Posted on Monday, 16th August 2010 by Auw Jimmy

It’s been a long since I promised to write this article: A comparison between Audio Note Copper Foil Mylar-in-Oil, Jensen Copper Foil Paper Tube, and Jensen Copper Foil Copper Tube. Some of my blog readers already email-ed me to ask about this. Due to my main job, I couldn’t finish this article immediately. So just this weekend, I spend few hours to have a listening session on this three capacitors.

Below is the test bed. A little bit awkward, but at least it works flawlessly!

(more…)

Tags: audio note, Capacitor, ELMA, jensen
Posted in DIY Audio | Comments (12)

Posted on Sunday, 8th August 2010 by Auw Jimmy

I was playing with my Rigol Oscilloscope to measure my laptop power output. The sound card was Realtek ALC660.

I played a 1 kHz sine wave with a software and measure the output. Since this was not an isolated environment (I have some application running on the background), so the frequency measured was not completely locked at 1 kHz.

On my typical daily usage, the output measured at 102 mV.

(more…)

Tags: ALC, measurement, oscilloscope, Realtek, Rigol
Posted in DIY Audio, Measurement | Comments (0)

Posted on Monday, 2nd August 2010 by Auw Jimmy

After completing the construction of my Duelund Interconnect 2.0 Rev2 here, I decided to do some short comparison. My friend has Duelund Interconnect 1.0 Rev1. I think this gonna be a nice comparison!

Direct to the stage, we have some equipment on hand, like floorstander 3-way speakers, CEC CD Player, Marantz CD4000 fully modified with tube output stage, Hybrid F4 power amplifier, Aikido 6N1P-6N6P powered with Duelund CAST Ag/RGN1054 Mesh Rectifier, and also #26 Pre-Amp powered with Jensen Paper Tube and AZ1 Mesh Rectifier.

Without any further ado, let’s go to review those cables.

(more…)

Tags: 26, Aikido, cables, Duelund, preamp
Posted in DIY Audio | Comments (2)

Posted on Sunday, 1st August 2010 by Auw Jimmy

Last week, we have a local DIY audio gathering at Bintaro (Indonesia). I took some photo, hope these could inspire us (DIY) more in the future. Sorry I didn’t “remember” all the equipments in detail. So most likely, you will enjoy the photos without caption.

The overall look of the stage, used for the testing.

(more…)

Tags: Bintaro, Blind Test, Gathering
Posted in DIY Audio | Comments (14)

Posted on Sunday, 1st August 2010 by Auw Jimmy

I designed a simple SRPP PCB for my own project. A special thanks to my friend, Mr. ATP who helped to process the PCB fabrication.

Well, later these days, I just feel more comfortable with PCB rather than point-to-point wiring. It’s nothing special, just an ordinary SRPP design.

Tags: PCB, SRPP
Posted in Collectible Stuff, DIY Audio | Comments (0)

Posted on Thursday, 22nd July 2010 by Auw Jimmy

I don’t like expensive cable. My most expensive one was Kimber, the lower one was Synergistic Research. But I was stunned when listened my friend’s Duelund interconnect 0.5 and 2.0. Now, Duelund launches their new interconnect, the 2.0 Rev 2. This Rev 2 means the improvement over the original 2.0. They said, this one has more silver and better (silk) insulation. Ok, I have put half of my feet on the water, there’s no way back, let’s go deeper (that means, go deep inside your pocket to get this one).

The main ingredients of this cable is Silver (oil impregnated) with Silk insulation.

If we are talking Duelund CAST Silver as the most expensive capacitor, their cable is not even close to the most expensive one (like Pear Cable, Kubala Sosna, or Nordost Valhalla). But still, spending over US$ 40 per foot/single cable has never been an easy job.

The appearance more likely like a silver tape with my old socks! Well, it’s a silk though!

(more…)

Tags: Cardas, Duelund, Interconnect
Posted in DIY Audio | Comments (3)

Posted on Sunday, 18th July 2010 by Auw Jimmy

I this world, there are lot of tubes, with different filament supply. In most of my tube rectification application, I stand with two choice of rectifier, the one with 5 Volt filament (most Octal and UX type) and the others with 4 Volt filament (RGN or AZ families).

The best way to use two type of rectifier with different filament voltage is to use dedicated switch to select the exact filament voltage. You can also use Resistor to drop the filament voltage (up to 1V drop and 1A), but this way is not recommended due to a lot of heat must be dissipated (also not too good in terms of sound quality to).

I just finish the switch installation this afternoon. Now I can choose to use 4 Volt or 5 Volt filamen voltage. You can see the picture below.

(more…)

Tags: Aikido, preamp, RGN, tube rectifier
Posted in DIY Audio | Comments (0)

Posted on Wednesday, 23rd June 2010 by Auw Jimmy

This post is the 2nd episode of my Terratec Aureon 7.1 FireWire mod. You can check the 1st one here.

Below is the final appearance of my Aureon. Sigh… despite the colorful capacitors, I don’t see any reason to say it’s a beauty or an art

(more…)

Tags: aureon, Black Gate, mundorf, sound card, speaker
Posted in DIY Audio | Comments (8)

Posted on Monday, 21st June 2010 by Auw Jimmy

I’ve been very busy later these days, almost no time even to refresh myself listening the music. Powering my tube amp, let them warm up won’t take less than 30 minutes. Well for next few weeks, I don’t think I have such time. Now, I spend most of my time in front of my Notebook, limited with poor onboard sound card and speakers.

After digging my cupboard, I found a pair of Altec Lansing MX5021 speakers and my old Terratec Aureon FireWire 7.1. Not the finest setup and my ears were irritated to hear the sound at first time, although they were better than my onboard combination. On a lazy Sunday evening, I fire up my soldering iron. Let’s see what we could do to improve the sound

You can check here for my previous introduction about the sound card.

The main improvement should be the power supply. I found “el cheapo” 1000 uF  /35 Volt. OK, this was the main filter, the most important, let’s change it to Black Gate NX Series 680 uF / 65 Volt. Also note another capacitor changed to the “purple” Os-Con. This was on the digital supply section.

Enough change for initial stage. Let’s power it up and test the sound. Wow, that was the first impression on the 1st second I heard the sound. The sound was very transparent, the staging, the tonal, all were improved. Not to the level that I was expected, but for a consumer grade sound card, this was OK.

(more…)

Tags: altec lansing, aureon, Black Gate, mundorf, mx5021, sound card, speaker
Posted in DIY Audio | Comments (6)

Posted on Sunday, 16th May 2010 by Auw Jimmy

I plan to compare some capacitors from Jensen and one from Audio Note. The two from Jensen are Jensen Copper Foil Paper-in-Oil (Paper Tube) and Jensen Copper Foil Paper-in-Oil (Copper Tube). From Audio Note, I have Copper Foil Mylar-in-Oil (I believe this is Copper Tube also). We gonna have a serious battle later since those 3 caps are using different “recipe”. Both Jensen are Paper in Oil type, but with different enclosure. While the Audio Note has similarity with one of the Jensen with Copper Tube, but with Mylar instead of Paper. Audio Note claims the Mylar will provide better combination between sonic reproduction and the reliability.

Shall we prove the result? Later… We must wait after the burn-in session, probably in 100+ hours.

For the burn-in session, I sealed the Copper Tube caps with plastic. This is to prevent the oxidation of the copper tube (both Audio Note and Jensen Copper Tube oxides very fast in my environment due to high humidity, thanks to the purity of the material used also). I should prepare a transparent heatshrink for a good looking appearance, but no time to find one now. Perhaps you will ask why there are 2 pair of Jensen Paper Tube? One is my friend’s, to join the burn-in session before used on his system.

(more…)

Tags: Aikido, audio note, Capacitor, Duelund, jensen, preamp, tube
Posted in DIY Audio | Comments (27)

Posted on Sunday, 2nd May 2010 by Auw Jimmy

After reading my article about finding out capacitor inner-outer foil, some of my readers asked me to do the similar test on the resistor. Well, technically speaker, resistor shouldn’t have any inner or outer foil, since most likely it’s a piece of carbon or wire on the ceramic core. But let’s see the testing result. On this simple session, I used Kiwame (Carbon Film Resistor) and Mills (Wirewound). I also have some Riken or Shinkoh, but not really available in many values. For Kiwame, I used 1M, 470K, 100K, and 2K2. For Mills, I picked one value, 22K.

1 MegaOhm readings below showed 332 mV.

(more…)

Tags: oscilloscope, resistor
Posted in DIY Audio | Comments (25)

Posted on Saturday, 24th April 2010 by Auw Jimmy

I just got my Oscilloscope, so I can play more fun with my DIY stuff. Ok, let’s start with some basic “game”, to find the inner and outer foil of a capacitor.

Basically, most of the capacitor, has what we call the inner foil and outer foil. Because, most of capacitor’s construction is based on the winding of paper or other conductor (silver, copper, gold, etc), so we will have a start position (the inner foil) and the finish position (the outer foil).

Although for the film type capacitor, it’s just fine to connect positive or negative to the inner or outer foil. But due to some reason, it’s preferable to connect the outer foil to negative side or to the “nearest” negative side (input side on coupling application).

Why? Because the outer foil will catch the outside interferences. So better if you can put this outer foil to the place nearest to ground or negative pole. So it could completely transfer those unwanted noise faster to the place where it should belong – the ground.

Some capacitor like Audio Note, Jensen, Auricap, Hovland, VCap, etc usually marks their capacitor with different color lead or print some black line to mark the negative side or input in the coupling application. Some other popular capacitor, like Mundorf, doesn’t seem to care about this, means no marks at all. So you got to check it by your own. Other capacitor like Duelund, which uses the Stacked Foil design, I believe doesn’t have any polarity (it’s not winded, but stacked).

How to do the test with Oscilloscope? Simple by testing both leads, and give some “interference” outside the capacitor (touch by hand or put some electric field interference e.g. high voltage cable, etc). The side with higher noise, means the outer foil.

Below are some picture from my own measurement on some capacitors.

Audio Note Oil Filled Mylar Capacitor. The black line marking on the capacitor’s body means the negative or input side. We can see the noise is quite big if we put the positive probe on the side which has black line marking.

(more…)

Tags: Capacitor, measurement, oscilloscope
Posted in DIY Audio | Comments (19)