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.

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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.

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Tags: Asus, DAC, Xonar Essence One
Posted in DIY Audio | Comments (2)

Posted on Sunday, 24th March 2013 by Auw Jimmy

I got chance to try QLS QA-660 with even higher grade of DAC. We have 3 models here: Lavry DA11 (price around USD 1700), Lynx HiLo (around USD 2500), and Bricasti M1 (around USD 8500). I know that we have some price gap here, but I don’t think we have so many chances to try this kind of setup.

Speakers used are Barefoot MicroMain 35 (around USD 7500) and Klein+Hummel O410 (around USD 15.000).

Here is the simple setup of Lavry and Lynx. Lavry looks elegant with black aluminum face plate.

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Tags: Bricasti, Lavry, Lynx, QLS QA-660
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Posted on Sunday, 24th March 2013 by Auw Jimmy

AD825 has been my favorite opamp for quite some time. But seeing the new trend of LM49720, I think it’s gonna be a good idea to have a try.

From my experience, AD825 should give a warmer sound with analogue touch. While LM49720 should have a modern touch with good high extension. I’m not saying who is gonna be the winner, but the test in next several days (or weeks) should gonna be (very) interesting.

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Tags: AD825, LM49720, OpAmp
Posted in Collectible Stuff, DIY Audio | Comments (2)

Posted on Saturday, 23rd March 2013 by Auw Jimmy

Removing the capacitor from a through-hole PCB never become an easy job. But for the sake of modification, that is the only way and surely no way back.

I spent nearly one hour to remove those 6 capacitors on the power supply PCB of Asus Xonar Essence One and cleaned up all the holes (6 capacitors means 12 holes).

With bare eyes, the holes looked clean and neat. But in ‘microscopic’ level, I still can see some dirt. But I think that should be fine.

By the way, LM358 should attract some attention here

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Tags: Asus, Capacitor, Essence One, power supply, Xonar
Posted in DIY Audio | Comments (2)

Posted on Monday, 18th March 2013 by Auw Jimmy

Still remember Asus Xonar Essence One DAC? It’s time to disassembly the power supply. It’s separated on small PCB. Good design as this makes my life more beautiful, although it’s not an easy job to disassemble it.

It has 3 power supply rails: One 5V, and two 12V (positive and negative). The regulators used are the low dropout one, LM2990 and LM2940.

The first target to be improved is the capacitors. I could see some values on by storage bin which could suit. Hearing the sound, I think adding some Silmic would be best, although Black Gate NX could be very-very interesting (but my supply is very limited).

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Tags: Asus, Capacitor, DAC, Essence One, Modification, power supply, Xonar
Posted in DIY Audio | Comments (9)

Posted on Sunday, 17th March 2013 by Auw Jimmy

I believe you still remember this one? I think it’s time to give a short review of it.

As comparison, I will use Jensen 4-Pole capacitor as both has same capacitance (470 uF).

Caveat: The Jensen 4-Pole has been used for quite some time as it’s my reference electrolytic capacitor. While this new ‘No Name’ capacitor is currently fresh from the oven. Quite unfair for the comparison, but from my experience, the ‘talent’ of capacitor should easily leave an impression on first sight, I mean, first listening test

So, what is my first impression?

This new ‘No Name’ capacitor has more ‘analogue’ sound. The vocal is sweet enough for an electrolytic capacitor, but not too sweet. The resolution also clearly ahead of the Jensen 4-Pole. The staging, depth and width, also much better than the Jensen 4-Pole (quite obvious on 月光小夜曲 by Cai Qin). Dynamic and headroom also not limited. Quite interesting. It just has more timbre and more ‘sweet’ harmonic along the music. Norah Jones, Cai Qin, and Livingston Taylor easily on this ‘No Name’ capacitor side. So, I can easily say this is more musical than the Jensen 4-Pole. The different is easily recognized on several seconds after the music played.

Am I saying this new ‘No Name’ capacitor has no weakness? Not really.

The speed is a little bit slow. This is quite obvious when playing ‘Black Magic Woman’ from Patricia Barber. During the last 3-4 minutes to the end of the track, we can hear and test the speed of the system (best part of the track actually). I can say this ‘No Name’ capacitor has the dynamic, power, and everything (including the guitar distortion which I prefer this capacitor instead of the Jensen 4-Pole). But it just seems like to play the music easily and constant speed (which eventually translated into a bit slower, especially when compared to Jensen 4-Pole). I could say it lacks (a bit) of pace?

Despite the speed, it has everything to make me fall-in-love at first listening test (my fall-in-love at first sight should be my wife;). Tonality wise, it’s musical. Staging wise, it’s deep and wide. Harmonically wise, it’s rich. Resolution wise, I don’t think we can have a lot of electrolytic could outperform this one. Male and female vocal? For me, it’s no contest against the Jensen 4-Pole.

The pace reminds me of too much Kiwame resistor. But Kiwame will hide the detail and resolution, while this new ‘No Name’ capacitor will keep the detail and resolution there, plus all the timbre and harmonic.

Will see how this will perform in next several hundreds hours. With additional extra of speed, this would be perfect!

Or, maybe it will need some extra tuning

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Tags: 4-pole, Capacitor, Electrolytic, jensen
Posted in Collectible Stuff, DIY Audio | Comments (11)

Posted on Sunday, 3rd March 2013 by Auw Jimmy

Before your mind gone wild, let me give you a clue: This is not a film capacitor…

Specially designed capacitor based on my ‘short’ experience testing a lot of capacitors.

No name yet, until it passes the sound quality test – which will come soon (hope so, finger crossed).

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Tags: Capacitor, Reference Capacitor, Special Project
Posted in Collectible Stuff, DIY Audio | Comments (10)

Posted on Saturday, 2nd February 2013 by Auw Jimmy

Yes, I’m kind a lazy guy when it comes to realization (or finalization) of my DIY project. But I think I’m gonna (or I have to) be serious to finalize this… Well, at least I have finished the component layout. Soon to have the final top plate machined based on this layout.

Soon I will post and (maybe) explain a bit about the layout and some of the reason what you should and should not during designing the component placement.

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Tags: Choke, layout, tube
Posted in Collectible Stuff, DIY Audio | Comments (8)

Posted on Thursday, 3rd January 2013 by Auw Jimmy

I was thinking what was the alternative to replace my standard Pulse Transformer PE-65612 on my QLS QA-660. Actually I had several options, but after some simple research, eventually I ended my journey on Scientific Conversion product, the SC947-02 “SUPER”.

I know the name is quite weird: “Scientific Conversion”. I believe they are not related with Calculator or something, but surely they have something serious on their product.

I had some options from Lundahl, and some other common brand like Murata or similar. But if you are familiar with me, I do what people don’t. So let’s see how this Scientific Conversion could perform

This pulse transformer is very cute and small. It’s only 9.5 x 5 mm and it has 8 pins like basic opamp. Imagine that!

Image below was taken with my ‘macro’ lens so don’t be surprise if they are looked ‘big’ than it should.

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Tags: AES/EBU, Pulse Tranformer, QLS QA-660, SC947-02 "SUPER", Scientific Conversion, SPDIF
Posted in Collectible Stuff, DIY Audio | Comments (4)

Posted on Sunday, 23rd December 2012 by Auw Jimmy

I was digging my component box to see if I can find some other opamp to be used in Xonar Essence One. Luckily I still have some obsolete (but my favorite) AD825.

I also bought a couple of new one few days ago (LME 49860 and JRC5532).

AD825 is still my favorite. It was on the generation of OPA627 as they are both share similar mono type opamp. Although quite obsolete, but price wise, this AD825 is not cheap at all as mono opamp. Need to use some converter in order to use them in DIP socket.

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Tags: AD825, gainclone, JRC5532, LM1875T, LME49860, OpAmp
Posted in Collectible Stuff, DIY Audio | Comments (2)

Posted on Monday, 17th December 2012 by Auw Jimmy

Just to kill the curiosity, I hooked up ASUS Xonar Essence One to my QLS QA-660.

Seemed the process didn’t click that easy. Xonar Essence One failed to capture the S/PDIF signal above 44.1 kHz sent by QLS QA-660. I thought I have a bad Coaxial cable, but eventually the Optical got same issue. USB seemed fine though. I could easily got a bit-perfect output by using WaveLab in ASIO mode. Playing up to 192 kHz material was so smooth and hassle free.

Then, I upgraded the QLS QA-660 firmware to the latest one V1.2. It didn’t much help. Still all materials above 44.1 kHz failed to be recognized by Essence One.

Another tried was to upgrade the ASUS Xonar Essence One MCU firmware to 1.27. The problem was: I failed to upgrade by using my laptop (Essence One was not detected by the upgrade program). I moved to another laptop then the process could be done smoothly. Could be one of my laptop got some USB driver issue.

The problem seemed solved. Xonar Essence One now able to recognize any signal above 44.1 kHz, except 192 kHz. So I have limit up to 176.4 kHz. Quite a strange issue. When I played 192 kHz material, Essence One seemed failed to recognize it. I think I have to wait for another round of firmware update then, either from QLS or from ASUS. I didn’t think I have a bad Coaxial cable…

Overall the sound of ASUS Xonar Essence One was impressive. Tonal balance seemed quite neutral. Bass was well pronounced, tight, with enough slam. High and mid-hi were slightly on the bright area. Detail and speed were impressive. Vocal was good, not too thick or warm though. Hey, this was sort of LM4562 sound! (LM4562 was used on this machine as output buffer stage and I just realized when taking detail photo of this machine). Would see if changing some opamp could impact the sound significantly (not mentioning some potential upgrade in the power supply section).

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Tags: Asus, DAC, Essence One, QA-660, QLS, Xonar
Posted in DIY Audio | Comments (4)