Hi Pinkie,
Where do you get your auricaps from in the UK?
I don't, my uncle is ordering some stuff from Michael percy in the US so I asked him to get me some Aricaps and Mills resistors, service does not seem to be to good though, a bit slow on replying to E-mails
They may be worth a try. How are you modding your amp, did you start by first allowing the standard kit to burn in and then trying different components or are you just replacing everything from the start?
I first built the kit as standard and lived with it for a couple of weeks, I have only just started doing some mods so I'll keep you updated, its a nice sounding unit as standard, the psu is the Chiara's weakest bit of circuit, those fixed regs are very noisy, its amazing what results you can get using better supplies,the rest of the mods will be down to personnel taste and getting it to match my source
I'm sometimes wary about replacing parts of a design without having first listened to the design in its original guise....... how do you know "what" is making an improvement if you are replacing parts across the board?
I have learned from mistakes in the past modding my other gear, my cdp took the longest to get to sound right, it now sounds very good and has blown many commercial players out of the water, the standard player sounds totally different,I don't just replace a lot of bits at once, it can be a long job but usually worth it, I find that some people seem to go around in circles when modding their own gear so you have to be careful
The OPA627 is "just" beginning to really open out now and it's been in my amp for over a month and probably still isn't fully burnt in. The Silmic caps are the same, they take ages before they come online fully.
I agree, most of my components have already been used before though in various amps etc, I like both the Silmics and OPA627's, I just prefer the AD8620, I'll compare them again once the psu has been sorted
You say the ALPS blue velvet has to go now you've listened to the Panasonic pot....... what was the difference?
I found the Panasonic to be more musical with my cdp but to be honest I have never liked the Alps pots including the Black
I think I'm ready to try the auricaps now I'm satisfied that the opa627 and Silmics have made the amp sound better...... if it sounds better with the Auricaps then I know that they have made an improvement but if I had replaced the op amp, pot, caps etc. etc. all at once how would I know what improvements each component had made? If any.
you don't, again you have to do things in stages which it sounds like you have, if something sounds good then thats fine, I think alot of stuff is down to personnel taste, I have also found that some so called audiophile parts can sound worse than the standard stuff
I'm interested to hear the difference the Panasonic pot made
Well it sounds good to my ears, the Alps blue always seems to add something I don't like which some people do like
All the best.
Ron
