
Originally Posted by
MartinT
That's good to know. I may finally solder them in once I'm completely happy. Actually, I'm very happy with it now.
I tried cranking the volume all the way up today and I only get a tiny bit of fizzle through my speakers. I had to put my ear right next to the tweeters to hear it. However based on the experience I've just had trying to re-solder the caps on the via's between the ribbons I personally wouldn't recommend soldering to them unless you're absolutely sure you won't be changing the caps in the future. I say this because despite being extremely careful I managed to lift the PCB track from the right hand via.
They're very delicate. Personally I think soldering the caps to the holes where the right ribbon connects to the front board is better. That way you're still removing the ribbon and a fair bit of PCB track out of the signal path but you've got proper holes to solder one side of the caps to. Obviously you'd have to chop out a bit of ribbon but that's much easier to replace than a knackered via.
Seen as I no longer had a connection between the DAC chip and the ribbon due to the broken via, I've had to solder a bit of wire to the bottom of the board before the via's bring the signal to the top of the board. I've now got some little sockets that I can plug different caps into to do some cap rolling.
Source: Apple TV 4K - DAC: Beresford Bushmaster Mk II - Preamp: CI AudioPLC-1 Mk II - Power Amps: Musical Fidelity 550K mono blocks - Speakers: Wharfedale Opus 3 - Cables: Mark Grant etc - Misc: Belkin PF30 mains filters.