Denon DA-500

[postjack]

Maybe you should check out that almarro Charlie is selling to get some tube love into your speakers

I'm not sure if the whole SET thing is right for me. It'd be sweet for jazz, but I also love to rock out with my speakers. Maybe I'll do tube preamp -> solid state power thing.

[hungrych]

Well with the 96db Galante Rhapsodies it was quite able to melt my face off with some Sabbath. Just sayin'.

[grenert]

Following the suggestions of many folks, I made some modifications to

my DA500. In summary:

Replaced filter opamp to AD8599, I/V opamp to THS4032.

Added 100uF Panasonic FM and 0.1uF C0G caps on each opamp rail.

Added 2.2uF polyester caps across opamp rails.

Did the "kill the clock" mod on the YM3623 from DIYaudio

(diyAudio Forums - A little Denon DAC mod - Page 1).

Replaced the stock power supply caps with slightly larger FMs and

added some 0.1uF C0G in parallel to the main filter caps.

Replaced the electrolytic ouput capacitors with 1.0uF Vitamin Qs.

Replaced filtering capacitors with RTE polystyrene.

Replaced filtering and audio path resistors with PRP metal film.

The rail opamps weren't so hard to do. The board already had some

weird, tiny, leaded 0.1uF ceramics located pretty close to the rails.

I just pulled these out, put in the FMs, and then paralleled the C0G

ceramics on the underside of the board. There is a lot of room on the

underside for this.

I tried getting rid of the output capacitors altogether, but one of

the channels had 24mV of DC at the output. I wanted to be able to use

the DAC with some input capacitor-less headphone amps, so I chickened

out and decided to put in the PIO caps.

So, how does it sound? Well, I am of course working from memory

here... When I first got the DAC, it sounded "fine," but it was not

something I was too excited about. The biggest improvement I have

noticed is in the room decay sounds, giving a nice sense of space. I

also hear tonal sounds in percussive instruments (as opposed to just

white noise). The frequency balance seems about the same. The sound

is very detailed, but I'm not sure that is very different from the

stock performance. Maybe one of these days I can arrange a comparison

with a "known quantity" DAC or a stock DA500 to put it in perspective.

It is much, much better than the CD player that feeds it (an old

Onkyo carousel), and it is also better than an Entech 205.2 Number

Cruncher which had a modded power supply and opamps replaced with

AD825s. I got the DAC for something cheap (under $200), and the parts

were definitely less than $100, so I'm very happy with the result.

Many thanks to those on this board (especially Filburt, who suggested

most of the implemented changes) and elsewhere for their ideas.

Pictures:

Audio section

Power supply

Stop clock mod

[url=http://g.imageshack.us/thpix.php]

[padam]

I didn't know where to put it, so I decided to put it here: has anyone heard the DCD-2560GL CD-player? How would an old player like this compare against something new like a Pico? And finally, is this write-up rubbish or not? Thanks.