Modified SACD players?

[captain_tinker]

Folks,
I was looking in Audiogon yesterday just having fun looking at some Marantz SACD players :drool: and I noticed a few of them had been modified. I read up a little bit on them, and found that there are places that do modifications on a lot of different kinds of SACD and CD players. I saw Sony as being a common brand to be modified, Marantz and Pioneer too. Some were modified to add tubes, and others were all solid state. Now, I would imagine that modification of this sort would void a warranty on a piece of equipment, but perhaps one that is no longer under a warranty, it probably would not matter...

Here is one of the many places that I found that does modifications:

http://www.audiomod.com/

Have any of you ever listened to or owned a modified cd or sacd player? Is it worth doing? I don't think I plan on doing any such thing, at least not anytime soon, but the idea is just interesting enough to want to discuss it further, for the sake of knowledge. :music:

-capT

 

[eknuds01]

me too!

Dan (DTB300) has a sony player that was modified by modwright.com

A group of us had the pleasure of listening to Dan's amazing system and while we didn't do any A/B comparisons between his modified player and another (unmodified) player, it's safe to assume that someone like Dan wouldn't have dropped over a grand to upgrade his source without serious consideration.

I purchased a sony 900v off of ebay and will have tuberesearchlabs.com mod mine. Check the reviews over at audiogon. People seem to adore this player when it's been modified. I got my player for less than $200 with shipping and I believe the mods are around $750.

For the longest time, I didn't think things like CD players could make a lot of difference, but when you think it about, that's where everything starts! If your player sucks and/or interconnects are bad; you're in trouble even before it gets to the speakers!

I have had numerous emails with the folks at modwright and tuberesearch and both outfits are extrememly knowledgeable and friendly.

 

[DTB300]

See post #4 of this thread:

http://www.martinloganowners.com/~tdacquis/forum/showthread.php?t=3363&highlight=allen+wright

 

[eknuds01]

link

Sony 900v review:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/frr.pl?rdgtl&1142721653&openfrom&5&4

 

[kcl]

I've got an Oppo 970 (CD/SACD/DVD-A/DVD player) that I had modified by (and actually purchased from) Reference Audio Mods. I'm very happy with the results.

 

[Rich]

I've got an Oppo 970 (CD/SACD/DVD-A/DVD player) that I had modified by (and actually purchased from) Reference Audio Mods. I'm very happy with the results.

I have the same player from R.A.M., but unfortunately I haven't had the chance to hook the system back up since I got it, what with the move and all. I am looking forward to getting things hooked back up over the next couple of weeks. When I get it hooked up, I will post some feedback.

 

[captain_tinker]

I have the same player from R.A.M., but unfortunately I haven't had the chance to hook the system back up since I got it, what with the move and all. I am looking forward to getting things hooked back up over the next couple of weeks. When I get it hooked up, I will post some feedback.

I'd be interested to hear your feedback Rich, as well as maybe some further info from kcl? How do you think it compares to the stock player? What about the cryo treatments, what exactly is it, and do either of you have it? Does it make a big difference?

-capT

 

[Caerus]

I am looking at the tubed Shanling modified CD players. Check out the other modified players as well from Underwood Hifi.

http://underwoodhifi.com/mod_shanling.html

 

[captain_tinker]

Folks,
So from what I have read so far, these are the names of the modification companies that I have seen mentioned so far. Are there any other ones that should be on this list?

Underwood Hifi
http://underwoodhifi.com/

Reference Audio Mods
http://www.referenceaudiomods.com/

Tube Research Labs
http://www.tuberesearchlabs.com/

Modwright
http://www.modwright.com/

Vacuum State
http://www.vacuumstate.com/

Audio Mod
http://www.audiomod.com/

The Upgrade Company
http://www.upgradecompany.com/

-capT

 

[Joey_V]

I've heard quite a lot of good things from both Underwood and Modwright so I'm sure you'll be A-OK with those.

Just wanted to mention that when I see the word "modified player"... my first thought is Dan (DTB). That guy KNOWS this side of the audio realm almost inside and out, his experience is quite valuable... so my big suggestion is to note what he says because he's the hombre.

Joey

 

[captain_tinker]

Then maybe I ought to PM Dan and ask a few questions sometime. You know, last night my wife came up behind me while I was at the computer looking at these mod sites, and asked what I was doing. I started to explain about mods for the players, why one does it etc, and then it hit me... I have a really good DVD player, that plays everything that I want it to play, and it does it well, I'm just simply looking for better sound. Why not see if I can have my 588a modded, instead of trying to buy something else? I already own it, so the only cost would be the mods, and shipping, I would not have to buy another complete unit... So I emailed one of the companies and asked for a quote. I am still waiting for the reply, but I think that this would probably be a very good way to go. I looked all over Google, and found several forum sites where modders were talking about modding their 588a's, so I know it can be done, and apparently the results are pretty good. I think it would be fun to add some tubes to the output if possible, but if not, I'll see about adding tubes eventually to some other component, just to see how they sound. I've not heard anything with tubes before, but from what I have been told, they are supposed to sound really nice.

-capT

 

[Spike]

Going the mod route

Capt'n Tinker,
It all depends on what you're looking for and...the size of your budget. The questions you'll need to ask are:

1. Whether you're looking for musical, stereo performance or general overall improvements. Are you looking for improvement in redbook (cd) performance or universal capability. If redbook/CD performance, you can spend $1k on a DAC (PS Audio, Stello, Benchmark, etc...) and be done.
2. Given a mod, will your system realize the benefit of the mod you have in mind. For example, why spend $2000 on your Pioneer mods when you can easily spend $500 on clock & power-supply upgrade, and put the rest toward a better amplifier.
3. Does this mod need to be done in 1 shot, or can this upgrade be spread out in multiple phases.

I myself have gone down this route and "settled" on the APL Pioneer 563A which is an older generation of your Pio 588A. The rationale(s) for my getting the 563A at the time (~3 years ago) were:

1. Reasonable cost around $750 including the player.
2. Upgrade to the DAC section as well as the new implementation of the analogue output section (bypassing the "evil" stock opamps).
3. Beefy power-supply.

Let's talk about various modders on the scene... I'd break them up into 3 categories and rank them in ascending order in terms of complexity involved:

1. Direct replacements of stock components to premium ones. Just about everyone does offer this as their entry-level offerings.
2. Upgrade/redesign of the power-supply and analog output section. For this level, we're talking about replacement of power-supply circuitry and analog output section. Examples are ModWright with his Signature mods where the power-supply and the analogue output section are replaced with his design, or Reference Audio Mods with their transformer coupled output stage, eliminating the stock opamps.
3. Upgrade/replacing just about everything in the signal chain, except for the optical drive. My APL Pioneer 563 is a good example of this category where the DAC have been added in parallel, power-supply and analog stage have been replaced with Alex's implementation. For this category, the modder needs to be very knowledgeable about the entire signal chain, DAC included. Unfortunately, there are not too many on the scene, Alex Peychev of
   APL HiFi, Dan Wright of ModWright and Allen Wright of Vacuum State. None of these offerings are cheap!

Owning both APL and ModWright products, I can say that they are both 1st class products. On the digital front, I was lucky to have met Alex before he refocused his business on high-end players. At the time, I found that his APL Pio 563 offer exactly what I was looking for (technically) and that his Pio 563 can rival any players on this side of the $2.5k price point. A current example of what Alex can do is his APL Denon 5910ci. Owning the ModWright SWL9.0, I can honestly say that Dan's signature mod is quite good since they are using the same circuitry (tube rectified PSU and tubed output stage).

So, those are my inputs on this mod route. Hope this helps...

Spike

 

[captain_tinker]

Spike,
Awesome information, thanks. I was kind of thinking about some of this earlier, just what exactly am I looking for this mod to do to my player? Well, I figured that since I like what the player is capable of doing, that I would choose this player to mod. It can play the SACD's, DVD-A's, and RBCD's, MP3's, JPG's, on both cd AND burned DVD's, which is rare to find. It can play DivX, whoopy doo, but a neat feature nonetheless. It did come in handy once when my brother came to visit and had several DivX movies on his computer. It can also play just a plain .avi file burned to a cd or DVD. Kind of cool. so anyways, what I really want to accomplish is to do several things in one.

I have thought about getting an external DAC. Good idea, but only really useful for RBCD. I have several of those and do play them periodically, but several of them are HDCD's, and I have found very few DAC's to play them. My receiver will play them, so I could potentially hook up both digital out's from the player, one to the receiver for HDCD, and Dolby and DTS, and one for the DAC for RBCD.

Now that leaves out the SACD and DVD-A analog outs. I have been really wanting to get a bit better sound from this side of the player. It is ok, but sounds veiled, and not much better than the RBCD playback currently through the DAC's in my Marantz receiver. So I was hoping to upgrade those specifically.

So combining these into one package, upgrading the DAC in the player, as well as upgrading the 6 channel analog outs is what I would be after.

The video side is pretty good, but considering I don't have what you would call a high grade TV at this point, and am limited to S-Video at 480i, I haven't really been able to mess with video quality yet.

So I could potentially spent several thousand on a very nice SACD/RBCD player, but miss out on DVD-A or get yet another player that does DVD-A and RBCD, and then spend another thousand or so on a good DAC, plus cables, or I could put it all into one container with a good high quality mod. This is what I was thinking.

So far I have gotten two replies back, one from Underwood saying that they don't do the Pioneer 588a, and one from Modwright saying the same thing. So, perhaps this may not work after all. But I am still waiting for Reference Audio Mods to reply, and Vacuum State too. We'll see I guess.

-capT

 

[Spike]

With your preference for DiVX, HDCD as well as universal capabilities, it narrows things down quite a bit. Go with Reference Audio Mods

1. Oppo DV-981HD.
2. Denon DV-2910 w/ coupling transformer output stage.

These are the only 2 players which fit your needs...

Spike

 

[captain_tinker]

Spike,
Well, I guess if they don't mod the Pioneer 588a, then I think I would be completely sold on the Denon 2910, it looks like an awesome machine! I think I did consider it at the time I bought the 588a, but now I don't remember why I didn't get it... It may have been a bit more expensive, or maybe it was that it didn't play the jpgs on DVD's or something. But owell, I can still keep my 588a to do that if I really wanted to do that. I found I haven't done it that often, but when I did want to do it, it was VERY handy.

http://www.usa.denon.com/ProductDetails/228.asp#

It seems to have not only the HDMI upscaling to 1080p, which I would eventually want to have, but it has the DVI output too. Very interesting. If I read the description of the Denon mod correctly:

http://www.referenceaudiomods.com/M...Denon2910&Category_Code=MODS&Product_Count=24

It seems that it is saying it only upgrades the two channel output, not the entire 6 channel analog output. Maybe it's good enough not to need to be upgraded? I also don't think I saw any tubes listed as being added in, no problem. I could eventually add a tube in either the pre-amp or amp stage someday. That may be a while though.

-capT

 

[Spike]

It seems that it is saying it only upgrades the two channel output, not the entire 6 channel analog output. Maybe it's good enough not to need to be upgraded? I also don't think I saw any tubes listed as being added in, no problem. I could eventually add a tube in either the pre-amp or amp stage someday. That may be a while though.

Most of the time, the people asking for the mods are those in the hard-core/purist camp, going after the most satisfying 2-channel musical experience. To them (and I am one of them), adding more hardware/channels will just make things more complicated, but not always more musical or better. In my (biased) opinion, if you are going after the multi-channel mods, the only channel needing mod will be the center channel to preserve the same signature and voicing on the front channels. (Flame-suit now on) The rear and surround channels are not that important in my view. If you inquire about the center channel mod, I'm sure the folks at Reference Audio Mods will walk you through the pros and cons of this extra mod.

Regarding tubes, they are worth it if-and-only-if done correctly! Keeping the signal path as short as possible is more important to me than to squeeze tubes into the circuitry unecessarily just to get the "tube" sound. In my view, the transformer coupled output stage makes much more sense in a player than tubes. In fact, when I discussed with Dan Wright, he agreed with me that given my excellent ModWright SWL9.0 in my system, the transformer output stage is the best solution for a modded digital source. For a digital source, I'm not that hung up on requiring tubes to be in the output stage at all. You'll be surprised what a clean, simple class-A circuitry can do :rocker:

Spike

 

[captain_tinker]

Spike,
Thanks for the explanation, See? That's what I am here for, to learn more about this stuff. And I always appreciate people helping me out like this. This is just way too fun for me!

So really it doesn't matter a ton if I have tubes then is what I am understanding, which I am ok with. I was just thinking that it may be interesting to see how it would hear.

Also, now that you mention it, I guess the front R/L channels do most of the work anyways, but I like the idea about doing the center channel mod. I guess there again, I was not really thinking straight about this. This is quite an intriguing idea. I will have to see what I can do about this. I am not really sure if my wife would be amenable to the idea of getting another player right now, since she can't tell the difference between my clock radio and my other stuff, to her the ML's are just louder.... Hmm, I wonder, how much does a dozen roses cost...? Do you think she can be swayed?

-capT

 

[Spike]

Also, now that you mention it, I guess the front R/L channels do most of the work anyways, but I like the idea about doing the center channel mod.

Nothing is ever that easy & straight forward. For music using CDs, the front L/R channels do ALL of the work. Unless you happen to have a Meridian processor supporting Trifield mode. There are now lots of multi-channel DVD-A or SACD putting out signals to 5.1 channels. In these cases, it's best if you have a decent center channel mod since that will be where the all-important vocal resides. I just happen to be on the hard-core, 2-channel purist camp with only a handfull of multi-channel SACDs compare to hundreds of redbook ceedees.

Spike

 

[captain_tinker]

Finally got my reply from Reference Audio Mods regarding the modification of my Pioneer 588a:



Thank you for your interests in RAM. The Pioneer would require very similar mods as the Oppo player. Here is an example.

Power Supply/output stage- Jensen HV 4-pole capacitor, RAM Exotic diode bridge, Rubycon ZA/ZL capacitors throughout entire player, Furutech IEC inlet, Upgraded opamps, and WBT RCA copper connectors. $625.00

Clocking- Superclock 4-$295.00 and optional Superclock 4 PSU-$295.00

This will be at least comparable if not better then the highly recommended Modified Oppo players. I hope this helps.

Best Regards,

Kyle takenaga




I guess that maybe that would really be a very good deal, to just go with the Oppo after all, since the price would be similar, and the Oppo would have the upscaling option. Of course the Denon 2910 would also be a similar price... So I guess I have some things to think about.

-capT

 

[eknuds01]

Finally got my reply from Reference Audio Mods regarding the modification of my Pioneer 588a:



Thank you for your interests in RAM. The Pioneer would require very similar mods as the Oppo player. Here is an example.

Power Supply/output stage- Jensen HV 4-pole capacitor, RAM Exotic diode bridge, Rubycon ZA/ZL capacitors throughout entire player, Furutech IEC inlet, Upgraded opamps, and WBT RCA copper connectors. $625.00

Clocking- Superclock 4-$295.00 and optional Superclock 4 PSU-$295.00

This will be at least comparable if not better then the highly recommended Modified Oppo players. I hope this helps.

Best Regards,

Kyle takenaga




I guess that maybe that would really be a very good deal, to just go with the Oppo after all, since the price would be similar, and the Oppo would have the upscaling option. Of course the Denon 2910 would also be a similar price... So I guess I have some things to think about.

-capT

Tink,

I am getting my sony 900v modded very soon (hopefully in the next week or two). I'll let you know how that turns out.

Erik