[sluggo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by llmobll Can anyone tell me which way the Capacitors should be orientated. ie. + - ???? I haven't looked on the card, but I'm guessing it matters.

They _should_ be using non-polarized caps there, but since I don't have a board I can't say. If you use a polarized cap here, then have the + on the signal and - on the ground.

If you are using this output to drive another circuit that already has caps on it's inputs (like any piece of consumer electronics), then you can short the caps with a wire and let the input caps on the other gear block the DC.

If you just want better caps, short the caps that are on the board and install nice film caps in a cable that's dedicated for this output. That way you don't have to worry about fitting a large cap into the restricted PCI slot space. Just splice into the cable, insert the caps into the signal lines, and wrap it all up with tape. Looks bad, sounds good

 

[llmobll]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MD1032 Are you kidding me? I didn't touch the pot on my amp, it was at near-zero when I shut down. Restarted, fired up foobar, and wham, it was quieter, forcing me to actually turn up the volume on my amp. Maybe I changed some settings or something I didn't know about.

The jumper doesn't make any difference in hi-res mode. It's been talked about before. If you noticed a diff. it was something else.

p.s. you're not the first to think it made a diff. when it didn't.

 

[Illah]

I think you're using the front output, in which case the jumpers turn off the soundcard amp and thus make it quieter. If you read the setup guide it's the HQ REAR output you should be using in High-Res mode. If that's the one you're using the jumpers make no difference.


--Illah

 

[MD1032]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Illah I think you're using the front output, in which case the jumpers turn off the soundcard amp and thus make it quieter. If you read the setup guide it's the HQ REAR output you should be using in High-Res mode. If that's the one you're using the jumpers make no difference. --Illah

That is the one I'm using and I swear for some reason there was a difference when I started up. Now that I've reinstalled the drivers (has some problems) it appears output it back to where it was, so yeah, it wasn't the jumpers. Also, my forward speaker output is severely crippled due to the jumper switching I did, so since it didn't make a difference after all, and I want to use my speakers right about now, I'm going to switch them back.

 

[Illah]

I just finished modding my two AV710's! Good news is I haven't killed my cards, both work fine (very easy mod BTW).

Initial thoughts are an overall tighter, yet bigger sound. Slightly more detailed overall, and bigger bass. Who knows if it's just a sugar pill though

Still, for $7 worth of capacitors per card even a miniscule improvement is great bang-for-the-buck. I'll update over time after the caps burn in and I have a chance to listen to a range of music with the new caps.

Check out the caps, they're like 3x bigger than the stock tiny ones!

--Illah

 

[Kenny12]

Nice, but how about doing something really really insane? i've got 4 100V 8.2 Bennic Audio Caps out here that are GIANT! [~same size as a shotgun slug] i'm thinking about running a wire from the soundcard to the caps, these caps are like half the size of the cards LOL.

 

[mbayaq]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Illah I'll update over time after the caps burn in and I have a chance to listen to a range of music with the new caps.[img http://www.grooveeffect.com/temp/av710mod.jpg[/img]

Caps... burn in? LOL

 

[mbayaq]

oops

 

[Kenny12]

and i've also checked the caps on the card, it seems they are polar? not non ploar like some people said

 

[llmobll]

This burn in thing is taken waaaayyyy to seriously arond here sometimes.

 

[altape]

Hi,
I've been looking at another page about modding the caps on the AV-710 at http://www.afrotechmods.com/Reallych...sennheiser.htm

It seems that increasing the amount of capacitance would improve the bass if there is no amp attached. According to that page (I'm gonna look carefully at the caps later and make sure), the caps are 10 uF 16V. I want to replace them with blackgate caps (BLKGATE-60093) rated at 33 uF 16V and see if it does any good. Any opinions?

 

[Samgotit]

I put BG NX 47uf 6.3V in my card. It is a worth while modification! Most significantly there seems to be more space and seperation around each insturment.

This thread is relevant:
http://www6.head-fi.org/forums/showt...24#post2037424

 

[Zenja]

I assume this won't effect the optical output?

Also, it's worth saying again do not just remove the output caps unless you have an amp with input caps or something like that because you'll get very high DC voltage that will probably fry headphones. I'd say it's much smarter either way to replace them with better caps.

 

[cmirza]

Upgrading the caps on the AV710 is definately worth the effort. I was considering upgrading to an 0404 but after getting my AV710 upgraded with a pair of Blackgate caps, I think I'll hold off on the source upgrade for a while longer. The biggest improvement I found was the improved bass response, nice and strong.

 

[altape]

cmirza: What specs are the blackgates you put in?