[bizkid]

On my K701s it was completely smooth, i mean no harsh mids or highs anywhere to hear. But with my A900LTD being my main headphone now, it could use some extra extra smootheness

 

[surfboardz26]

if pairing the zhaolu with an hev90 amp should i use optical or digital out? Why?

 

[educator]

How do you remove a dac board from the zhaolu? Do you just pull it out or is there some technique?

 

[lan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by yo2tup2 its probably the stock RCA's when i changed the analog outs and the digital-in rca's on my 1.3... everything became incredibley smooooooooooooth.

You mean you went directly to the solderpoints to new RCA jacks? The stock ones go through a relay so effectively doing this would bypass the relay which is good besides using new RCA jacks. I would disable to power to the relay also if you bypass it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bizkid On my K701s it was completely smooth, i mean no harsh mids or highs anywhere to hear. But with my A900LTD being my main headphone now, it could use some extra extra smootheness

Headphones should always be smooth. If not, there's something else in your system causing harshness. I find K701 just to be overlysmoothing masking things before it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by surfboardz26 if pairing the zhaolu with an hev90 amp should i use optical or digital out? Why?

I dont' understand what you're saying here. Your options are

transport --(coax/toslink)--> zhaolu --(analog out)--> HEV90

or

transport --(digital output. i'm not sure what hev90 uses )--> HEV90

Quote:

Originally Posted by educator How do you remove a dac board from the zhaolu? Do you just pull it out or is there some technique?

There is one screw on top holding the board down. Remove the screw then lift DAC board upwards toward you.

 

[bizkid]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lan Headphones should always be smooth. If not, there's something else in your system causing harshness. I find K701 just to be overlysmoothing masking things before it.

Uhm you cant be serious

Or maybe we have a different meaning of smoothness. There's alot headphones which arent smooth, and you obviously havent met the famous ATH trademark highs yet

However system matching can tame them so they'll only appear at higher volumes.

 

[granodemostasa]

Hello, checking in.
frist: the L3k is pretty smooth, nevertheless that's the only smooth/liquid can of theirs i like.
I'm not a diyer, or anything close. nevertheless, i get the impression that the adding of the 3 ei core transformers could be a decent mod that i could pull off (and it sounds cheap). i'm wondering, however, if someone with as little (no) experience as me should be attempting this/and how i would go about it. Thanks.

 

[lan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bizkid Uhm you cant be serious Or maybe we have a different meaning of smoothness. There's alot headphones which arent smooth, and you obviously havent met the famous ATH trademark highs yet However system matching can tame them so they'll only appear at higher volumes.

You said, "no harsh mids or highs anywhere to hear" as your meaning of smoothness so I'm following that.

The headphone is not making this but just passing on whatever is before it.

I've been to over 20 meets. I've heard more headphones than most people. i also am quite particular about things and don't liek 95% of audio products.

As for system matching, to alleviate this situation, you can either mask it or improve the quality of components. In the case of K701, it is extra smooth and tends to mask the problem IMO.

 

[lan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by granodemostasa I'm not a diyer, or anything close. nevertheless, i get the impression that the adding of the 3 ei core transformers could be a decent mod that i could pull off (and it sounds cheap). i'm wondering, however, if someone with as little (no) experience as me should be attempting this/and how i would go about it. Thanks.

Tranformers cost way more than capacitors or diodes or resistors. In any case, if you DIY, any of this will be relatively "cheap".

You don't need to work with small parts or take parts out so it is an easy project to start with soldering. You will have to cut some the traces on the board though which may be a bit difficult. I use a dremel for this. Right now, 5 diode bridges use one of the secondary outputs on the single transformer. If you want to use a transformer per diode bridge, you must separate each from the others thus the cutting part.

One thing that needs clarity is which diode bridge is responsible for what function.

 

[granodemostasa]

(actually had to go to wikipedia to find out what a diode bridge was). from what i understand is that i would have to cut them and then place them on the new transformers.

 

[lan]

You can leave the diode bridges the way they are right now.

The point in adding the other transformers is to separate the power path some more. So intead of having 1 transformer being shared by the multiple rectifiers (diode bridges in this case), you have separate transformer to one rectifier. To separate them out, you have the cut the trace to the original transformer though.

 

[granodemostasa]

okay i'm starting to realize..... is there somewhere on the site i can look up and trace/learn where and what things do on the inside of this dac?

 

[lan]

I believe if you look at the board, you can follow the traces to see where they go. It's easy to follow in the start where the AC goes to the diodes.

A picture of the underside of the unit will show what's going on here.

 

[zdogg]

I was able to weasel out of work today and took the opportunity to visit with the mad scientist Ori in his home...interrupted some World Cup action, but some things are more important (oh man, here come the riots

).

Anyways, I got a chance to listen to his Zhaolu 2.0 modified with a separate transformer feeding the digital PLL along with his discrete output stage, new RCA connectors and some other things I'm probably forgetting. We compared this to my 2.0 which was identical with the exception that it lacked the above-mentioned Ori-performed surgeries, and instead had 3 DY-2000 opamps in the standard output stage. We used the CS dac module for both in the comparison.

All I can say is, holy ****; I'm floored by how good the modded unit sounds. My unit sounds great to begin with, but with the discrete output etc. the sound was an order of magnitude more impressive. Bass became razor sharp, whereas with the opamps there was a roundness and relatively bloated quality. Treble improved by losing a slight edginess and vocals sounded simply more natural and accurate. Dynamics were more snappy, and soundstage more focused. I'm actually underhyping the improvements I heard IMHO

And I was perfectly happy with the unmodded unit to begin with. Curse you Ori

We listened on a speaker rig. Perhaps Ori can post some pics of the mods he did, they looked purdy in person.

 

[Cyrilix]

Soon, there may be meaning to the words "Ori mod".

 

[granodemostasa]

it would be great if he could at least post something on it...
if not, maybe he could give us a price for his offering.

question: there are two common mods right now, the opamps and the removing of the caps (right?).

how do i remove the caps? Thanks.