Caiman + DVD player clicking trouble

[Ikemen]

A little history first. I use the Caiman with my cable TV, my Marantz CD player, and my cheap Sony Blu-ray player, all with success. I also have a Pioneer DVD/DVD-Audio/SACD player from about nine years ago and it went in to storage when it did not better the sound of my new Sony player a couple of years ago. Since then my new speakers and Caiman have been a huge step forward and when I connected the Pioneer today I was amazed at how it was now my best sounding component on CDs.
Japanese version of this;
http://www.avland.co.uk/pioneer/dv747/index.htm

However;

Playing CDs is fine, great in fact, but DVD sound is not produced, only a rapid clicking sound. If I pause the DVD the sound stops. I even realised the Caiman box itself also was clicking, obvious if I put my ear to the box.

I tried all the audio settings from the player menu to no avail. What could it be?

[monkfish]

I had a similar prob which was fixed by changing the audio output of the DVD from dolby to PCM wav.
Regards
Jim

[Reid Malenfant]

Playing CDs is fine, great in fact, but DVD sound is not produced, only a rapid clicking sound. If I pause the DVD the sound stops. I even realised the Caiman box itself also was clicking, obvious if I put my ear to the box.

I tried all the audio settings from the player menu to no avail. What could it be?
The Caiman will not be able to decode DVDs with more than 2 channels of digital output. It's obviously attempting to, but it can't ;) If you can select a stereo audio track on the DVD then it just might work.

[Ikemen]

Thanks for the ideas, but I tried those.

Selecting PCM gives me silence.

I already changed soundtracks to two channel, every available track in fact, but to no avail.


Have you guys experienced the clicking noise from the Caiman case it self?

[Stratmangler]

The clicking is the muting relays.
Some seem to be affected, some not.

[Ikemen]

The clicking is the muting relays.
Some seem to be affected, some not.

What do you mean by "Some" please? Some people, some discs? I've only tried two DVDs so far so I'll try some more when I can.

[Stratmangler]

What do you mean by "Some" please? Some people, some discs? I've only tried two DVDs so far so I'll try some more when I can.

Some DACs.
Mine is affected, but it varies from disc to disc.
I'm thinking of going back under the hood and taking the relays out, that or replacing them with some solid state ones.

[isj1202]

picture of Caiman with links in place of relays,

http://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?t=9595

Couldn't hear any difference when it was compared at the time, but the clicking definitely stopped.

[Ikemen]

Thanks for the link. Hopefully Stan will feedback on those last two posts, the purpose of resistors versus just bare wires.

[StanleyB]

I showed a picture of my mod. Feel free to try out alternative suggestions from others. I am only trying to be helpful, nothing else.

[Ikemen]

Hi Stan. I had never even heard of "muting relays" before this thread so I appreciate all and any suggestions. Personally I would like to know if the resistors serve a purpose such as protection to the circuit. That kind of info is invaluable to the likes of newbs like me.

Thanks.

[StanleyB]

Muting relays are normally only used in expensive DACs. Correct me if I am wrong, but the TC-7520 and Caiman were the first DACs below £500 to use muting relays. The normal process is to use far cheaper muting transistors.

I used resistors as I showed in my mod. That's all I can say. I'll leave it to someone else to experiment with resistors and wires, and then let us know if they detected a difference.

[Ikemen]

I'll leave it alone. I do not want to risk messing with my Caiman.

Thanks for all posts on this thread.

P.S. Loving my Caiman by the way Stan. Keep up the good work:)