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Philips CD104/204 with external tube clock?!

Those were Reiki crystals! I'm sure this CDPs aura will be ruined now, you might be messing with tech that you don't understand :-s

Perhaps try putting the crystals in a wooden box with some copper plate attached to an earthing point

gfaw

Are you joking? He said they were crystals but they just look like worthless coloured glass to me - I have hundreds of the things, seller stuck them all over everything!
 
Are you joking? He said they were crystals but they just look like worthless coloured glass to me - I have hundreds of the things, seller stuck them all over everything!
I bet you didn't burn any incense before you opened the case either.

I'm joking, but the previous owner might not have been :). Was there a massive chunk of Amethyst in the listening room?
 
Perhaps I’m stupid or thick but I totally fail to understand what the antique valves do. Enlighten me please Richard! I thought I understood electronics but here :rolleyes:
 
Perhaps I’m stupid or thick but I totally fail to understand what the antique valves do. Enlighten me please Richard! I thought I understood electronics but here :rolleyes:

As far as I can see, valves used to excite a normal crystal of the right frequency, connected by a long cable to where the original crystal used to be. So…why does it sound so good? No fecking idea :D Need to live with a while, I now have loads of decent sources to challenge my main modified Naim CDI - but I probably won’t get to it until autumn now.
 
The external clock is nonsense, put it back in the case and give it a good local reg.

Is the Grundig philips cdm2?


Utterly- this.

Some years ago, discussion elsewhere proved the utter-idiocy (... it did not take long ...) of using a valve in a clock reference circuit. The 1/f, let alone higher orders, is ..utterly, despairingly, wild / F'idiotic.



Bin that, restore local order: enjoy.
 
I bought these things for their resale value, I’ve so far only listened to a NOS modified CD50 with loads of black gates (& came with loads of faults I used to beat down price of everything else :)). It sounded good once repaired.

I’ve tried the CD104, NOS’ed and stuffed full of Black Gates, with external tube clock - after replacing the Burson opamps (one was faulty, level drops off when warm) it also sounds good…and without all the shitty blue glass stuck all over it.

it’s currently running very basic opamps I had available, I’ve some Burr Browns on the way. Once they’re fitted, with suitable decoupling, and after I’ve confirmed it’s forced into 14-bit operation (not sure it is currently, need to check) I’ll have a proper listen amd compare to the CDI. But that will be after summer now.

In an ideal world I’ll also then re-instate the internal clock (but maybe with a flea ;)), and compare again.

I’ve never listened to NOS before, and I frankly think an external tube clock is a bad engineering decision, all I can say is that it sounds great :D
 
Yeh the little uns are the hi-q, the hi-q nx were even better.

Still I'd replace em with Panasonic ng or nh given the age.
 
@Dan K I meant sell the 'earth box' you suggested at £1k. Probably enough crystals to make 10 of them. :) reckon about 100 quid in wood and copper sheet, plus about 1/2 day each to make. Can I have a commission for expanding the idea? ;)
 
I’ve never listened to NOS before, and I frankly think an external tube clock is a bad engineering decision, all I can say is that it sounds great :D

Don't beat yourself up. I prefer a NOS DAC too ;-)

Best (sounding) descrete opamps that I know of are the Staccato items, Bursons are rubbish by comparason
 
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@Dan K I meant sell the 'earth box' you suggested at £1k. Probably enough crystals to make 10 of them. :) reckon about 100 quid in wood and copper sheet, plus about 1/2 day each to make. Can I have a commission for expanding the idea? ;)

They might be Tourmaline, perhaps blue calcite. Get em crushed up and fill some cigar boxes..


Hours of fun for you.
 
@Dan K I meant sell the 'earth box' you suggested at £1k. Probably enough crystals to make 10 of them. :) reckon about 100 quid in wood and copper sheet, plus about 1/2 day each to make. Can I have a commission for expanding the idea? ;)
Ahhhn. now understood. No, all in the public domain :p
 
The result was even better than I remembered & functioned flawlessly.

The CD104 uses a TDA1540 DAC chip which is 14 bit when Philips discovered that Sony and others were coming to the market with 16 bit Players Philips pushed/forced it's engineers into adding oversampling in the guise of a SAA7030 error correction chip. My reading indicates a Non Oversampling (NOS) mod which involves de-soldering & removing the SAA7030 chip and adding a 1k resistor to an isolated leg on another chip to provide 5v to enable 14 bit's to be read, the result is worth the effort.

I bought from Ebay a "Nos re-clock circuit mounted on a 20 pin a side plugin chip socket for TDA1540 SAA7030 based dacs and players" ie not just the NOS mod by just removing the SAA7030 chip and soldering in 4 wires this apparently re-clocks the TDA1540 chips (x2).I still have the replacement for the CD104 a John Westlake designed Cambridge CD4 se and he rates it as one of his best. It is the only CD player I had at that time ever heard/liked under £1500 this modded CD104 probably edges it.

I bought a pristine CD104 off eBay, this CD104 even arrived in it's original cardboard box sold as defective ie not reading CD's. Having already modded my original Philips CD104 running in his own system, with my latest purchase John jnr. took about an hour to drill & wire through the "griplets" dismount the SAA7030 soldering in a 24 pin chip socket then plugging in the "non oversampling/re-clock circuit" off eBay. then reassembled.

Both of these CD 104's are still working beautifully, I now use the CD4 se as a transport with a DAC I bought last year, not necessarily better just a different presentation.

Unfortunately most of the pictures went when Photobucket started charging.

Some idea shown below

http://www.tube-classics.de/TC/MyEquipment/Listening/Projects/PhilipsNOS/PhilipsNonOversampling.htm


Philips and Sony developed CD as a 16 bit standard, Sony chose to use a 16 bit DAC, multiplexed if I remember correctly, Philips chose to use a 14 bit DAC with over sampling as there were two DACs this was technically a better solution. Later it went to 16 bit dual DACS for cost saving reasons, technically the only one that approached the dual approach using TDA1540 was the TDA1541A, TDA1543 etc were much worse, bitstream were pretty good, SAA7350 etc.
 
@Mike P thinks Silmics are better. Sigh

I don't think I've ever said that.

But yes, I do like Silmics for some positions, although I do understand why some people don't like them.

For the record, I've had loads of Black Gates and I've sold most of them. They don't live up to the ridiculous hype IMHO and I would always prefer to use a new cap rather than a 20+ year old one.

@Dowser The Nichicon range of posh 'for audio' caps are very reasonably priced.

If buying from Farnell etc I tend to use a lot of Panasonic FC and FM, Nichicon PW and Rubycon ZLH.
 


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