Ronny's Warehouse

Pioneer DV-373 Modification Part II

2009-03-30T06:34:00.000-07:00

OK. Lets continue the modification of Pioneer DV-373. Lets get to the point.

First thing first I’ve been analyzed the main board layout. In the audio department, there are Burr Brown PCM1742 for Audio DAC IC and A SOIC Op-Amp IC (sorry I forgot to write it down what IC that pioneer used). What we can do to improve audio quality of this player is:

1. Change the op-amp to better one. There are a lot of op-amp out there, but for this one you can change with dual op-amp with SOIC packaged such LM4562, AD8066, OPA2134, etc. Which one the best? I will not make any discussion here.
2. Supply the op-amp and DAC with good power. What I mean is:

a. You can change the bypass capacitor with the better one. For analog supply you can use Rubycon Black Gate, Panasonic FC, or Elna Silmic. For digital supply you can use Blackgate N, Sanyo Oscon, or Elna cerafine will certainly do better job than the stock one. And I think higher than 100uF will not do any difference.

b. Create a separated 7812 or LM317 based regulated PSU to feed the Vcc of the op-amp and 7805 or LM317 based regulated PSU for Vac and Vdd for DAC.

3. Change the output coupling / DC Blocker capacitor with better one (preferably bi-polar capacitor) or even remove the capacitor (check the DC offset first!)

4. Remove the muting transistor.
Because lack of time and spare parts (and maybe knowledge hehehe), what I did is just do no 2 and 3. I’ve changed the PSU capacitor for op-amp with 470uF rubycon ZL, change the coupling capacitor with 100uF bi-polar elna silmic, and chage the PSU capacitor for Vdd feed with 100uF sanyo oscon.

Result with part I combination

- The separation increased
- Better staging
- High is no longer ear crushing
- Deeper bass
- Lower “hiss” noise

Okay. That’s it. It was a lite project, so I don’t really want to go further. And I am satisfied with the result.

Cara membuat sim C

2009-03-30T05:32:00.000-07:00

Untuk Anda yang ingin membuat SIM C baru dengan jalur / mekanisme yang sebenernya alias tanpa calo, maka diharapkan pengalaman saya ini sedikit banyak bisa menambah "ilmu" Anda :

1. Lokasi : tempat pembuatan SIM C Jakarta sampai saat ini terpusat di Satpas Polda Metro Jaya Jl. Daan Mogot, Jakarta Barat. Untuk rute perjalanan bisa menggunakan busway, meski rada muter2 dikit.

2. Waktu : Senin - Sabtu. Khusus Sabtu, pelayanan SIM hanya setengah hari

3. Persiapan pembuatan

Dokumen yang dibawa : cukup KTP asli dan poto kopi (buat antisipasi untuk kopiannya ya minimal 5 lah, kemarin sih sampe diminta 4 aja)

Biaya : minimal 110 ribu (klo saya kemarin cuma abis 100 ribu, rinciannya biaya formulir 10 ribu, asuransi 15 ribu, permohonan SIM 75 ribu). klo yang ujian manual, harus ada biaya tambahan untuk beli pensil 2B (komputer). klo bisa siapin dari rumah deh pensil dan pulpen (jika diperlukan). nah klo yq mau pakai calo, ya bisa di atas 300 ribu kali.

Materi Ujian : Kesehatan, Teori ama Praktek,
klo kesehatan 99,9999 lulus lah .. wong cuma disuruh tutup mata kanan/kiri terus baca angka2 di depan kita yang relatif jaraknya dekat (2-3 meteran), bisa lah terlihat .. so di sini lulus

untuk Teori : sekitar rambu lalu lintas dan studi kasus. Kebanyakan adalah model kasus di persimpangan jalan.
Batasan kelulusan teori : 60% dari 30 soal atau minimal 18 soal. klo ujian teori menggunakan komputer, kita diminta mengerjakan seluruh soal dengan alokasi waktu 15 menit, jadi kasarnya 1 soal setengah menit dan pas diakhir ujian langsung muncul otomatis hasil ujian teori kita, jumlah benar dan salahnya, lulus tidaknya. sedang yg manual pakai pensil, mesti sabar lah nunggu hasilnya.

klo praktek, ada 3 materi (berurutan) : track lurus, angka 8 dan zigzag. kebanyakan gagal di track lurus karena lebar lintasan yang sangat sempit dan di zigzag karena harus menyeimbangkan depan dan belakang motor dan jarak antar zig-zag juga mepet
Batasan kelulusan praktek :
- tidak lebih dari 2 penanda (kaleng) yang jatuh. di track lurus, kanan kiri ada 5 pasang (10 buah), di putaran 8 ada 9 buah dan di track zig-zag kayanya ada 8-an juga. jadi minimal ada 25 buah penanda di ujian praktek.
- kaki tidak pernah jatuh ke tanah
- mentaati aturannya .. suruh lurus ya lurus, suruh zigzag ya zigzag ga sebaliknya

4. Step2nya (silakan koreksi klo salah)
- Dateng ke Satpas di jalan Daan Mogot, klo perlu pagi2 biar ngga kesiangan/kesorean untuk seleksi dan macem2nya .. maklum jg, orang yang ngantri buannyak banget
- Ambil formulir sambil nyerahin ktp asli dan kopiannya. keluarin uang 10 ribu buat beli formulir.
- terus masuk tes ksehatan .. disini lulus deh (lihat materi ujian point 3)
- terus baru urus berkas2 administrasi (ke loket asuransi kecelakaan bayar 15 ribu terus masuk ke loket permohonan pembuatan sim c bayar 75 ribu)
- udah gitu masuk deh ujian teori (bisa pilih manual atau komputer). saya lebih suka pakai komputer, lebih jelas hasil nya (lihat point 3 di atas, materi ujian). Waktu kemarin saya lulus, benar 18 soal dari 30 soal.
- tunggu deh hasil resmi kelulusannya dari loket 5 ...
- klo udah dinyatakan lulus, terus ke ujian praktikum mengendari motor. Sampel motor nya Honda Supra (lihat materi ujian point 3)
- klo lulus sesuai batas kelulusan (spt point sebelumnya), maka berkas2 nya ntar dikembalikan dan diarahkan menuju loket poto dan data diri di SIM C, seperti verifikasi nama dll, juga tanda tangan
- terakhir, nunggu di loket 10 untuk menerima SIM C

Pioneer DV-373 Modification (PART 1)

2009-02-13T04:32:00.001-08:00

Hi folks, Its been a long time that I wrote about Audio DIY modification (see the time of last post). I don’t really have enough time and honestly I’m quite lazy to fill my blog hahaha. ^-^
Well, two days ago I’ve started to feel boring about my everyday activity so I checked my drawer of electronic components. And yes, what as I expected I don’t have many good component to do any big project. So I will start a small modification project. The “victim” for today is my old school Pioneer DV-373.

My Pioneer DV-373 is fine DVD player. What I like the most form this player is the laser pickup. It will play any pir*ted DVDs smoothly yet durable. The downside is, this is not a videophiles or audiophiles grade DVD player. SO don’t expect good performance from it. This player also a step back from current technology, it still using analogue video output instead digital video output like HDMI or DVI-D like modern players.

Inside of Pioneer DV-373

Okay. Let begin with opening the case screw located around the body. Well, inside of the player we see a three section. First on the left side is the power supply circuitry. On the centre is laser pickup and disc mounting mechanism. The right most is the main PCB.

The Tweaks

First thing first, let’s tweak the power supply section. Binggo! Pioneer using good parts for PSU (except for the transformator). Nice. What I did just some little more tweaks. The blue highlights originally are the X2 class capacitor designated for filtering AC ripple current. What I did is just remove the capacitors (C1 and C2). Yes it was designed for safety, but for some people (including me) will love with the absence of X2 class capacitor as long there still choke on it.

The capacitor in green highlight was originally for secondary filter after rectifier. I just replace the already good ELNA RJF (extra low impedance) with ELNA SILMIC (audiograde capacitor).
The last thing, is replace the capacitors after the regulator (shown in red highlights). I was replaced the old capacitor with with ELNA SILMIC and Rubycon ZL. I also increased the capacitance one of capacitors from 1200uF to 3300uF with Panasonic FJ.

DENON DVD-1920 Modification

2008-07-11T05:03:00.000-07:00

Most audio/video lovers know about Denon. The DVD-1920 is one of their products. It is a very popular universal player (CD/VCD/SVCD/SACD/DVD/DVD-A/DivX/MP3 player) among audio/video enthusiast. This fellow often appear on many audio/video magazine and received many award for their best bang for the buck universal player especially on video performance. Being a good performer in video, doesn’t mean a good performer in audio too. Yes, the sound performance not really meet the audiophile standard in term of quality especially its analog output. That’s why I should do something to improve its sound performance.

Let see what inside.

Yay! I really shock to know what is inside this player. It appear that denon try to reduce production cost by using a poor grade capacitor. The only high grade component are their video dac (burr brown), video processor, and DSD chip. The rest is poor grade samxon and su’scon capacitors.

This is the power supply components. The main power capacitor made by su’scon (33uF/400v) and other supply capacitor are made by samxon and su’scon. Not really good capacitors indeed.

This is the analog out opamp the KIA 4558, they using unknown brand for their 4558 IC. This opamp IC is coupled with another samxon supply capacitor and some coupling-decoupling capacitor.

Well, now we know why denon DVD-1920 is a poor sound performer.

The Modification
To make it sound better than ever, I should replace some capacitor. My focus is to improve analog output of this baby. The limitation in my project is my very limited stock parts. This is the stock list what I used for this project:
1. Nippon Chemicon 68uF/400v power path
2. Nichicon Muse FW 330uF/25v -> power path
3. Elna Silmic 100uF/16v  power path
4. Black Gate F 47uF/50v  OPAMP Coupling
5. Rubycon YK 470uF/16v  power path
6. Rubycon ZL 220uF/16v  power path
7. Rubycon YK 22uF/50b  audio signal path
8. Panasonic Purism 470uF/25v  OPAMP supply
9. Elna Blue 1000uF/6.3v  power path
10. Burr Brown OPA2134PA  Analog out OPAMP

Modification notes:
Power path: The main target is the main supply capacitor. I upgraded with bigger size nipon chemicon 68uF/400v capacitor. I know, this is not the best capacitor around but its a lot better capacitor than su’scon one and this is the only capacitor in that size that I’ve stocked. The rest of capacitor, I replace with stock what I had.

OPAMP: This spot is the most important spot to replace since it will affect analog out so much. What I did is to change the stock 4558 with burr brown OPA2134PA. To make sure OPA2134PA work perfect, I also changed the opamp supply capacitor with Panasonic Purism and coupling capacitor with Black Gate F.

Result
Yes, what I expected. When the first few hours listening session, the vocal feel very warm and separation is improved.
After about 3 hours burn-in, this baby started to improve. The vocal warmness started to decrease and feels just right, the bass is tighter than before, highs is airy, and separation increase again. This modification brings a lot improvement compared to standard DVD-1920 especially in sound performance. IF you have this player at home, I highly recommend to do some modification to kill its weakness.

Altec Lansing 621 Modification

2008-07-10T04:55:00.000-07:00

Altec lansing 621 is the lastest multimedia speaker I’ve owned. Despite its big size, its sound really good. Even my friends that no audio lover, they always delighted by 621 presentation.
After 4 years using this speaker for listening songs from my computer, I should do something to it. Why? Simply because this speaker cannot satisfy me any more. The treble sound realy sharp and tiring to listen for a long time and the vocal is very thin. The good things about 621 is the staging, and separation is quite good. Yes, my target is to make she is more “ear catching”.

Let see what is on the sub-woofer.

Hehehe.. I forgot to documented the internal parts before modification. That photo was taken after first modification.

But anyway as we can see, there are 3 multiwatt15 amp chips for their main amplification. Two TDA7296 for each satellites and one TDA7294 sub-woofer. Well, its not top-performer amp chip but its still a high quality chip around. There are also 5 opamp for the amplification, four MC4558 (dual) and one LM324(quad). The first two MC4558 used for main input amplification and other two is for each satellites, while LM324 for sub-woofer.

The main supply capacitor is came from samxon 4700uF rated 35v, the other capacitor mostly came from samxon and capxon in different size from 0.1uF – 100uF. For your information, samxon and capxon is not the best capacitor around and it was reported in bad caps forum as one of bad caps.

For the power transformer, altec lansing 621 used a torroid transformer. That is very good one..

Enough for the analysis. Let see, what I can do to her..

This is the plan for modification project.
1. Upgrade the power path, from power cable to amp and opamp supply
2. Recap all signal path capacitor
3. Upgrade opamp and speaker cable

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1. Upgrade power path
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This is just a simple upgrade. This is what i did:
a. Substitute power cable with iron cable and put some ferrite clamp on it.
b. Upsize the main power capacitor to rubycon 10000uF (originally 4700uF)
c. Change the opamp supply capacitor with Elna Silmic BP. Latter I use a combination of Rubycon Black Gate F and Elna Silmic BP

First time, the bass is has slow response. But after 20h break in, the bass is become normal and more punchy and separation is increased. Overall quality are increased. But its still sharp.

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2. Recap all signal path capacitor
---------------------------------
This is the step took very long time to find all the material, This what i did:
a. Change all the 2.2uF stock elco with bi-polar Panasonic purism.
b. Change the de-coupling elco for multiwatt15 to Philips and Black Gate
c. Change all 10uF and 1uF elco with Elna Blue.
d. Change coupling caps with Jensen Oil Paper Capacitor and Black Gate F
e. All the caps below 1uF changed to wima mkp 10 capacitor
f. Change the signal input solder with audiophile grade solder (forgot the brand, but its higher quality than WBT)

This modification brings more transparency, warmth to the vocal, and open high. But before i changed <1uF size capacitor to MKP 10, the high is quite sharp.

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3. Upgrade opamp and speaker cable
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This one is fun part, because this one is the easiest step from all, but still it still took a long time to get the right parts and have a great impact to overall sound perentation. This is what i did so far:
a. Put sockets for dual-opamp, so I can change opamp without solder or de-soldering
b. Use a combination of AD8066 form analog device and OPA2134 from Burr Brown for input amplification
c. Use two LM833 from national semiconductor for each satellite opamp.
d. Change the quad opamp from LM324 to OP470
e. Speaker cable upgraded from stock to HT speaker cable (I forgot the brand already, its an old school cable taken form my father un-used cable and its performance quite decent)

What I got from this step is a precision, airy highs, warm vocal, and wide staging presentation from 621. This because a combination of sharp and fast AD8066 and warm vocal from OPA2134 for input and a wide staging from LM833. I next experiment is to try LM4562 for satellite opamp.

Here is the lastest picture of my 621: