[ttl_ctrll]

Thanks joneeboi. Well you see the way I did my mod is that I've cut the connector part of the headphone jack that connect to the main board. So I needed a new ground. What i did is desolder the wire from the dock and simply resolder it the firewire ground on pin 30. No more noise and no battery problem

Thanks for your input.

 

[corbz]

I'm a bit confused about what to do with this mod.

I have a spare logic board (broken), that i can practice with.

I'm just not sure what i'm ment to wire to what, and if i'm ment to de-solder certain things? Some people using capacitators, some not?

(I only have basic knowledge of electronics) If I do this mod, am i able to just run a LOD adaptor to my Fiio e5 > headphones ?

Or..

Thanks for any help, this site has allready gotten me to buy a small amp and IEM's.


edit: 5.5g iPod.

 

[pcyl]

Quote:

Originally Posted by joneeboi /img/forum/go_quote.gif Nice pics, Peter and Germania. I like the compactness of your dock, Germania. And Peter, your dock is really slick looking. Great job with the construction, both of you. ttl_ctrll: Try desoldering the ground wire. If you're using the headphone jack, you shouldn't need to resolder the ground wire. barqy tried that a while ago, and he got battery discharge problems on his 4G. We couldn't figure out what the heck happened, but you shouldn't even need that ground wire in the first place.

thank you Joneeboi for the appraise i shall post up the breakdown of the Dock built

 

[pcyl]

Quote:

Originally Posted by corbz /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'm a bit confused about what to do with this mod. I have a spare logic board (broken), that i can practice with. I'm just not sure what i'm ment to wire to what, and if i'm ment to de-solder certain things? Some people using capacitators, some not? (I only have basic knowledge of electronics) If I do this mod, am i able to just run a LOD adaptor to my Fiio e5 > headphones ? Or.. Thanks for any help, this site has allready gotten me to buy a small amp and IEM's. edit: 5.5g iPod.

Well prefer guage 30 wire for my preference i prefer copper with silver plated
but i also have the other ipod using home grown silver also gauge 30 ,the 5.5 g will preferred use external cap unless your ipod video run on CF (conversion i mean)
do you want to see the set of tool i use ? i have done more than a dozen till now

 

[joneeboi]

The diyMod is a DAC output coupling capacitor replacement modification for portable digital media players. DACs put out quite a bit of DC in their signal, but we don't want DC in our dynamic speakers and headphones because too much of it will fry them for good. Dynamics use a coil of very thin wire around a magnet, and those thin wires will melt if there's too much DC put through them. For most headphones, 20mV is the upper threshold of DC tolerance at comfortable listening volumes. Below this limit, we are usually considered safe. Now, taking iPods as an example, their DACs put out as much 2VDC which is already way too high before being amplified. Since most of us are amplifying our signals, it would behoove us to get rid of this DC before it destroys our end audio equipment.

There are several ways of getting rid of that DC, but the cheapest and simplest way is to put a capacitor in series with the signal. Now, one can do put this capacitor in front of or behind the amplifier in the signal path, but putting it in front allows us to use smaller, often higher quality capacitors than if we use them on an amp's output. For instance, the Millett Hybrid series of amplifiers all use coupling capacitors on the output, but because the capacitor will form a high pass filter with the headphone impedance, you lose bass information unless you use a lot of capacitance. And then you're forced to use an electrolytic capacitor, which often doesn't sound as detailed as film types. Then you start getting into arguments with people about whether Black Gates and Cerafines and Muses are better than this or that, and then whether bypassing makes a difference, and whether anyone can really hear the difference at all, and how much money did you spend on your capacitors, and a bunch of headaches and strong opinions which are freely available for your enjoyment in our museum of threads at head-fi. I could go on, but I don't want to bash your head in with too much info. Does that make sense?

 

[dumbears]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pcyl /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well prefer guage 30 wire for my preference i prefer copper with silver plated but i also have the other ipod using home grown silver also gauge 30 ,the 5.5 g will preferred use external cap unless your ipod video run on CF (conversion i mean) do you want to see the set of tool i use ? i have done more than a dozen till now

Mine, mine, mine. I just broke an iPod 5.5 PCB due to the heavy 24AWG wire with caps. Yes, I was modding an iPod 5.5 with caps (of course, it runs on CF).
Next trial, I will put my bids on some 28AWG wire. I'm looking at Jupiter silver cotton wire. Would anyone be kind enough to advise me how to cut the cotton wire wrap?

Moreover, I have another question, which I asked before but yet to be answered. May I mod without removing the caps below L2 & L3 and C64 & C66? I think these caps can help to hold the wires if they aren't being removed.

One additional question, where are your favorite solder points? BTW, would you pls to share some photos of your work?

Thanks in advance.

 

[pcyl]

here is one of the LOD i make from far look like ALO super cotton actually some woven plastic netting

 

[pcyl]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dumbears /img/forum/go_quote.gif Mine, mine, mine. I just broke an iPod 5.5 PCB due to the heavy 24AWG wire with caps. Yes, I was modding an iPod 5.5 with caps (of course, it runs on CF). Next trial, I will put my bids on some 28AWG wire. I'm looking at Jupiter silver cotton wire. Would anyone be kind enough to advise me how to cut the cotton wire wrap? Moreover, I have another question, which I asked before but yet to be answered. May I mod without removing the caps below L2 & L3 and C64 & C66? I think these caps can help to hold the wires if they aren't being removed. One additional question, where are your favorite solder points? BTW, would you pls to share some photos of your work? Thanks in advance.

solder on with home grown silver cable gauge 30

 

[dumbears]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pcyl /img/forum/go_quote.gif solder on with home grown silver cable gauge $30

Thank you for both images. One more question: are you solder the wire on both connection points of L2? My previous failure is my wire being too thick and it isn't holding steady in its place even though I had taped it.

 

[pcyl]

Well i have done this on Free hand, another tips is to solder on the DAC side first and USE blue Tag

 

[dumbears]

How thick is your wire? Mine was 24AWG. I'll do my wiring with a 28AWG wire on another iPod Video PCB.

 

[sputnik13]

Not sure how many people would care, but I just have to share this

I successfully modded my 4G iPod.

I was so proud of myself for doing such a clean job on the soldering, but then I made a series of really stupid mistakes that led to lifting the L2 pad. Fortunately, with a little probing I realized that the little silver circle above where I soldered the wire at L2 was a test point for that trace. So I resoldered the wire onto that and all is working as it should

The sound doesn't sound that phenomenal to me right now, I'm chocking that up to the blackgates needing burn in. It sounds at least as good as my Sony S738 right now, so I guess it'll only get better with burn in.

The series of stupid mistakes first started with trying to jam the iPod closed with the BG caps installed below the hard drive kokokrunch style. When I did get it closed, I must have dislodged something because it didn't turn on. So I reopened it the hard drive was wedged between a BG and the headphone port and totally tore the BG off of the wire that I'd soldered onto it. Then while trying to strip the wire to resolder it to the BG, I tore it off the board along with the trace at L2.

Mistake #1 was actually not hot-gluing the wires to the board after I'd soldered them, thinking I'd do it after I verified everything is working because I don't want to try and remove the hot-glue if it didn't work. Then the chain of events above... after reattaching the BG and the wire, I hot-glued everything down and I installed a CF card so I wouldn't have to bother with trying to jam the hard drive in there. I have a ultra slim 40GB external drive now as my portable hard drive

So the iPod is working now, but the LOD is another issue. I got one of the fancy shmancy thing ultra low-pro dock connectors from Ridax. Well, I didn't have tweezers, so I couldn't pull the extra pins out to give myself enough room to do the soldering. Also the length of the 3 conductors are off so one wire is sticking way out... it's just a mess right now. But it works

Next task is to clean up the LOD and continue burn-in.

 

[ttl_ctrll]

I dont know if anybody else experienced this but when i turn the knob of my cmoy, i hear some static noise that decreases gradually with time. I am sure that the problem isnt the amp because i've plugged it in my macbook and it doesnt do it. I only hear it when i plug it in my diymod mini. The DAC is connected to the amp input which has 0.63 uF inline caps integrated in the amp. I must add that ive added caps in series between the DAC and the input and i had the same issue. My ground is connected to the firewire ground on pin 30.

I measured the dc output to my headphones and i get 0.8 mV to the right and 0.0 mV to the left. Now, i hear that static noise mainly from the right earphone. I would like to know if that noise is due to that dc voltage or something else.


I also tried measuring the dc output when i used my macbook and i had the same 0.8 mV to the right and 0.0 to the left and i dont any static noise when i turn the knob.

Im quite confused

...i wish i could talk to an electrical engineer or something lol

 

[dazzer1975]

I had the same issue with a lod I made for my diymod while using pin 15 for ground. I usually use pins 2, 3 and 4 and indeed once I had rigged up a diymod lod using pins 2, 3 and 4 the issue cleared up.

Continuity checked out but I had obviously bridged somewhere or done something wrong, but since I returned to using 2,3 and 4 I havent had any issue... which is strange really as its even tighter soldering 3 pins in close proximity rather than just 2 but hey ho

 

[ttl_ctrll]

thanks dazzer. what ive done in an attempt to solve this is make a dock connector that can connect externally the two ground pins but unfortunately this hasnt solved the issue

my only option left is to reopen the ipod and resolder the ground for for some reason i dont this the ground is the issue here because if it were, i would her the static on both sides right?

This is not that much of an issue when i am not changing the volume so i guess it live with it because every time i open the ipod up, i risk to loosen up a wire or lift a pad or something that i dont wanna do lol

thanks for you help and the next diymod im gonna do, im going to use pin 1 for the ground haha