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Got Fleas?

Just checking in to report. First Flea [out of two] with Tent is up and running, out of the player, CD3.5 awaits.

Incidentally I had bought my clock with inductor already [about two and a half years ago] and the kit came with another inductor, so if anyone is missing their inductor, I may well have it. Just let me know.

End of message.

Thanks again chaps.
 
I know some of you have been trying to contact me (some are waiting for extra bits) but I'm afraid my laptop hard disk failed on Tuesday and it's taken me an age to get back to a working state again. I'll be catching up with flea stuff again tomorrow (hopefully) and apologise to those trying to contact me and waiting for bits.

Cheers,
Carl
 
The flea is now wired into my CDP, I powered up briefly using a bench supply to confirm all was working. I will have proper listen when the PSU is installed. The clock that I removed had a damping rubber hat attached to it, as most clocks do. Would the flea's clock benefit from some damping or is it immune by design?

Regards,

Mus
 
Hi guys,

I've just tried running the flea straight into the SAA7310 in my modded A5 so totally bypassing the SAA7220.
If you don't want to go to the trouble of removing the board and going straight to the pins you can try a simple way by removing R224 (120ohm) and fitting the XO output inplace of R224 (hole nearest the edge of the board)
I'm currently listening through the headphones, its fairly late:D A and B comparison the sound with the flea going straight to the SAA7310 is clearer,more detailed! no problems as far as I can tell.

Does anybody know if the SAA7310 could do with a resistor going across XTAL1 and XTAL2?
 
I've now removed that 47pf cap (C229) I'm using OPA627 for the I/V and OP27 (in classA) on the output, NOS mod and fitted the TDA1541S2 double crown, the sound is beautiful:eek:

Now for the weird thing, for most of tonight I've not been using the remote and its been working fine, I've just skipped a track using the remote and the discs speed up, its like listening to it in fast forward:D infact pressing any button on the remote and it does the same, if I switch the Arcam off, then back on and use the buttons on the front it works fine, as soon as I touch the remote it goes mad again:confused: any idea's guys?


Update, changed the 33R resistor to 47R, it now works fine:) I've also added a 1M resistor across XTAL1 and XTAL2
 
The Flea Has Landed Stateside.... well in California anyway. Many thanks to all the hard work everyone contributed. It's probably a few weeks away from becoming 'active' but I will post results once in on my CDX.

Cheers

Martin
 
Ron i put both 33 and 100 ohms resistors in mine with 100R going to the decoder?

So is your arcam better than your DAC now ? :D

I got 3,3uf SMR in my outputs now, they are as ive read very musical and oh my god how much bass now :eek:
 
trancera said:
Ron i put both 33 and 100 ohms resistors in mine with 100R going to the decoder?

So is your arcam better than your DAC now ? :D

I got 3,3uf SMR in my outputs now, they are as ive read very musical and oh my god how much bass now :eek:

I've got the 100R resistor now going to the SAA7310, its still working fine and sounding rather good, you should try it, that SAA7220 adds a fair amount of crap to the sound:D
I also use SMR's for dc coupling in mine but only 1uf
I removed those blue Evox polys for the op-amps decoupling and fitted 100nf multilayer ceramics underneath the board directly onto the pins this morning, I'm also going to remove that ceramic disc cap on the -15v supply for the dac and fit a 0.1uf Multicap RTX directly onto the pins a bit later.
Also may remove the tants on the msb pins of the dac and fit 1uf Wima's which should improve things, its easy enough to put back if not;)

The Arcam is very good but it still does not compete with the dac, to be fair though the dacs output stage is much better than the Arcams, theres also Asychronous reclocker using a very good oscillator on the 12S lines
 
heres a picture of the flea in my Arcam, if the link works:rolleyes:
138048660.jpg
 
ohhh yesss!!!

Just had the lid off my CD5 last night to size up a transformer to up the input voltage to the flea. Thought I'd have a poke around and check the grounding of the can I'd put it in (I'd gone to great pains originally to make sure it was isolated from chassis ground with the only ground to the CD5 main board via the coax shield to the DAC). To be honest I was wondering if something was wrong as I was contemplating swapping back to the Superclock (!).
Well low and behold I found that it had become shorted to the case via the mounting screws. Quick fix with some insulation tape and re-check with the mulimeter and...
Wow! - bass has returned - soundstage too - detail still there! It's sounding very good indeed now. Almost certainly better than the Superclock!

Just goes to show that implementation is everything...
 
Last night I built an external supply for my Flea: 30VA 2x 18V toroidal in centre-tapped configuration, feeding an Avondale schottky rectifier board and a 10000uf BHC smoothing cap.

Much difference from feeding the Flea from the internal supply? YES!! This one is really good; like a new CD player with gold knobs on. Like adding an XPS to a CDX.

If in doubt, DO IT!!
 
After looking at the Acoustica site, my first cut at implementation of the Flea in the CDX would be by usng the Flea to clock the DAC and the decoder. Looks like the circuit is very similar to the 3.5 except that the DAC is a BB 20 bit device. Using the Acoustica 3.5 mods page
http://www.acoustica.org.uk/, looks like the connections would be as below:

DSC_1493bSmall.jpg


The existing resistors would be removed and the clock output connected as noted, the ground (one connection only) would be made at a pad close by.

Before I pick up the soldering iron could anyone proof my work....


Thanks

Martin
 
They look very likely candidates, the right values in about the area I'd expect relative to the crystal. I presume you've checked under the board that these are inline between the inverter (74HC04 or similar) and the fed chips; otherwise, go for it.

If you can take another photo or two I'm sure it would help other CDx owners, thanks.
 
Jo Sharp said:
Last night I built an external supply for my Flea: 30VA 2x 18V toroidal in centre-tapped configuration, feeding an Avondale schottky rectifier board and a 10000uf BHC smoothing cap.

Much difference from feeding the Flea from the internal supply? YES!! This one is really good; like a new CD player with gold knobs on. Like adding an XPS to a CDX.

If in doubt, DO IT!!


Agreed Jo,

This is a 'MUST DO' upgrade for the Flea IMO

Graham
 
MartinC,

I suspect you'll run in to timing difficulties if trying to clock the DAC directly. Up to you of course, but I'd play safe and feed the flea into the place vacated by the old clock. Once it's working, then experiment. Good luck.
 
I haven't had any difficulties with timing when clocking the DAC and decoder directly on my cd3.5 (bypassing the buffer chip), but I'm not sure if the same rules apply on the CDX.

Adding another flea (sans XO module) to power the DAC is also very, very nice :D
 
Some dac chips like the TDA1541 need an active divider if you want to run the flea to them direct, I'm going to build one for my Arcam A5, something like a 74VHC163 or HC74 would be ok
 


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