পটভূমি
এই পুরানো সাহসী সম্পর্কে নকশা ফিরে তারিখগুলি 1989 এবং আমি বিশ্বাস করি খনি 1991 দ্য Arcam আলফা প্রথম এক ব্যবহার করা হয়েছিল ড্যাক প্রায় চিপ, বিখ্যাত TDA1541(একটি). এখানে এই চিপ সমন্বিত খেলোয়াড়দের নিবেদিত একটি ভাল পাতা: Lampizator guy. যে সাইটের লেখক বিখ্যাত DIY পরিবর্তন করার সময় বৃত্ত কিন্তু কয়েকটি গুরুত্বপূর্ণ ট্রিকস ব্যার্থ সিডি খেলোয়াড়দের.
আমি চিন্তা করার ঝোঁক সিডি players as offering three main areas for making substantial sound quality improvements: power supplies, clocking, output stage. Many novice upgraders never progress beyond fettling the analogue output section of a সিডি player. This is a shame because the really big gains typically come from improving power supplies and clock arrangements.
Power supplies
The Alpha is better than some as standard, featuring two power transformers and a 6 x 1000uF bank of smoothing caps for the ড্যাক & op-amps. It seems clear upon internal inspection that Arcam have taken a generic Philips পিসিবি and power transformer etc, তারপর তাদের নিজস্ব যোগ ড্যাক / output stage board which is powered by a second transformer. Sadly this transformer is prone to mechanical buzzing (a side effect of poorly constructed frame transformers). One of my earlier modifications was to replace this with a toroidal transformer of the same secondary voltages (17.5V — 0V — 17.5V). প্রধান পিসিবি'গুলি পিএসইউ caps power everything other than the ড্যাক chip and output op-amps. Most, সব যদি না, এগুলোর প্রতিস্থাপন করা উচিত, not only to improve sound quality but also because the electrolyte in the caps could be drying up after 20+ বছর! It is fashionable and indeed seems beneficial to change rectifier diodes with soft-recovery types, usually “schottky”. In my opinion this is a safe modification on digital supplies but may worsen the sound on analogue supplies.
To take things to a whole other level it’s easiest to mount some extra supplies off-board and run wires to it. Remotely feeding my Alpha I have supplies for my new output stage, the digital filter (SAA7220), সঙ্কেতমোচক (SAA7310), servo driver chips as well as a transformer dedicated to the after-market clock and the র্যাম আইসি. The rectification and smoothing for clock supply is on-board as I found on a previous project clock power supplies can cause issues when mounted externally.
For now I’ll just wrap this section up by saying use good quality, LARGE capacity caps on the ড্যাক smoothing and you’ll be richly rewarded.
Clocking
For a long while it’s been a popular modification to “re-clock” the ড্যাক এ চিপ আপনার সিডি player. Replacing the standard timing crystal with a low-jitter clock can be a subtle improvement or a profound one, depending on the circumstances. There are various after-market vendors of such clocks such as Tent Labs, Audiocom, জলজ পালন এবং, আরো সম্প্রতি, Fidelity Audio.
Beyond ড্যাক re-clocking, there are opportunities to feed a “clean” clock signal to other parts of a সিডি player such as the decoder chip, digital filter and maybe even parts of the servo. In the Alpha I have so far fed 4 clock feeds from my Fidelity Audio C2 master clock. Two of these re-clock pins on the ড্যাক, one does the digital filter and the other the decoder. Three of these are 11.2Mhz, the other is 5.6Mhz (প্রধান ঘড়ি দুই দ্বারা বিভক্ত, which is available on this particular product).
আপনি নিচে এই পথ যেতে পারেন আপনি খুশি হবেন!
Output stage
The last thing I want to talk about is the output stage. Arcam did a fair job on the power supplies, a typically poor job on the clocking and again let us down a little bit with the main output section, কিন্তু সেখানে আরো বেশি খারাপ হয়! The output stage uses two single op-amps per channel and some good quality caps to filter এইচএফ noise. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with op-amps but the ones available at the time weren’t very good. It’s possible to upgrade these 4 op-amps and the results would be good. I tried to replace the final pair of op-amps with some Burr Brown OPA627, but I didn’t get sound. Without looking further into it I think it may be because they are not unity gain stable, meaning they cannot work purely as a “buffer”, they must amplify the signal.
The reason I looked no further was because I was building up a whole new output stage using a পিসিবি I sourced from the DIYAudio.com forum. This was designed by Nelson Pass, a man famous for his large class A amplifier designs sold under the name Pass Labs. This output stage was a quantum leap forward in sonics! Especially so if, আমার মত, you enjoy a warm full-bodied sound. The power supply for this is off-board.
Summary
I will add to this article as I think of improvements but it’s very difficult to fit it all in as there is SO MUCH that can be done to an old সিডি player! I would just hope to whet a few appetites of those seeking the elusive “perfect sound forever” that Philips promised us with the advent of the Compact Disc. If you enjoyed this article and want to request more detail on one particular area then please drop in a comment, আমি এটা দেখতে নিশ্চিত করা এবং সাড়া পাবেন.
হাই, I know this is an old article but its what Ive been looking for. May I ask where you sourced the 17.5v‑0–17.5v transformer?
Would a 18v 0 18v be a substitute?
Thanks
Neil
Bravo Simon — like the site and useful downloads too
অ্যান্ড্রু
ধন্যবাদ অ্যান্ড্রু! There’s lots I want to talk about on here, যখন আমি এটা কাছাকাছি পেতে. Funny how I only just saw your comment 3 সপ্তাহ পরে..
Hi bought an old but perfect Arcam Alpha সিডি player, it sounds good but I would like to upgrade it little by little, which is the first step of the three?…instead of changing the op amps with something newer what do you think about to put two transformers in place of the op amps?...
তোমাকে ধন্যবাদ
হাই, would an 18v 0 18v transformer be OK to use? Could I ask where you got the 17.5v one?
Thanks
Neil