Cheap to Audiophile with Simple Hacks

petertrog writes "The IEEE has a story showing how you can turn a cheap DVD player into something that sounds a whole lot more exotic. All you need is a small budget, a soldering iron and a desire to void your warranty."

Comments

What about the speakers?

[bigwavejas]

Build some cheap speakers to go along with the player http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/Debertin/spbuild.htm

I regularly improve the quality...

[Grog6]

.. Of electronics I buy; the main amp in my car I bought for ~$150, put in ~$50 in better transistors, and a few critical resistors, and have a really nice amp, until it overheats. The watercooling project is next, I guess.

The thing in the article that pegged my bullshit detector is the 'audible difference' in capacitors. I design high frequency pulse amplifiers, and at subnanosecond risetimes, capacitors act pretty awful. but in the audio range, there is no way to hear the difference in a good quality capacitor. Below 1MHz there isn't enough difference to measure. You might hear the difference between a low quality, floor swwepings quality z5u capacitor at 20kHz, an a high quality silver mica cap, but I seriously doubt it.

P-channel mosfets are more expensive than N channel mosfets; If you look at the parts in any car amp, the P-channel parts are the lowest rated; replacing them is an easy way to improve the capabilities of an amp. but you have to upgrade the power supply as well, usually to take advantage of the improvement.

And replacing the resistors in the signal path with metal film, if they're not already, is an audible improvement.

Replacing the capacitors, with no design check, will result in shit blowing up, just as specified. Inrush current is a bitch. Replacing the output caps on a power supply board with larger ones is not a good idea; the lead inductance is a design constraint. The need to go in the same holes.

Also, FRED diodes are soft recovery, with no ringing. Schottky diodes ring like a bitch, and are why fred's were developed.

If you add capacitance to a switching power supply, do it at the circuit you want to help out, not at the power supply. The resistance of the wire going to the circuit board will damp the inrush current to the additional capacitance.
1 ohm of wire makes a huge difference in the surge current when you turn it on.

If I spent $10 on a capacitor, I guess I'd say I could hear it too...