A few days of tweaks

Well, over the past few days a few tweaks have been in progress.

These can be broken into two categories. First is the speaker stands. Second is the CD player.

The speaker stands have been fitted with their replacement base spikes, new top-plate spikes, and filled with sand to about 80% capacity. They also now reside on stone slabs.

I suspect that they are overfilled with sand, as the bass became a little bit thin. However, the upshot of this was that I could move the speakers back a little and get the bass back, but tighter than it was before.

The CD player has been reclocked, and gained much in terms of separation and clarity and detail. The clock will take some time to settle down, but it's turning out nicely.

The point is that tweaking is worth doing. Spending £200 on a tweak might seem anathema (and it did to me in the past), but as I've seen it make more difference than replacing a component with one worth £200 more, I'm a convert.

Mains and isolation are coming soon...

 

Oh er....., seems the ZG bug could be contagious

 

I blame you Tone.

 

You wouldn't be first , and I doubt the last either

 

I guess HIFI tweaking is rather like a car, if you have a nice £40,000 TVR it is not going to do much good if you use it with cheap oil and petrol. HIFI is the same, people think you can just stack all your bits on top of each other and it will work fine it bloody well don't! I currently have my Cassete deck and radio on top of my CDP but this is somthing I want to sort out soon, my turntable and amp or on seperate shelfs though.

 

Glad your having a good time ....that's what its all about.

The enjoyment of hearing nicer music from the same system, at little cost.

The speaker stands may now be too damped, but I suspect the sound your hearing is a more accurate bass, probably more of it at different frequencies. A stable base will allow your speaker to perform better. Sometimes you need to get used to the change in sound "flavour", before you can tell if you've done the right thing.

The CD player tweaking is an area with great scope for improveing performance. I'm about to reclock my player, and I'll let everyone know how it sounds later. I have though carried out a great number of tweaks on the machine before I got to the reclocking stage.

I've been able to greatly improve the performance of this 10year old sub£300 player. So much so that it didn't disgrace itself in a multi thousand pound system at a recent bake off.

If people are intrested I'll put up the internal upgrades and changes on the DIY board....and no they only cost a few quid to do.

 

The recessed vocals are rapidly disappearing as the clock settles in.

Damn, I need some money. My remaining "fun" budget and more got eaten by new tyres for the car. :cry:

 

Isaac, it usually takes between 2 and 4 weeks to run in (black gates being particulary slow to wake up), also depending on weather you hooked up a seperate PSU or not, direct to the back of the IEC socket, in which case it will be permently powered, easing the process glad to hear your starting to enjoy the fruits of basic Tweeking. WM

 

I'm sure many would be interested. I'm not too sure about tweaking as i'm using a dvd as transport and don't want to mess any of the video side of things up.

 

Indeed WM, but it's a process that slows down, so the most obvious changes will occur in the early part of the running in process. I don't have a separate PSU yet, but I will do that. New op amps are also on the list as I mentioned elsewhere.

 

Not certain I agree.......sometims it seem ages before anything happens and then woosh its done.

The worst breakin was for my Martin Logan's played every day took the best part of 3months !
and gradually so it was only when a friend came round who I had not seen for a while, said what had I done to improve the sound? the answer being nothing.

 

MO!,

Doing MOds to a DVD around the video circuitry will improve the picture quality as well... I have done my Toshiba SD100e and have gained substantial improvements.

Regards

 

Innnnnnnnteresting. I'm using the SD200E. The picture quality is great IMO. But can always be better