[arcticears]

Well I just got my Icon Mobile back and was trying it out.  Listening to IE7's through the Icon Mobile running usb from a Mac Book G4.  I do not care what is being said, the sound was very, very, good.  No noise, no hiss just good sounds.  The bass was strong and the little extra on the treble was just right.  The overall performance was better than the Mac Book output, I do not consider it "worthless".  The Icon Mobile may not rank very high when compared to some other amps, or dac/amps, but it still has its uses.  And I, for one, have a use for it.

 

[Budgie]

A simple solution - The rolled off bass is due to the surface mount coupling caps used for blocking the DC on the dac output. I opened mine up and soldered in some small Silmic II's and now all the bass is there. I used 47 mfd at 6.3 volts.The actual voltage across the caps is about 1/2 B+ or approx 2.5 volts dc. It.s an easy tweak if you can solder surface mount. Sounds very good also. You can get additional improvement by replacing the three electrolytic power supply caps with better types, also. Size is a consideration for all these caps if you want it to fit back into the same enclosure.
 
If somebody is actually interested in this tweak, PM me and I will get some pictures.

 

[HeadphoneAddict]

Quote:

A simple solution - The rolled off bass is due to the surface mount coupling caps used for blocking the DC on the dac output. I opened mine up and soldered in some small Silmic II's and now all the bass is there. I used 47 mfd at 6.3 volts.The actual voltage across the caps is about 1/2 B+ or approx 2.5 volts dc. It.s an easy tweak if you can solder surface mount. Sounds very good also. You can get additional improvement by replacing the three electrolytic power supply caps with better types, also. Size is a consideration for all these caps if you want it to fit back into the same enclosure.
 
If somebody is actually interested in this tweak, PM me and I will get some pictures.

 
Pictures are always good.

 

[Budgie]

Damn, my ancient digital camera (Pentax EL-100) is giving me fits.  Anybody have a picture of the Nuforce Icon mobile on the side opposite the battery?

 

[Budgie]

Here is somebody's picture. Hope they don't mind. - http://www.flickr.com/photos/wakanmuri/3185137888/
 
This picture looks a bit different then mine, but the caps are in the same place.  Top left corner of the picture shows four surface mount caps (small beige colored cubes) just to the left of the Vr II silk screening. My version has  two surface mount resistors between the caps and the caps are oriented differently. Each channel has two surface mount caps in parallel for dc blocking, between the dac output and the amplifier input. The dac left and right outs are one half of the B+ voltage above ground, around 2.5 vdc so the caps can't be replaced with wire jumpers. There is almost no room for caps in the tiny enclosure so chose what you do with that in mind. ( I am in the process of installing the board in a different enclosure, but that means a new volume control and output and USB jacks and a lot more work.)

 

[Budgie]

Don't know if this will work, so here goes -
https://cid-9c29e9699d81e478.photos.live.com/self.aspx/.MobilePhotos/Icon%20Mobile.jpg
 
 
(Don't know how to make it appear in the post.)

 

[dirkpitt45]

Upload the picture to tinypic.com, just click on upload and browse to your file. Then it will give you a link to copy/paste into your post. 
 
 
Anyone with DBA-02s try them on the e7? 

 

[kroem]

Anyone had problems with the Icon Mobile and WinXP? (seems) Randomly the sound just "breaks", like the bass just get distorted... and then you have to unplug it, plug it back in...and it works again. Driver problem?