another capacitor Q
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SET12
Super Member
I used them for my Sony X77ES CDP, I had installed Burson Discrete Op Amps and most people it seems install more capacitance for the Bursons as they like to use about 5 times current or around 25mA/module and I have 6 modules to supply for.
Muses are a great cap and really do sound like a good film cap. Always for my tube amps I use Polyprops for my final cap supply.
I felt it was very beneficial to use them here in my CDP. I had them on hand and it seemed the logical thing to do with the very expensive Burson's which BTW were worth every penny. These are the previous generation, the new is suppose to be even better.
I went from maybe 15,000uf to about a 150,000uf with the player which is built like a Rolls Royce @ 40lbs it has two massive R-Core power transformers I did a couple of other tricks to the player as well here is the thread
http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=185971
A few photo's
Making room by removing the balanced output module
Installed a breadboards front and back view from top of chassis
View from the bottom of the chassis where the Bursons reside
Total of 10 2200uf Muse and 12 470uf Muse were used.
I also replaced a quad of 3300uf caps with a quad of 22,000uf Panasonic.
The bass foundation and overall transparency of the player is very remarkable IMO and was worth the 14hrs of planning and building.
Muse in the power supply :thmbsp:
SET12
Muses are a great cap and really do sound like a good film cap. Always for my tube amps I use Polyprops for my final cap supply.
I felt it was very beneficial to use them here in my CDP. I had them on hand and it seemed the logical thing to do with the very expensive Burson's which BTW were worth every penny. These are the previous generation, the new is suppose to be even better.
I went from maybe 15,000uf to about a 150,000uf with the player which is built like a Rolls Royce @ 40lbs it has two massive R-Core power transformers I did a couple of other tricks to the player as well here is the thread
http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=185971
A few photo's
Making room by removing the balanced output module
Installed a breadboards front and back view from top of chassis
View from the bottom of the chassis where the Bursons reside
Total of 10 2200uf Muse and 12 470uf Muse were used.
I also replaced a quad of 3300uf caps with a quad of 22,000uf Panasonic.
The bass foundation and overall transparency of the player is very remarkable IMO and was worth the 14hrs of planning and building.
Muse in the power supply :thmbsp:
SET12
Nice job.If you increase the value that much on the PS caps you must have had to "beef up " other components as well ? I'm just replacing value for value on my Pioneer CLD95 laser /Cd player ,no technical knowledge . It had Muse caps in the PS for the D/A converter boards. I'm not going to do the video section (as of this writing ).
Have looked at the new Panasonic FR caps ?
Have looked at the new Panasonic FR caps ?
What changed your mind ?
SET12
Super Member
Thank's!
I don't have that much knowledge myself but enough I guess, still its not rocket science in what I did.
No I haven't looked at FR caps but I do like Panasonic Caps, I don't work to much with SS audio gear other than my own. I'm mostly into tube gear which uses some SS aides to do the job I want from the gear. I use my CDP direct as most line stages get in the way of music to my ears, although I do like a few but the are out of my price range.
I would purchase the schematic for your player I think you'll find it invaluable and it will allow you to see if your truly replacing a cap that you want replaced for that part of the player. The schematic is the difference between being blind and a bit insecure to being somewhat confident you can do the job!
Yes it can be a little tricky and some things can be easily damaged if your not careful but in my case it was well worth it!
One thing you can have a lot of fun with is replace your Op Amp IC's with sockets especially the analog output section. The you'll have the oppurtunity to use some of the very latest Op Amps, they are just plug and play!
Use a a pair of these
From here http://www.partsconnexion.com/opamp_opamp.html
I did exactly this for my Headphone output Op Amps which I removed so that I could allow my player to be focused on the power for the chips I would be using. But I left the option to plug and play for head phones to be used.
The thing is IMO you can replace caps for subtle differences but changing out Op Amps as easily as changing a tube is definitely going to be very dramatic and the beauty is the cost! its nothing like the Burson's and if I get around to having to work with another player I'll go the IC socket route next time around, you just have to make sure the pin outs are the same or use an adapter that changes the pin out to another pin out for the Op Amp in question.
Its a lot of fun, and really your not constrained to replace cap size (uf) for uf and not I did not really have to beef up anything. Rule of thumb to is that there were caps in my player that had voltage ratings much higher than what they should of been. Meaning the rules are this.
1) Use Caps at 2/3 their working voltage to get 50% more life out of them.
2) Using a cap at 1/2 its voltage rating will decrease life by 50%
3) Using caps at rated voltage will give you rated life.
I shoot for the 2/3 or as close as I can get.
In my player I found 63 volt caps in sever locations that were for 20VDC not good.
I bought a good ESR meter and built it from a kit, it can test caps in circuit and I found my DAC supply cap was bad with nearly 50 times more ESR then what it should of had. I replaced the 470uf with a 1000uf the DAC had its own regulator which I left unmodified.
The parts in the players supply are really more than adequate for handling the addition supply and I believe most players .
One of the more interesting things I did was to kill the feedback in the voltage regulators for the Burson Op Amps while allowing the regulator to regulate voltage. Regulators typically use 100% feedback which is very damaging to the sound IMO. I did this by selecting a cap to bypass the discrete series pass transistor. This added a lot of warmth to the player.
Now to address noise that the regulators clean up I broke the trace and installed a simple diode to drop noise over, with the addition capacitance I added the noise floor measure was essentially unchanged from the previous unmodified regulators noise floor specs.
Though a 150,000 ufs sounds like a lot it really isn't a lot of energy at 20VDC by my standards, It's about 30 Joules which is near the equivalent of some medium power 2 channel receivers, nothing like my 10 watt tube amps running on 400 joules total.
The formula is (voltage squared X uf's [converted to Farad's])/2
So its a lot of fun and a schematic may cost $15 but it was worth every penny and you learn a lot. One starts somewhere I did!
SET12
Last edited:
I have the service manual for the CLD 95 . It shows the analog and digital signal path which helps me . I like your idea of the Op amp sockets .My CLD 95 uses AD1862N-P(20 bit audio DAC) and BU40538 multiplexer (what ever that does ). I did something similar on Kenwood KR9600 FM section . Its an Echo Wars upgrade and it made the big difference in the sound of the FM .
SET12
Super Member
I would stick with something easy like the Analog output section to work with myself. Replacing the Analog Op Amps with socket will certainly IMO open up a whole new world of sound. Op Amps are as different sounding as individual tubes to many people, so you'd be able to dial in a sound presentation that you really like.
The nice thing about them is there low power consumption vs my Burson's with nearly 5x more current demands. It was the reason why I expanded my players capacitance reserves. It gave a substantial improvement in the players bass foundation as well as it huge sound-stage that has lateral imagining extending up to 10ft left and right of each speaker for some recordings which means its beyond the 18ft wall boundary's in the room that I listen in. Keep in mind though not all players have this capability nor does everyone value this kind of capability but I do anyway this one had a big step to start with and with the mods it went a step further.
For me I started with the players buffer a single Op Amp module/channel and then I replaced a dual Op Amp module that part of the Analog filter network. And as I said I had no need for my headphone Op Amps so they were replaced with just sockets. This gave more power reserves to the Burson's that I use.
Enjoy the Journey!
SET12
The nice thing about them is there low power consumption vs my Burson's with nearly 5x more current demands. It was the reason why I expanded my players capacitance reserves. It gave a substantial improvement in the players bass foundation as well as it huge sound-stage that has lateral imagining extending up to 10ft left and right of each speaker for some recordings which means its beyond the 18ft wall boundary's in the room that I listen in. Keep in mind though not all players have this capability nor does everyone value this kind of capability but I do anyway this one had a big step to start with and with the mods it went a step further.
For me I started with the players buffer a single Op Amp module/channel and then I replaced a dual Op Amp module that part of the Analog filter network. And as I said I had no need for my headphone Op Amps so they were replaced with just sockets. This gave more power reserves to the Burson's that I use.
Enjoy the Journey!
SET12
SET12
Super Member
Its a great piece for your $ I even installed a sockets on the board for a couple of its IC's this makes it very easy to service without having to apply undo heat to the board, I got the sockets from Radio Shack.
Yes Op Amps can be located near the output jacks but not necessarily so, as in my Sony they are located at the front of its chassis along with their coupling caps.
Things should be clearly labeled on your schematic with reference locations printed on the boards. Just as in my schematic here IC606 is my players buffer, a buffer is a Unity Gain (no Gain) (you can tell a buffer usually has a wire from the output to one of its inputs, a ratio sets gain and in this case "0" gain note pin 2 and pin 6 of IC606) device that typically offers a high input impedance with a very low output impedance for driving long cable or what ever.
Notice my players buffer is also labeled NE5534P this is a very common low noise Op Amp
So My first step was to replace my buffers which where the single Op Amp modules. the eight legged NE5534P IC's are at the bottom of the photo they were replaced by the discrete Burson Single Op Amp stages that have 8 white wires connected to each. The installation was more intimidating looking then it was actually to install.
Now just to the left and to the right of the Burson Discrete Op Amps are the Dual Op Amp IC's which I replaced later with a pair of Burson Dual Op Amp Modules.
Putting just IC sockets is a quite bit easier in contrast though.
IC Op Amps have polarity, a half moon notch like feature or a dot on a corner of the chip and so on. Pin one is the left top pin as you look at the chip with the polarity in the up position looking straight on to it.
Now next to my Op Amps are the big film coupling caps a long with a smaller round vertical like cap. The both are black and one is 1uf and the 10uf. I suppose this is what one gets with a $2000 player, the build quality of the player is very,very high though. Other notable features are the boards DAC's which are the white outlined squares with the corner notched. Also the discrete regulators in back with the heat sinks that have the series pass transistors mounted on them instead of the typical IC regulators these supply + and - 15VDC from 20VDC + and - sources.
You might notice the board holding tool which makes working on the board very easy, thought its not really necessary. I don't use it often but when I do I enjoy it.
You could stop in a repair shop and have someone point out the buffer Op Amp IC's for you! Or you could have a shop at a reasonable price install the sockets as well. All of this isn't to hard it just needs a little confidence and maybe someones assistance. As I like to say we all start somewhere.
I you would like, and you have either part or the schematic as a digital file perhaps you could send it to me and I would be happy identify the chips to start with.
A project like this is very rewarding as its almost like trying out different CDP's as the sound will vary from chip to chip.
You can also look up data sheets with their application notes to learn more on individual Op Amps.
I hope this helps, a lot of people enjoy the chip search and there are a lot of threads on other forums of people that do this.
SET12
I really like the way this player sounds . I found the OP amps their NJM5532SD. I found the data sheet for the NJM5532 its a high performance low noise dual op amp. I can send you the whole repair manual if want to look at . I don't think I'm going to any op amp swapping just yet. Where did you get that board holder ?
SET12
Super Member
Its a Weller here is a link to it, its expensive at $54 but worth every penny for it. Its very adjustable for various size boards and even has an arm to hold parts in place as you solder them.
http://www.testequipmentdepot.com/weller/accessories/holders.htm
I'm sure you might be able to find it cheaper as Weller is a big name in soldering equipment of course.
I send you a PM with my private e-mail address so you can send it easily.
The 5532 and 5534 op Amps are decent sounding Op Amps but are pretty old designs today's later generation of Op Amps can easily eclipse these IMO.
The Discrete Burson's I use easily out perform the 5534 and 5532 though mine required several hundred hrs of burn in time. As I said also Burson is on their second generation and look to be even easier to install.
SET12
http://www.testequipmentdepot.com/weller/accessories/holders.htm
I'm sure you might be able to find it cheaper as Weller is a big name in soldering equipment of course.
I send you a PM with my private e-mail address so you can send it easily.
The 5532 and 5534 op Amps are decent sounding Op Amps but are pretty old designs today's later generation of Op Amps can easily eclipse these IMO.
The Discrete Burson's I use easily out perform the 5534 and 5532 though mine required several hundred hrs of burn in time. As I said also Burson is on their second generation and look to be even easier to install.
SET12
