3 mm diameter will be much too strong. I have 2 mm bought in Poland - they are too strong too related to the light weight of K501 - I think it depends on the manufacturer or the purpose and there should be also weaker 2mm elastic bands on the market.

This is all what remained - try to decode my notes and the schema (it will be easy, looking at the pictures at the same time) and be very, very careful (500 Volts, very easy to burn a lot of components that are not easy to buy). I had a plan for more modifications, but in the end there was not...

- The general problem is with the weakest link. You can swap for example headphones without any effect if you source or amplifier significantly reshapes/colorize the sound. - Most of the audio equipment is a piece of scrap, useless, despite of great components inside. For example I have ~60-70...

The general problem is with the weakest link. Most of the audio equipment is a piece of scrap, useless, despite of great components inside. So simplification is needed, and the state of art design. This is why I love American and British equipment as an end user, and like Japanese even more as a...

ESS ES9018K2M is quite good, not as good as full ES9018 for sure, but better than ES9028Q2 (this has a volume control). Never the less the ESS chips sound still a little bit too technical to me - they are unable to release the sound fully as a good DIY modification of any better old CD player does.

I'm selling it here: https://www.ebay.pl/itm/122850887152

Internals of my "SRM252U".

Quote: No, try PCM179x, ES9023 or even PCM5102A better then, because: CS4398 - could and lifeless to me, WM8741 and WM8740 - both sounds like broken, even in the best possible circuit - they have a problem with some sort of compression and sound is too dynamic in an artificial way, and...

PCM5102 was rather mediocre - worse even than PCM2702 (not PCM2704) in my mostly spider-soldered solution. I haven't tested PCM5102A yet, but the only difference is that it has a slightly reduced amplitude (lower than 2V RMS), because PCM5102 external +3.3V and internally pump-generated -3.3V...

You probably right with "Tube DAC". I've already modified a few CDPs (all of them had 2x PCM56/61 or better) by removing all op-amps and providing some discrete I/V similar in sound signature to a tube. Of course doing something with a typical OS was a second crucial part of the modification -...

Despite my previous mixed feeling about musicality of ES9018 based on the experience with entry-level Audio-GD DAC+headamp (no-loopback, no-opamp, A-class output), I must confess that I have recently bought old flagship-killer: Meizu MX4 Pro phablet/smartphon with mobile version of ES9018 and...

Base on this PCB, I've reinvent a new amp, and it sounds 100 times better for me (100x because in the original form it doesn't sound at all). Lehmann Audio BCL in the original form (with every possible op-amp) is one of the worse A-class amp I had - the only one worse was Beyerdynamic A1 (which...

In Lehmann BCL the good thing is to remove 1k5 resistors (these between Base of BD139/BD140 and +/-) and replace it with current sources - I put here JFET's, removing even this small input NPN/PNP transistors. Next thing is to play with the op-amp's and the resistors in the loop and the best is...

This Onkyo is very old and looking at the way is build, I sure that is free from op-amps. It's probably not a very "linear" amplifier (not the 0.001% harmonic class as a modern ones), because of not very high amplification in the open loop. This last feature of modern amps (which push...

This 120 Ohm resistors on jack or DIN-360 headphone output is a Bayerdynamic standard for typical 600 Ohm headphones and every amp had it in the vintage era.

Lehmann BCL needs a lot of modification to sounds good. Vintage amp drives headphones very differently, because of 120 Ohm resistance prior to the jack output - it drives the headphones in the current way (head amp dives it in the voltage way). I have to look at this Onkyo TX-330. Most of the...

This isn't K500 on the pictures, but probably K401. K500 has the 4-wires cable and I see there only 3-wires like in K501 and K401.

I strongly prefer AD1955 over other delta-sigmas like ES9018, WM8740 and WM8741. From my experience, ES9018 in my Audio-GD is no better than any Cirrus or Wolfson - just different, but sonically boring, not for an audiophile at all. I didn't test delta-sigma or advanced segment PCMs from TI, and...

I have sold mine AKG K550. Dumped or not, burn-in or not, was the same crap as Sony MDR-Z700 or AKG K272HD. Unforgivable lack of clarity, because of some sort of strange (I think) distortion (stiff diaphragm resonance or reflected wave?). K701, K500, K501, K401, K240, K140 sound fabulous in...

AKG K550 reminds me AKG K272HD and Sony MDR-ZX700 - both the same not very clear in therms of musicality. I have to dump it.

Ask some DIY guys for a price of embedding in it a S/PDIF interface. It's not a problem. I keep my PD-91 unmodified as long as possible. It was my first high-end source 22 years ago and it is still great, but right now I prefer simpler, more direct and less changed sound.

But FiiO E9 is not even as good as a mediocre CD player. FiiO E9 just hurts sound.  

Only one of mine had the channel imbalance, the second has "only" middle range nasty peak, and the third K340 is tonally 100% balanced - by the way I'm selling it here: http://www.ebay.pl/itm/121102582019

Quote: Which one of the JVC you recommend over which one of the Denon?