Jimmy’s Junkyard

Last week (last Saturday, 26 May 2007), Indonesian audio DIY community held a blind test session. The blind test was held at Rich Audio, ITC Permata Hijau. This time, the subject was Single Ended Amplifier. All were DIY products (except the SAC, made in Thailand). We have 12 contenders this time, divided into 2 classes, small power (less than 5 Watts RMS) and high power (over 5 Watts RMS).

Here’s the contenders.

The other equipments used were:

• Spark CDT15 CD Player (fully modified, op-amp is running in Class A)
• Sonic Frontier SFL-1 Signature Series (also fully modified)
• DIY Speaker with D25 tweeter and Vifa P17 woofer in Transmission Line cabinet (MTM)
• CDP to Pre-amp Interconnect: Oritek X2
• Pre-amp to Amplifier Interconnect: Unsemble Ultraflex
• Speaker Cable: Kimber 8VS

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As I’ve mentioned on my previous thread here, I plan to modify the components on the Onkyo SE-90PCI. So, some of the parts have arrived. Some are still on the way.

I think I will use the Elna Cerafine as the main filter. The stock capacitor is Nichicon 470uF/16Volt. I plan to upgrade it to Elna Cerafine 2200uF/16Volt. As we know that better filtering should give better sound quality, so I underline the need of highest quality capacitor in this section. I plan to use BlackGate to, but can’t find the FK series around. I currenty have BlackGate Standard Series 1000uF/16Volt, but I think I prefer Cerafine over BlackGate Standard. This Cerafine is quite big. I’m not so sure whether I can fit in on the board Will find the way later.

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It’s no surprise to see a motherboard, vga, notebook, or even a barebone PC from ASUS. But, wait a second, a sound card? Yes, a sound card. ASUS introduced Xonar D2 (PCI) and D2K (PCI-E) sound card on CeBIT 2007, few months ago.

This sound card is equipped with Dolby Digital Live and DTS Connect. These two features allow Xonar to stream any sources in the Dolby Digital or DTS digital signal. So, you can connect this Xonar to your receiver via one digital cable only. Any sources means MP3, MPEG, DiVX, etc (any non-multichannel audio). You can enjoy multichannel audio by activating this feature. So I guess, Xonar is expected to become a nice HTPC companion.

The photo above shows the PCI version of ASUS Xonar, while below is the PCI-E 1x version.

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Artist: Teresa Teng
Album: Volume I
Publisher: Universal (works together with Hugo Productions)
Recording Technology: LPCD45

About this album:
This is my first LPCD45 album. I bought it around S$ 39 (forget the exact price) at Singapore. Currently, there are 3 volume of Teresa Teng’s album in LPCD45, but this one (Volume I) contains most popular Teresa’s song. So I picked this one.

Overall, this CD contains almost all popular old Teresa Teng’s song. Track #2 is the popular “Ye Liang Tai Piaw Wo Te Sin” (月亮代表我的心) and track #8 is Thien Mi Mi (甜蜜蜜). You can read the rest on the track list at the end of this page. Finally, I can have an album that contains all good track inside. Really nice, since I used to be Teresa’s fan. I don’t have to tell you much about the album because if you love Teresa’s song, then this album will give you 100% satisfaction.

The sound quality itself can be considered good. The vocal is very sweet and liquid. The treble is soft, warm, transparant, but not harsh or bright. The low extension is tight, well rounded. I also listen other LPCD45 and they are have similiar quality and characteristics.

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Around last year or two, I heard about LPCD. Term “LP” itself is commonly used for Vinyl (or turntable, got the point?). So LPCD means a CD with “vinyl” taste or quality. Most people consider CD to be a digital format (and digitally sounded media), while Vinyl tends to have warmer sound (and more analogue). A lot of audiophiles claim that Vinyl sounds better than CD. But Vinyl is not as durable as CD, since it’s an analog media. You need a lot of treatment to enjoy a Vinyl.

Hugo Productions, a record label from Hong Kong, established at 1987, claims a new technology called LPCD. They claim that the LPCD will have more analogue sound than typical CD. A man behind Hugo is Mr. Aik Yew Goh. He is a famous recording producer who spend over 35 years in this business.

From the picture above, you can see the block diagram to produce LPCD. As we can see, there’s nothing really special from this diagram. The source is Open Reel Master Tape and Digital Master Tape, then sent to highest quality D/A circuit with up-sampling capability to 24 bit 192 kHz. They adjust the sonic quality and characteristics to match their standard and of course adjust the level of all tracks. Finally, the tracks will be down-sampled to 16/44.1 kHz into the CD format and processed to LPCD.

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I decide to mod my “3-weeks” old Onkyo SE-90PCI. The basic sound is good actually, but I think I can add more taste for it. I have checked my parts bin and see that I have enough parts to upgrade this sound card. But, I think I need to order some more. So, for now, I just remove all the capacitors first and we’ll see what can I do next

Here’s the picture of the Onkyo SE-90PCI with removed capacitors. I leave the Os-Con there, since no capacitor better than Os-Con for this section.

The picture of the back of the Onkyo SE-90PCI. Some dirty job to remove all the capacitor. Not an easy way to do that I took around 4 hours to remove all the capacitors

I’ve finished my Luxeon III project. It contains two Luxeon III Star (Lambertian). I design a simple voltage and current regulator based on two National Semiconductor LM317. You can adjust the current and the voltage by using few resistor or potentiometer. I will discuss about the driver on separate post (later). Now, just enjoy the project showcase first

The picture above shows my project. As you can see, I use two LM317. The first one is to regulate the current, the second one is to regulate the voltage. I use two switches to set the current. All switches off means 200 mA, one switch on means 400 mA, and two switches on means 600 mA. Actually I should provide switches to set the 800 and 1000 mA. Perhaps later. The resistors used for regulating the current should be minimum 2 Watts (I use 5 Watts).

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I just returned from Makassar, South Sulawesi, yesterday (after delayed around 3 hours). I arrived around 01.00 in the morning. I got a small shoot at the Losari Beach, Makassar, South Sulawesi.

Taken with EOS 10D, Tamron Lens, F/2.8, 4 seconds, and ISO 100. Not a really nice shot, since I didn’t bring my tripod Anyway, just enjoy it!

Click the photo below to see the bigger version.

I’ve just downloaded Creative ALchemy from here. I install the Windows Vista with X-Fi Elite Pro and F.E.A.R.

Screenshot above shows the F.E.A.R on Vista. Hey? All the HW acceleration and EAX function are not available!

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See the picture below. This page will be shown when you are accessing “considered forbidden” website from Google’s search result. I don’t know the criteria of a website that will be considered “harmful”, better ask Google for it

But I think the idea is good. By doing this way, Google will prevent a “newbie” to access those site. As you can see, there is no direct link from the “warning page” to the “destination page”. See the red square. You have to copy-and-paste manually the link to access your destination page (I don’t think everyone know the way to do this, especially the one who is not familar with such thing). So, you put yourself on the risk by doing that, not Google. Clever eh?