Filburt
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Jun 23, 2005
- Posts
- 2,411
- Likes
- 12
So I got an Aiwa XP-6, thinking it might be the same as my slightly beat up XP-7. It turned out that it wasn't...the sound was more neutral and less involving...and I was disappointed.
So I decided to do what any sensible person would do. I proceeded to mod the heck out of the XP-7 using parts from the XP-6. Sensible, right?
The XP-7 I have is the AU version, which is the US version that has no wireless remote system. The XP-6 was the European version which had, of course, a wireless remote system. Oh you so knew I had to appropriate that immediately
So I desoldered the IR receiver and the capacitor that went with it and installed it on the XP-7. I also snagged some SMD caps and ferrites that looked to be in better shape while I was at it around that area as well as elsewhere, including in the signal and power paths. End result - works perfectly. Couldn't be happier with this modification.
I also replaced some of the jacks on the XP-7 with those from the XP-6, and resoldered pretty much everything else in the signal path. It lowered the noise floor noticeably, which was nice. Next up will be replacing caps in the signal path, of course, but I'll leave that for another day. I can't tell yet, but it looks like they both may actually have an separate DAC chip, which is unusual for the "1 bit" units as, by then, the dac was usually integrated with other things on a single chip. The most obnoxious thing to replace was the ferrite that connects the ground on the power jack to the mainboard. You have to get this little green wire soldered with one end of the ferrite, and it doesn't seem to like staying still
One thing that was interesting was the PCB that connected the mainboard to the board with the line out and DC jack had the largest SMD resistors I've ever seen. It had a row of 8 of them, I think they were 220 ohms although I forget the value now. Well, I think they were resistors, anyhow. The XP-6's connection PCB lacked these as well as some sort of transistor or rectifier or something at the end. I didn't pay much attention to what it was there. No idea what they do. They were maybe 0,9cm long and 0,4cm wide.
Finally, I swapped transports between the two, and recalibrated the whole thing from the ground up. Took a while, but performance is much improved. No more obnoxious chattering of the optical block mechanism. Then, to finish, put everything into the XP-6 case as the XP-7's case lacks the cutout for the IR pass filter window that allows reception from the IR remote.
So, overall, I've got better sound plus a wireless remote system now
So I decided to do what any sensible person would do. I proceeded to mod the heck out of the XP-7 using parts from the XP-6. Sensible, right?
The XP-7 I have is the AU version, which is the US version that has no wireless remote system. The XP-6 was the European version which had, of course, a wireless remote system. Oh you so knew I had to appropriate that immediately
So I desoldered the IR receiver and the capacitor that went with it and installed it on the XP-7. I also snagged some SMD caps and ferrites that looked to be in better shape while I was at it around that area as well as elsewhere, including in the signal and power paths. End result - works perfectly. Couldn't be happier with this modification.
I also replaced some of the jacks on the XP-7 with those from the XP-6, and resoldered pretty much everything else in the signal path. It lowered the noise floor noticeably, which was nice. Next up will be replacing caps in the signal path, of course, but I'll leave that for another day. I can't tell yet, but it looks like they both may actually have an separate DAC chip, which is unusual for the "1 bit" units as, by then, the dac was usually integrated with other things on a single chip. The most obnoxious thing to replace was the ferrite that connects the ground on the power jack to the mainboard. You have to get this little green wire soldered with one end of the ferrite, and it doesn't seem to like staying still
One thing that was interesting was the PCB that connected the mainboard to the board with the line out and DC jack had the largest SMD resistors I've ever seen. It had a row of 8 of them, I think they were 220 ohms although I forget the value now. Well, I think they were resistors, anyhow. The XP-6's connection PCB lacked these as well as some sort of transistor or rectifier or something at the end. I didn't pay much attention to what it was there. No idea what they do. They were maybe 0,9cm long and 0,4cm wide.
Finally, I swapped transports between the two, and recalibrated the whole thing from the ground up. Took a while, but performance is much improved. No more obnoxious chattering of the optical block mechanism. Then, to finish, put everything into the XP-6 case as the XP-7's case lacks the cutout for the IR pass filter window that allows reception from the IR remote.
So, overall, I've got better sound plus a wireless remote system now
