Caiman passive output mod revealed

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Originally Posted by leo

Yes, I guess its why we have to try these things out isn't it :) Could be because we use different regulation or something or maybe because my Silmics was much higher voltage, dunno yet tbh, I'm willing to try the lower voltage ones just to be sure

I don't think the passive mod will suite everybody but its easy to try and put back .
BTW if you try it the same as me or easier still the same as Andrew you get the muting relay in the circuit , you can just pull the audioboard out and stick the caps in the socket. If you look you'll see the relay, its wired to the output of that socket , if you do it the same as stans pic your bypassing the relay altogether .

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Leo,a friend on another forum tried various caps in a diy dac he'd built,the upshot of which was that the high voltage caps did not sound good at all used at the low voltages in the dac,so your assuption may be correct.I'll be interested in your findings.

If you do the mod like James or Leo and remove or replace the audio PCB, then the muting circuit will operate as normal, and the variable output will also be passive.

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Originally Posted by James G

I've been posting quite a lot here lately. Perhaps I'm going mad too. :lol:

I often wonder what my wife thinks when she comes home to find me hunched over a pcb with a trail of smoke coming up. Sometimes while I'm at work I think about what I'm going to do to my audio, then just as soon I get home I get started on it. If that's not mad I don't know what is. :mental:

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Welcome to the madness club :eyebrows:

egarding using too high a cap voltage. I'm sure I read somewhere recently that you shouldn't go more than a third higher the regular voltage, so if the rail is 15V, then 25V is the absolute limit for correct working.

On the other hand, running a continuous flat out 37V rail with 40V caps may not be a long-term reliable thing to do either. My Crowns had (then) computer grade supply 40V caps running in a circuit which was locally regulated at 30V (max raw DC voltage is around 33V) and after 35 years these caps were still well within spec, albeit around +5% tops by then.

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Originally Posted by leo

BTW if you try it the same as me or easier still the same as Andrew you get the muting relay in the circuit , you can just pull the audioboard out and stick the caps in the socket. If you look you'll see the relay, its wired to the output of that socket , if you do it the same as stans pic your bypassing the relay altogether .

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Yes, I saw that and will try it as it is easy to put the Caiman back to original spec when required. Now where did I put those spare caps...

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Originally Posted by James G

I often wonder what my wife thinks when she comes home to find me hunched over a pcb with a trail of smoke coming up. Sometimes while I'm at work I think about what I'm going to do to my audio, then just as soon I get home I get started on it. If that's not mad I don't know what is. :mental:

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I can relate to that... you're normal :lol:

Andrew

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Originally Posted by Ali Tait

Yep.You've got it bad.

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My worst fears confirmed by the experts! :D

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Originally Posted by leo

Welcome to the madness club :eyebrows:

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Actually I'm quite honored to hear that, whether you are serious or not. Like I said before, there's a hell of a lot of other hobbies one could have, and not learn a damn thing other than piss money away. Which my wife is well aware of. And I know she enjoys good sound too, just not quite as fanatical about it as I am, which is part of my personality anyways.


CHEERS! :champagne:

Yep,I could be down the pub every night,drinking and chasing women.There are worse hobbies than this!

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Originally Posted by Ali Tait

Yep,I could be down the pub every night,drinking and chasing women.There are worse hobbies than this!

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That does sound appealing though :cool: :)

Got to say, with this mod and using the Black Gate FKs I was seriously in danger of getting to sleep too late for my 6:30am start this morning.

The effect of this mod is not to be underestimated. The resulting sound is stratospheric - maybe (with its Tirna mods included) reaching Akurate DS territory (going by audio memory).

Andrew