Rotel 955AX?TDA1541A zero-oversampling tweak results

Tweakers' Asylum

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Here we go,
I just finished that one. I was impatient and with no coax around I used, errrr, dare I say it, some leftover RS solid core speaker cable 20 awg to shunt the 3 relevant pins as recommended by Thorsten, Ryan and Marco, Italy (url below). This in order to cut out the 7220 digital filter as I understand. No major problems, and since the original connections are just bare traces of roughly same length I don't assume the cheesy cable is a major crime.
How does it sound? Surprise, pretty similar, except for some beautiful, insiduous quality it now has that just takes away the annoying edges of before the tweak. How to explain it... it's brighter than before, but at the same time smoother, sorry if that sounds contradictory. It seems a lot truer than before for some instruments while leaving the overall balance unchanged, this especially for cymbals and any kind of sharp high pitched attack. These passages used to make me cringe on some material, and now I found myself cranking up the volume. I measured that to see if it was due to some different pre output levels, but it seems I now like to listen at about 90 SPL when before my comfort zone was around 85 dB.
I also found that the soundstage now has actual noticeable depth on some CD's. I never cared much about soundstage because I never found it real anyway, but this tweak improved the situation a lot. And one more thing: Thorsten mentioned before that to him CD didn't have correct pitch / timing. I was never bothered by that, but the zero oversampling now gives me an idea of how nice and varied the timing is with some CD's/musicians - I never suspected that :-) and it does make the music much more involving.
All in all, very very worthwhile, haven't seen any drawbacks yet if not for a suspected minor decrease in perceived detail but I can't say for sure. We'll see that over time - some things take a while before they annoy you. But of course the unit still has the old caps and op-amps, these will be changed at a later stage and I hope it will develop the potential of my Rotel even further.
This is a beautiful hobby. But I must say it wrecks your mind too. I ate a potato yesterday and was tempted to qualify it as "lacking subtlety and very uninvolving"... no, really! :-)
Have fun tweaking,
MBK

Marco's page (Open in New Window)

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Topic - Rotel 955AX?TDA1541A zero-oversampling tweak results - MBK 01:36:55 03/06/02 (7)

how can it be so good when most recordings were done with oversampling? - capslock 13:09:53 03/06/02 (4)

Re: how can it be so good when most recordings were done with oversampling? - marcoamboldi@libero.it 04:19:46 03/07/02 (0)

Re: how can it be so good when most recordings were done with oversampling? - MBK 00:45:33 03/07/02 (0)

Sorry. Should have prefaced previous post with Splitting L/R datastream. NT - Sylvester McMonkey McBean 00:11:19 03/07/02 (0)

"Stopped" bitclock. Assuming you feel the interchannel delay matters.See AD appnote AN207. NT - Sylvester McMonkey McBean 23:56:04 03/06/02 (0)

Re: Rotel 955AX?TDA1541A zero-oversampling tweak results - Ryan 07:29:22 03/06/02 (1)

Re: Rotel 955AX/TDA1541A zero-oversampling tweak results - MBK 09:40:07 03/06/02 (0)

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