Posted on Saturday, 18th May 2013 by Auw Jimmy
It’s been quite some time since I play with small soldering job. Time to practice a bit more. On the same time, I have to solder my LME 49720HA to the PCB board converter. So, let’s heat up the hand a bit. The idea is to convert TO-99 package into standard DIP8.
Tags: LME 49720HA, OpAmp, Soldering
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (20)
Posted on Sunday, 12th May 2013 by Auw Jimmy
Finally it’s done, the modification of Asus Xonar Essence One (E1). Before we go to a final listening test, let’s enjoy some pictures first.
As I have explained before, this is not the best design to mount the big Jensen electrolytic capacitor. But it seems I don’t really have many option here.
Tags: Asus, E1, Essence One, Modification, Xonar
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (7)
Posted on Sunday, 12th May 2013 by Auw Jimmy
After this process, now it’s time for the audio board to return to its original place. Time to plug her back.
The final touch is to assembly the power supply board and the new capacitors. It will take some time – 15 minutes probably?
For some capacitors, I need to jumper them (space is the main concern). So I use UP-OCC wire with Teflon insulation (around 18 AWG) to connect them. And off course, a bit of creativity to mount them. Note the yellow Jensen electrolytic capacitors and their new ‘DIY’ mounting kit 
Can’t see any better for sure!
Tags: Asus, E1, Essence One, mod, Modification, Xonar
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (13)
Posted on Thursday, 9th May 2013 by Auw Jimmy
Time to get into serious business now: Let do some surgery. The object: Asus Xonar Essence One audio board.
I’m gonna make it quick. The ordinary Nichicon is no where good for my taste (it could be for me only, yours could be different). So I pick several candidates as listed here.
To be honest, the process is not that easy. It was easy to remove the capacitor, but to plug the new one, definitely it will need some time due to the small hole (this board is very stingy with the hole size).
All components here are soldered in WBT solder and Cardas Rosin Flux.
Tags: Asus, Capacitor, Cerafine, Elna, Os-Con, OsCon, Rubycon ZA, Silmic II, Xonar Essence One
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (14)
Posted on Thursday, 9th May 2013 by Auw Jimmy
I believe you still remember this one?
After some listening test, I decided to have another revision. It was a good capacitor, but I was thinking if I could improve some of its aspect. Well, I could be wrong, but no pain no glory, right?
So here is the new revision of the ‘No Name’ Capacitor. Physically wise, they are all the same. But I add some mass on this new capacitor, so it will be a bit heavier. Due to its extra mass, I bet it will be better when vertically positioned, instead of horizontal.
Another different is, it has the 5th lead which is ground/shield of the capacitor. So although it has no metal case on the outside, but we still can have a benefit of shielding when needed.
Tags: No Name Capacitor, Reference Capacitor, Rev. 2, Special Capacitor, Special Project
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (4)
Posted on Thursday, 9th May 2013 by Auw Jimmy
If you have a bunch of capacitors on the shelf, surely you will even face this. Once upon a time, I plan to use my old capacitor (we are talking several ‘few’ years, not 15 or 20 years or so). Off course as wise ‘technician’ says: better safe than sorry. So test your old stuff first before putting them into the real circuit.
When I test with a basic Ohm-meter testing with my Sanwa analog meter, I find some of my capacitor not totally back to infinity during the testing. It means there is some leakage on the capacitor. Mostly, such leakage is recoverable with reforming them (I will discuss this later as I need to use a power supply, some high wattage resistor, etc). So don’t throw them to the recycle bin directly.
See below the measurement result. The needle doesn’t move back to infinity.
Tags: Old Capacitor, Reform, Reforming Capacitor
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (2)
Posted on Sunday, 5th May 2013 by Auw Jimmy
For Asus Xonar Essence One modification
Best on the class, perfect on their position.
Tags: Asus, BlackGate Jensen, Capacitor, Cerafine, Elna, OsCon, Rubycon ZA, Silmic, Xonar Essence One
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (11)
Posted on Tuesday, 23rd April 2013 by Auw Jimmy
It seems that one of my article here has inspired a guy from Warsaw, Poland, named Marcin. But instead of comparing those capacitors, Marcin deciced to change the capacitor based on his music and his taste. According to him, he enjoyed listening different caps with different kind of music. I completely agree that even the best Duelund Cast sometime not sweet enough (if you are really a fans of super sweet vocal) compared to – let’s say – Jensen Paper Tube.
So below photos are completely Marcin’s system and his works. I start to think that his work is completely better than mine, especially the Elma selector wood stand. Mine was done with a plastic CD cover
Tags: Capacitor, Duelund, jensen, Reader's System, Sun Audio
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (9)
Posted on Sunday, 21st April 2013 by Auw Jimmy
Asus Xonar Essence One uses a ribbon cable to connect the stage before the final buffer output to potentiometer then brings back the attenuated signal back to the buffer output stage.
This is no where a best approach, as the signal will pass through cheap ribbon cable back and forth. Some audiophile will prefer an extension rod and put the potentiometer on the back, near the signal point which to be adjusted, instead of bring out and back the signal itself with cable. Well, there are dozens way to Rome, right?
The potentiometer itself (Alps B10K) is a balance type (4-Gang). I don’t really need that balance type as I will not use the balance output. So I did some tracing to get the connection between the LPF opamp to the final buffer stage. So here we go!
Remember that the layout below is seen from the top, not from the bottom. And I do hope I’ve done the tracing correctly Do at your own risk and double check before you proceed to modify that part.
“I” means Input, “O” means Output, and “G” means Ground.
One thing that you might notice is the Input and Output layout are all crossed. I1 is side by side with O2 instead of I2 and vice versa.
Tags: ALPS, Asus, Essence One, potentiometer, volume control, Xonar
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (4)
Posted on Monday, 8th April 2013 by Auw Jimmy
As I have informed on previous post here, the best way to trace the PCB is to remove as much component as possible. This to make sure some of your tracing process are accurate. Although not mandatory, but seeing I plan to change some components anyway, so removing them would be the best approach
So, here is the Asus Xonar Essence One PCB with almost all capacitors removed.
It was so fun process and took around 15 minutes to remove (nearly) all the capacitors. Cleaning the hole was another story though
Tags: Asus Xonar Essence One, Capacitor, Modification, PCB, Tracing
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (5)
Posted on Sunday, 31st March 2013 by Auw Jimmy
The first thing that we have to do before doing some mods activity is to find out who is where, why, and doing what. We can easily exclude when and how
First, we need a AVO Meter. Any brand will do, as mostly we are testing for continuity only. Mostly, it will produce a ‘beep’ sound if it detects conductivity. Any cheap meter will do, started from $5. But I prefer a good tool, so I use my Sanwa PC510.
Tags: Asus Xonar Essence One, Capacitor, mod, OpAmp
Posted in DIY Audio, Measurement | Comments (16)
Posted on Wednesday, 27th March 2013 by Auw Jimmy
Don’t call me nuts as I think disassembling Asus Xonar Essence One shouldn’t be categorized as that
I took 30 minutes, more or less, to disassembly this stuff. The hardest part was to remove the ‘glued’ heatsink. It was quite tough.
Tags: Asus, DAC, Xonar Essence One
Posted in DIY Audio | Comments (2)
QLS QA-660 Meets Lavry DA11, Lynx HiLo,
AD825 and LM49720
Asus Xonar Essence One Power Supply:
Asus Xonar Essence One Power Supply
Testing the New ‘No Name’
No Name Yet…
MJ Technical Disc Vol. 6
Beautiful Mesh Plate![Travelling with Nokia Lumia 920 [Camera Quality Review]](http://jimmyauw.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/1-Waiting-for-Boarding-150x150.jpg)
Travelling with Nokia Lumia 920 [Camera
Preparing the Layout…
SPDIF Pulse Transformer Scientific
DIY Battery Power Supply for Sencore