non-oversampling Arcam 5+

[john & Jake]

hi again everybody,fancy seeing you here.

Pic of the non-oversampling mod below.
A bit daunting but simple in the end.
Desolder pins 1.2 and three of the TDA 1541 and bend the pins up.
Three wires from these to pins 1,2 and three of SAA 7220.

First notable was an easier bass line. You may see bigger improvements as I can only compare with the Dacmagic 1 that the Arcam has been running through until now.

 

[andypaulden]

Slightly off topic, though still about the Alpha 5, took the lid off mine a while back just to see what all the fuss was about. I have to say I was quite surprised how full the case is. Maybe all players of this era were crammed like this, but from recollection, pictures I've seen of similarly priced gear, just seem to contain the transport, a pcb and a little torridal.

 

[john & Jake]

hi Andy,
yes I know what you mean. There's a lot in there.
In the Arcam the Audio board sits on top of the main pcb and just unplugs to work on.
Lots of caps, easy to get at to upgrade.

 

[andypaulden]

Hey John,

You're obviously not worried about having a go yourself, and all credit to you. I elected to let someone who knows what they're doing fiddle around inside mine. Now just looking forward to getting my ' breathed on' player home!

 

[Kit Taylor]

Here's something that might be worth looking into.

Thorsten Loesch has come up with an analogue filter for Non-OS DACs that gives a flat frequency response, cuts out the worst of the "bad" ultrasonic noise and leaves behind the out of band stuff that mimics instrumental overtones lost in digital encoding.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Thunderstone_technical/message/63

 

[john & Jake]

hi,
just replaced the two ne5534's on the audio output with op27's which seems to be the accepted choice.

Thought it was worse to start with, although there was a definate pace to the tracks now, as the tone had shifted.
A tad brighter.

After about an hour though the tone dropped back and was now pacey and natural.

Another worthwhile mod.
Getting there slowly.

 

[ron]

I wonder if we could try a couple of ALW super regulator boards in the AA5? all the electrolytic caps in these players are pretty naff, especially the output coupling cap this should be lowered in capacitance and changed to the best type you can find and fit in the pcb, take out those nasty muting transitors aswell, come on guys, any more idea's has anyone tried improving the psu? maybe by building an external one and use a better transformer

Ron

 

[timpy]

NE5534's are very popular in these types of players. There are some in the non LE-discreet version of the Rotel RCD-965BX as well. First port of call for the soldering iron, although I haven't done the mod yet. They're not horrible, but they're not marvellous devices either.

Another useful improvement (which I have done) is to remove the combined digital and analogue output board on the Rotel that carries the phono sockets, and (he says desperately trying to bring the post back on topic), probably worth doing on any other player that us so afflicted with such a feature.

Cheers

 

[andypaulden]

John and anyone else interested.

Picked up my Alpha 5 from Chesterfield this lunchtime. Have listened to maybe 4 or 5 hours worth of my fave tracks since getting home and I have to say I've no idea what Mr W. does to this humble player but its nothing short of magical. Since hitting what I thought was the pinnacle of digital replay in the form of a Levinson 390s then having to sell it for financial reasons, I hoped that I'd come across something one day that made me smile like it did, but for real world money. This isn't that far off, certainly not £6000 off!

I'd certainly recommend anyone with an Arcam 5/5+ to speak with Avondale, as the job done on mine has to be just about the biggest bang for your buck in Audio.

 

[quickie]

Give it at least a month to burn in and it will sound even better It really is a stunning machine at the price.

Paul.