Quote: Which post were you referring to with the instructions? The one with the 3 steps or the 4 steps further down?  

Quote:   How do you change the crystal?    

Quote: If he tells me they are very good, that won't make them sound any better to me. I think ears are the best measurement, better than any theoretical concepts.  

Quote: Have you tried them yourself? My experience was they initially fluctuated from rather poor to average sounding and only started sounding excellent (well above any IC op-amp) after weeks of playback.  

Quote:   I'm trying to do this upgrade and I don't understand step 4 - what do you mean solder the 12V power supply to the new crystal? You mean that 4-pin connector you plug into the back of the STX?    

Quote: Well yeah you could definitely kill your STX if they're on the wrong way.    

Quote: How did you kill it by using adapters? I'm a bit worried about my soldering job, my STX has started sounding a bit strange.  

Quote: If that's your goal you won't regret moving to discretes. No IC op-amps are as warm in my opinion.  

Quote: Surely you could use an extension lead to the PCI slot?  

These new drivers seem to have increased the volume output somehow. Not that I'm complaining, I just noticed my amp doesn't need to go as high when i'm playing music or watching videos.

ASIO and KS definitely sound different on my rig. ASIO seems stronger and hard-edged with pronounced highs, while KS is flatter. I have no idea why that is.

Quote: Well I worked it out. The one closest to the edge is the right channel, if anyone is interested. Thanks guys  

Ah okay, thanks i'll give that a try. I thought that would make it too large but I'll see!

Quote: Thanks, but I don't know if it would help. The problem is each wire is split into about 6 little wires and it's still going to be hard to put them all together and get them in the hole. Does it matter if I just place all the wires on top of the hole and solder? I mean, will it...

Hi there I'm trying to solder an op-amp onto a DIP8 socket, and could use some advice. Each wire running from the op-amp is split into a number of tiny wires which makes it hard to fit in the holes of the socket, if that makes sense. It's extremely hard to get all them in the holes at the same...

Quote: It matters for me because I'm trying to identify which op-amp is possibly defective. Do you know or not? It's okay if you don't, I won't flame you :) 

Thanks, but I want to know which JRC op-amp is right-channel and which one is left-channel. Top or bottom?

Can someone tell me which op-amp is left and right channel in this pic?

Quote: Possibly, but I think if it was soldering it would either work or not. The circuit is either connected or not, right?   I'm pretty sure it's burn in, beacuse it's balancing out which I didn't think it would do (I installed one to use in the buffer before the other so it had...

Does anyone know if it matters whether the DIP8 socket is gold or silver? I am using 2 to fit two discrete op-amps. One is gold, the other silver. I'm pretty sure one channel is louder than the other. Could it be the adapter material or more likely my lousy soldering?

Wow, great descriptions Reputator, exactly what I was looking for!

How do the OPA2107 compare with the OPA2134?

Well the new driver is about 1mb bigger than the last one so there must have been some significant changes.

Quote: Fantastic, can't wait to try this! Can anyone who has tried these say if they offer the same huge improvement in sound that the last update in July did?  

Quote: You should probably have your power off on all devices when you are plugging in RCAs - I once blew my amp doing that.