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More DVD plans (any suggestions?)

209.181.254.115

Posted by daryl on May 31, 2000 at 15:13:35

Okay, I hope no one is getting bored with my Toshiba 3109 saga -- I realize it may be much more interesting to me than it is to anyone else. Thanks to all the inmates here who have been generous with their time. There's lots of info in the archives, which I've been mining to come up with ideas.

1. I pulled the HEXFRED's after 100+ hours -- too early to let them break in fully (and they were breaking in), but I got a bit tired of them for now. I'll try them again later, but they weren't making music.

2. There are 4 820uf 16V caps on the power supply board -- I replaced these with same value Panasonic HFQs. This made a *real* nice change -- the sound is smoother, richer, more harmonic.

3. Tried bypassing the main filter cap (100uf 200V). First I tried a .22 poly. Yuck -- grainy and edgy. Then I tried some mystery cap I had laying around (it might be a .047uf ceramic). Wow, this kicked out a whole lot of midrange glare. Next I paralleled a 3.3uf Solen with the main filter cap. Okay, now we're getting somewhere -- bass goes deeper and tighter, there's more pace, transient attack is sharper. The soundstage has a layer of depth that it never had before. Did I mention that the video is better, too? Everything is more 3-dimensional, probably due to the improved contrast and more subtle shading.

So now I'm pretty stoked. I could live with this as my main transport -- granted, its plastic and flimsy and cheap, but so am I. Of course, I can't leave well enough alone, and will probably tinker with this til I blow it up, at which point all I'll be able to watch is summer reruns of Dawson's Creek. Anyways, I'm about to order some more parts to work with, but before I do feel free to chime in with suggestions, ideas, or alternatives.

1. Each voltage regulator has a 220uf 25 cap (one of them is the single black and gold colored cap on the board; I assume that means its important :) -- I'm going to get HFQs to put here -- first 220uf to be safe, but I'll also try larger values: 330uf or more. At some point bigger will become too big, I figure, but I have no idea where that will be. The separate output board has 2 1000uf 10V caps where the power supply line connects -- those will go for 1000uf HFQ's too. (I just don't know how much capacitance I can add here -- any thoughts?)

2. X7R ceramic caps to bypass all the caps feeding power to the digital circuits. I figure .1uf should do. Maybe Wima .1uf bypasses for the two 1000uf caps on the output board (I am thinking they aren't feeding anything digital....)

3. All the video and audio have 47uf coupling caps (generic Elnas). At least I think they are coupling caps (the negative points to the output). I'm thinking these can go for 47uf HFQs or maybe Nichicon Muse, with a .1uf Wima bypass later on.

4. The digital outs (coax and toslink) also have 47uf caps next to them -- dunno if these are for coupling or what. Since I'm ordering 47uf caps by the handful, I'll probably swap these as well, but does anyone know what I should be doing with these? (I'm using this as a trasport, so the quality of the digital out is pretty important).

5. I'll experiment with some more fast diodes for the main rectifier bridge. Vishays, General Semis, whatever I can lay my hands on for under two bits a piece. The voltage across the main cap is 156V, so I can't try the low voltage Schottskys.

6 Finally, back to the main filter cap. I think I am going to splurge and try all polypros -- something like 100uf + 20uf Solen (and ceramic bypasses). Do you think an all polypro PS going to perform that much better than adding a 20uf Solen to the stock electrolytic? I've got tons of room, so size isn't a consideration.

So, like I say, please feel free to make suggestions, corrections, or to slap me if I am doing something just plain wrong. I'm not going to touch the DAC board, which is pretty much all surface mounted stuff anyways. Thanks for reading this far :) --daryl

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Kimber Kable

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