Caiman passive output mod revealed

[NRG]

Indeed Leo but its reassuring that you've woken up to Black Gates at long last

Update: True to form from past experience the standard BG's came on song after about 50hrs of use.

Female vocals are now better balanced and less fatiguing(!) so they did change a bit more. Rally enjoyed my session this afternoon without the family distraction

The FK's are now in place and its early days as yet...diffuse presentation, smooth and detailed though as I'd expect, this will change but the FK's take more than the standards to run in up to 200hrs however they give a good indication after a few, so I expect a smooth, rich but detailed presentation that ultimately will lack a little bit of balls for rock.....we'll see!

[James G]

Has anyone tried the Rubycon ZL/ZLG in this mod?

[leo]

Indeed Leo but its reassuring that you've woken up to Black Gates at long last

Update: True to form from past experience the standard BG's came on song after about 50hrs of use.

Female vocals are now better balanced and less fatiguing(!) so they did change a bit more. Rally enjoyed my session this afternoon without the family distraction

The FK's are now in place and its early days as yet...diffuse presentation, smooth and detailed though as I'd expect, this will change but the FK's take more than the standards to run in up to 200hrs however they give a good indication after a few, so I expect a smooth, rich but detailed presentation that ultimately will lack a little bit of balls for rock.....we'll see!

Yes, I was suprised with them this time and don't mind admitting the BG's work very well in this dac, not always had success with them in the past though

Oh, got a couple of used 47uf 16v standards on the way too now

[leo]

Has anyone tried the Rubycon ZL/ZLG in this mod?

Not for coupling (I have tried them for decoupling supply rails) their steel leads and low ESR may make them a little sharp in the high's used for coupling. Worth a try though seeing as though their cheap.

[MartinT]

What about a new thread or maybe doing it as a poll ? Thats if I can work out how to do one, never done a poll before

A new thread with the root message being updated with additions to it. A header for each capacitor and a bullet point for every comment made about it, plus the contributor's name should do it. The exact name, value and voltage of the capacitor would be helpful.

[Peter Galbavy]

Just a bit of feedback on this mod. I picked up a couple of pairs of caps from Stan and tried a pair of Capxon (?) ones. I have also made changes to the speakers by putting them on 20kg of slate-effect porcelain floor tiles sandwiched with some blutak, so this is not a fair or scientific comparison.

Initial impressions are that the sound is "grittier" and "raw" but not as unpleasant as those adjectives would make it out to be. The removal of bass resonances with the wooden floor under the carpet by the new positioning of the speakers makes it hard to judge the low end at all. At first I had the fixed level output going through the Audiolab 8000C but after initial testing I went with a variable output direct into the Rotel 1572 power amp. All good.

I did the remove-opamp-board and push caps in version of the mod since I am not really set-up for or confident in my soldering abilities.

This is another pair of changes to my system that I can say help to seperate out good and bad mastering - Rodrigo Y Gabriella's 11:11 track 1 came through as stunning with little fear of the compression that must be there (it's a new loud recording after all) while some older stuff came through muted and muffled by comparison.

Now that I am not constrainted by the Audiolab's groundloop annoyances, when using the Caiman as the preamp, I can more easily leave the lid unscrewed (no ground wire) and then try with and without opamp board and also finally try the AD826s too.

[chrism]

I have taken out the opamp board and fitted Rubycon non-polars into the pins as shown in the pictures (the same ones we put in the opamp board mod). I had already done the Murata's and top qulaity linear supply a few months back. This feeds into an Avondale A260 and then into JM Labs 926 speakers using the variable outputs.

Well, I don't like the sound changes - I love them!

I cannot detect any harshness etc as some have found. The sound is smooth, powerfull and very enjoyable compared to the AD826 opamp setup I tried before with the wire and resistor mods (and I liked that).

Thanks Stan and everyone for a great upgrade at very little cost.

Regards

Chris

[AndrewR]

Has anyone tried the Rubycon ZL/ZLG in this mod?

A quick look on the Internet seems to suggest that ZA is better. However they'll all cheap enough to consider trying the lot.

Andrew

[HighFidelityGuy]

Is there an upper limit to the capacitor rating that can be used for this mod?
For example, would using a 220uF 6.3V cap be a bad idea for any reason?

Thanks.

[MartinT]

Is there an upper limit to the capacitor rating that can be used for this mod?
For example, would using a 220uF 6.3V cap be a bad idea for any reason?

Since the circuit is completed via your preamp's input circuit you could leave yourself open to large thumps when you play music and the muting relay disengages, charging the capacitors all of a sudden.

This happened to me with some Elna Silmics (which I suspect are leaky) and my power amp went into protection shutdown!

In any case, you shouldn't need such a large value as the corner frequency will be unnecessarily low.