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soundt >>Tweaks and DIY >>Filtering noise on a cd player


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clint e.- 03-29-2008
My main audio concern now is how to remove electric/digital noise from the audio signal pass band circuit in a cd player, without altered the main characteristics of the player; mainly because I have some respect for the guy’s knowledge that had project and thought the player electric and mechanical design.

All hi-end cd players have all kind of the best mechanical/electromagnetic/analogue/digital noise filters.
Filtering noise give us the musical clarity most hi-end cd players have.
More clarity give us more detail, more 3D sound image and depth, more definition in all sound spectrum, more dynamics…in two words, I mean four smile.gif – more music & more fun.

As we all know, in a cd player we have all kind of noise interference with the audio sign pass:
Electric current noises from the main current and power supplies.
Electromagnetic noises from transformers and electric wires.
Mechanical noises from cdp transport and digital noises from upsampling, opamps even from anti-alias filtering components…

In simple terms this "caps idea" is just to do some filtering with the less expense of time and money.

What capacitors do?
In simple terms caps store charge. But, not only that. Also they provide to circuits the amount of output voltage with the low ESR possible, acting also has filters to almost every component in an electronic circuit.
There are lots of caps with lots of characteristics on the market….so, the idea is to put some of them with specific characteristics in the “main noise points” of the electronic cd player circuit to reduce some of the noise.

To be honest, I’ve done that in all my cd players and the results are great. smile.gif

Nowadays there are a lot of cd players upgrades out there. Better clocks for jitter correction, over and non sampling dacs, wider and faster opamps, a lot of digital/analogue filtering devises, but that costs time and money and imho it’s better to buy a new cdp than completely change the cd player sonic signature.

What's your opinions about this? Anyone tried this before?


clint e.- 04-04-2008
Some practical example of what i posted above, made in my Nad C521BEE :

Ceramic fuses and ferrite rings in the power cable and tranformer output:

user posted image


I'd change all the caps to Elna, Rubycon and Nichicon:

user posted image


Some Elna Cerafine and Nichicon Gold in the signal pass:

user posted image


A real upgrade in all sound spectrum. soundt/woot.gif


dingus- 04-04-2008
i love your work, i just wish i could hear the results too.

Elroy- 04-04-2008
was telling dingus yesterday, I wished I knew a little about electronics, but, I know nothing.

elroy

clint e.- 04-04-2008
QUOTE (dingus @ April 04, 2008 03:56 pm)
i love your work, i just wish i could hear the results too.

The results in the Nad cdp was just amazing. I never thought the results will work at all. I had an idea that the sound will be more open and detailled, but i never predict such a tremendous upgrade. soundt/thumbup.gif

clint e.- 04-04-2008
QUOTE (Elroy @ April 04, 2008 07:43 pm)
was telling dingus yesterday, I wished I knew a little about electronics, but, I know nothing.

elroy

Now that you're in love with your new babys, don't even think touch a cap... biggrin.gif Now, with ROSH European rules & regulations even caps sound different from the ones you have in your gear, nevertheless you always can lean a few things here in ST, You just have to go to http://soundt.18.forumer.com/index.php?showtopic=583 and made an upgrade in yourself... wink.gif

Tanx for your input guys. soundt/thumbup.gif

Elroy- 04-04-2008
I am more of a hands on, just ask my girlfriend, I have to see it in person and actually do it, pictures are ok, but actually watching someone doing a mod, and me helping, would get me started on a diy, someday I will take something on.

elroy

thedelihaus- 04-05-2008
QUOTE (Elroy @ April 04, 2008 04:13 pm)
I am more of a hands on, just ask my girlfriend...

user posted image

dingus- 04-05-2008
humma humma!

clint e.- 03-07-2009
I'd experimented on my USB Box Dac and now i've done the same in the op-amps power rails of my Nad C521BEE cdp:

user posted image

user posted image

This time with two caps in parallel, a poly and a metallized, on each op-amp:

user posted image


Of course i can only imagine this tweak with the silver mica caps....but for now,the upgrade is all over the music spectrum: Definition, low freqs attack, depth, detail and dynamics.


user posted image

Rock on! soundt/action-smiley-035.gif

dingus- 03-07-2009
Alvaro, you need to make a trip to the States and teach me how to do all these cool mods.

clint e.- 03-07-2009
I'd love to go on a trip to a beautiful country like the U.S.A. but i don't need to just to make such a simple tweak like this. All you have to learn is to solder and desolder and you can practice on any kind of board, even from the trash, then i ( and others ) can guide you with simple knowledge to simple/pratical audio electronics. I'm learning from others to, after all nobody's born with all the knowledge...all we can do is learn from each other. I just know the audio basics and a few tweaks, nothing more.
But, this de-coupling capacitor tweak is imho, really great. I was thinking on changing Nad's op-amps to a better ones...not anymore. wink.gif

Btw, it was a little more difficult to do what i've done in the USB box than in here, just because of the op-amp size/type...but everything turn out just fine. smile.gif

EDITED:

An interesting link about solder:

http://www.curiousinventor.com/guides/How_To_Solder

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