael had the following to say about the new DC30W

sounds like it's just a cleaner revision, more then a better sounding one.

Thanks for the heads up Mike

Sanyo Saga

Rhodes54, some Sanyo sepc dropped on my doormat yesterday, I wasn't even going to put them in as I was happy with the NX on that digital board. But the smell of the flux..... well you know.

Anyway glad I did, the sound is still essentialy the same as with nx, immeditate/fast/detailed, but now with the sepc its more naturaly richer/more body/presence but no FAT. This is no doubt due to upping the UF from 22uf with the nx which are way short of the 100uf spec.

But now the sting, these sepc are 560uf!!!!! to high? and more then twice the UF of the oscon sp that I took out because of bloat, and therefore another reason why I dragged my heels putting them in. However leaving the .1uf Wima bypass does do the trick, now having my cake and eating it.

Guess now have to look at those resistors, and spludge some of Pat's magic grease on those contacts, (don't you just hate those pops!!) and then leave the damned thing alone (hmm isolation transformer).

LOL, The thing is that the TX2575's are the opposite of coloured, they are (almost) totally uncoloured! Now you can finally hear what the average resistor does with the sound. :-)

I would not underestimate the importance of the Dac coupling caps Pat. They seemed to make a pretty big difference to me.I can't compare to blackgate as I never tried them, but the silmic 2 are pretty nice, and cheap as peanuts. Im a bit gun shy of modding the digital board after what Qusp told me a few pages back. I have another Reclocker and Digital board on the way from Michael. I think im almost done with my mods as well. I plan to replace the Ceramic cap on the digital board with another .1 wima and leave it alone. I may experiment with floating the ground. I do wonder if I've got enough UF at output. Im really enjoying the sound of these Dynamicap Caps at this point though. They seem to have plenty of sparkle at the top and a nice warm midrange with decent bass. Although replacing the output caps was on my list of things to do. It's hard to find suitable replacements. I like to keep everything pretty clean and neat looking inside and some of the caps are massive. I don't know if I could handle those massive 5.5 uf jupiters just a bit to large. Limits you to something like 32mm x 55mm. The 3.9uf mundors are still quite huge at 41x57 and the 4.7's are larger still. I've actually considered going with a 10uf Dynamicap, but I hate to spend 70$ on a pair of those all for nothing if my current 3 UF Dynamicaps are getting the job done.

I also realize there may be some benefit to wiring direct to the capacitors and avoiding board traces etc. I've used silver wire and a good quad eutectic solder here to minimize this, and it's a trade off i've made, im kind of meticulous and want a real clean inside. I know it may not be best for sound.

Edit: I really must emphasize how much difference replacing that Digital input cap made. Probably has to do with the value change of .1 from .01. The cap I used is a pretty good quality film cap as well. (Multicap RTX). I know most of you have removed this cap completely however.I noticed on the new revision chameleon Michael has put a different cap there, not sure if he changed the value or not. He's also got different caps in the .01 filter slot (silver mica slot).

On the new revision the value has changed to 0.1uF.

btw. Did you sort everything out with your DC30W? Did you already recplace the 10R resitor?

not yet rhodes. it seems to be working good though.

Hey, does anyone know if these VCXO are a drop in replacement for the current clocks? Would it have a positive effect?

yes, it definitely will make a difference. Especially with Asynchronous reclocking the XO should be very high quality.
Unfortunately Tentlabs doesn't offer TCXO's because their XO's are very good.

By the way: The clocks also benefit if you provide them their own, clean +5V. That's why I have the idea to put in three different regulators, one especially for the two TXCO's.

With all the praise about TX2575s it is time for me open my wallet and order some TX2575s... Since I am at it, I was wondering if ordering 233R for a 12 DAC setup makes sense. Did anyone try with 12 DACs?

Really?

Betting is now officialy open, PM me for the odds.

so, rhodes, does that mean the VCXO can't be dropped in place of the reclocking boards TCXO.

I'm not sure if you can because the names of the XOs speak for themself:
- TCXO = Temperature Controlled XO
- VCXO = Voltage Controlled XO

I will contact Guido from Tentlabs tomorrow to get some more info on this.