Quote: These are some of the more representative pictures I took of the stock amp plate.  Based on what the OP's mods look like, it appears (to me) that the OP installed the Wima caps in place of some existing polyester caps (in yellow in the pictures) and through-hole ceramics.  There were...

Cheers mate!    What type of SMDs are you referring to that are coming out these days ?  I'm going to evaluate some PPS caps against MKPs or PPs (non-metalized polypropylene) for signal coupling when possible in the future.  I have only used PPS film caps for compensation and filters, and...

Quote: First of all, the polymers were not OSCONs.  OSCON is one of Sanyo's brands if memory serves me correctly.  They are marked by Sanyo's markings.  These are who knows what make type of polymers.  Secondly, polymers are way better than electrolytics (typical electrolytics) at HIGH...

Quote:   I don't think you have read the whole thread...   The Silmics II's are in a signal coupling situation, the ceramics that were surface mount were used for signal coupling (in my mod, as indicated by the pictures with circles around the caps), and the back to back config...

You can also lay the capacitors on its side, so instead of standing up like that, turn them 90 degrees to lie on the board, the legs absolutely won't touch anything then.  I think that's how 1 of 2 sets of my Silmics were mounted to avoid the surface mounted parts.    I guess Elna changed...

Here is how I did my back to back Silmic II's soldered to a surface mount spot of the polymers at the input, demonstrated on an old dead video card:     And you want to ideally NOT use wires to lengthen the legs of the caps, because it introduces an extra un-shielded pathway for hum...

Quote: The sound improvement was big to my ears.  I didn't have 2 sets to do A/B comparisons, but they definitely sounded better to 3 pairs of ears I had auditioning them on top of mine.   I'll post a picture sometime on how I managed to rig the 2 back to back caps onto a surface mount.

Quote:   I rested my Silmics flat against the board (on top of some surface mount parts, if I remember correctly) and glued it down like that.   For the other caps that are through-hole, I noticed there is about 1 cm of room behind the board, so if you have too much crowding, or just...

Oh and for the Silmic replacements, I trimmed the legs of the Silmics as short as possible and soldered them onto the pads then used some hot glue to hold them in place.  Try to keep the legs short.  

Looking great!  Very clean de-solder!  

As for benefits to shunting vs. replacing them with wires - NO DIFFERENCE.  Perhaps a difference if you are dealing with super high frequencies like in the Ghz range, but not in this case, absolutely not.  It is simpler to just shunt with a wire, and it is gentler to the PCB as a result as well.

Quote:   Looks good, looks like you have got it all down.    When you shunt the ceramic/polymers, the capacitance is replaced by inductance of a wire (which is tiny, tiny), and the AC coupling becomes DC coupling, and you get rid of that pesky capacitor.   When you replace the...

Quote:   Tim, the RED circled caps are the ones you want to bypass with a wire (shunt them), and the blue circled ones replace with some high quality Silmic II's.  Back to back reduces distortion since Silmic's don't come in already made bipolar varieties (so back to back makes your own...

Quote:   The ceramics you want to bypass are the ones in the bottom part of that picture you took, they are in the signal path.  The ones you replaced with film caps that are red can stay there.  Take a look at the diyaudio thread or the pictures a few posts above, there are two images...

Quote:   Check the voltage across this cap with the amp powered on, say on a work bench or something with a multi-meter.  If the voltage across this cap (any of the ceramics in that picture, NOT ALL CERAMICS ONBOARD) is just a few milivolts (mV), bypass it with a wire.    My guess is...

Quote:   I just wanted to chip in and say that the larger ceramics as indicated by circles in the earlier pictures are not decoupling caps for the power rails, they are coupling caps for the signals (I had to double check to make sure with a meter for continuity).  That is why they are...

Absolutely agreed.  I have yet to build a gamma2, but am currently looking at other DIY sources and the ESS Sabre based ones look extremely promising but super expensive.    Quote:  

You are right to say the perceived gap has been narrowed a lot.  However, that's based on a static gap which as a function of time from 10 years has widened tremendously.  Audio in general, internal, external, onboard or offboard has changed a lot the last 10 years.  What was the benchmark for...

Nvidia's Sound Storm on Nforce 2 was strictly speaking a DSP used for positional audio processing for games (acceleration).  It doesn't do anything for hi-fi.  It still needs a DAC and output stage.  And ultimately, the DAC and output stage is what determines (along with power supply) a lot of...

Quote: I haven't heard exactly that model.  Although I did buy that board for my friend as a gift.  It says right on the board that at best it does 108db SN.  That says a lot given most DAC's and soundcards do more than that given 24 bit sources.  For reference, in the mid 110 db's are...

Definitely a mag is useful.  After building these I felt like I became tunnel visioned and near sighted for quite a while.     Quote:  

And the Ventus EZ with Opamp input stage instead of discrete.  I built one of these a while ago and it sounds excellent.

Built 3 of these DAC's over some period of time last year.  I must say, they are great sounding for the price.  Fantastically fun and simple build process too!  All thanks to its creators!!

Oh, and if you take a look at that board (and any board now a days, except very few), they actually use all solid capacitors, even for the coupling in the audio section!!  And if you look at the value of those capacitors, it is clear that they can't drive really low impedance phones unless the...

The onboard is probably clean enough for driving low impedance phones and doing non-critical listening like gaming and multimedia duty.  Something off-board will get you the best music performance.  If you are spending a few hundred dollars max for a good sound solution, you might as well pick...