![20180317_143924[6054].jpg](https://cdn.head-fi.org/a/10085164.jpg)
germanium
Headphoneus Supremus
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The caps in the red box need to be shorted underneath the board. This is for the analog stereo output section of the card
The caps in the green box need to be bypassed underneath with two 12uf metalized film caps each.
The caps in the purple need to be bypassed with one 12uf metalized film cap each.
The caps in the blue box are for the surround sound analog output section. These only need to be shorted if you are using 5.1 speakers with analog input.
This mod requires a total of 7-12uf capacitors
That is the extent of my mods to this card at this point.
The sound coming from this card is to die for it is so much better than when fresh out of the box.
Everything has much higher resolution. Bass though just as present is more detailed & takes it's proper place behind the midrange & still adding tremendous foundation to the music. Treble is massively more detailed yet easier on the ears as well. This is not to say the treble lacks dynamics as even the dynamics are improved as well. Instrument such as bell & triangles have a piercing but sweet quality. By piercing I mean that it projects it's sound above other instruments, not that it sounds harsh as it doesn't.
Saving the best for last, The midrange is what tube lovers love about tubes. Well you tube lovers can put away your tube amps now as this card has that type of midrange in spades with out all the fuss rebiasing your tubes every time you listen to your music, not that all tube amp need constant rebiasing but many higher end tube amps do. Just joking about putting away your tube amp really though. It's just this card takes on the midrange in such an excellent fashion yet retains all the best attributes of transistor amps. I.E. tight extended bass & extended treble but improving on the treble by giving it the sweetness & detail of the finest tube amps & yes I have heard some of the finest in the world tubes amps as one of the was built by a friend of mine that now deseased but in his heyday was lead audio engineer for A&M records as well as Disney studios. These were true studio grade amps. Before he died he sold the design which some parts were cheapened & turned into a consumer grade amp & they are charging 40,000 dollars for. Only 5 of the original amp were built before he became too sick to continue. He was only charging $7,000 for a 50 watt version & $3500 for the 25watt version amp that had even better parts & had an output transformer that was truly a design that was never seen outside of the studio. Instead of having the standard 4, 8, & 16 ohm taps found on most output transformers the winding of the transformer were sent out to a jones socket where the windings were reconfigured for each impedance tap inside the jones plug. This allowed him to double up the windings so they ran in parallel for the 4 ohm tap or run them in series for the 16ohm tap. Note he was not making a killing on these amps as the parts cost for the 25 watt version came to $2500.
These picture I'm posting now are posted with permission of NCSUZoSo.
He did a nice job on his mod. Better looking than mine.
The caps in the red box need to be shorted underneath the board. This is for the analog stereo output section of the card
The caps in the green box need to be bypassed underneath with two 12uf metalized film caps each.
The caps in the purple need to be bypassed with one 12uf metalized film cap each.
The caps in the blue box are for the surround sound analog output section. These only need to be shorted if you are using 5.1 speakers with analog input.
This mod requires a total of 7-12uf capacitors
That is the extent of my mods to this card at this point.
The sound coming from this card is to die for it is so much better than when fresh out of the box.
Everything has much higher resolution. Bass though just as present is more detailed & takes it's proper place behind the midrange & still adding tremendous foundation to the music. Treble is massively more detailed yet easier on the ears as well. This is not to say the treble lacks dynamics as even the dynamics are improved as well. Instrument such as bell & triangles have a piercing but sweet quality. By piercing I mean that it projects it's sound above other instruments, not that it sounds harsh as it doesn't.
Saving the best for last, The midrange is what tube lovers love about tubes. Well you tube lovers can put away your tube amps now as this card has that type of midrange in spades with out all the fuss rebiasing your tubes every time you listen to your music, not that all tube amp need constant rebiasing but many higher end tube amps do. Just joking about putting away your tube amp really though. It's just this card takes on the midrange in such an excellent fashion yet retains all the best attributes of transistor amps. I.E. tight extended bass & extended treble but improving on the treble by giving it the sweetness & detail of the finest tube amps & yes I have heard some of the finest in the world tubes amps as one of the was built by a friend of mine that now deseased but in his heyday was lead audio engineer for A&M records as well as Disney studios. These were true studio grade amps. Before he died he sold the design which some parts were cheapened & turned into a consumer grade amp & they are charging 40,000 dollars for. Only 5 of the original amp were built before he became too sick to continue. He was only charging $7,000 for a 50 watt version & $3500 for the 25watt version amp that had even better parts & had an output transformer that was truly a design that was never seen outside of the studio. Instead of having the standard 4, 8, & 16 ohm taps found on most output transformers the winding of the transformer were sent out to a jones socket where the windings were reconfigured for each impedance tap inside the jones plug. This allowed him to double up the windings so they ran in parallel for the 4 ohm tap or run them in series for the 16ohm tap. Note he was not making a killing on these amps as the parts cost for the 25 watt version came to $2500.
These picture I'm posting now are posted with permission of NCSUZoSo.
He did a nice job on his mod. Better looking than mine.
The thing is that my CPU cooler leaves me very little space for modding (when ZxR is in PCI-E X1_1 slot). Imagine that free space where i can place caps starts after red line, until then there is CPU cooler and only few mm behind board. GPU blocks other PCI-E X1 slots, actually block only second, but leaves no place behind 3 one. So several solutions i can think of:
