| Audio Tweaks - Tweak Ref.
351 |
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| Clean Your Clock - quick tweak to improve the clock performance in your CD player |
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| 351 |
Mike Heilman |
Excellent |
$0.02 |
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| My Own |
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| Shorten up the leads of the crystal's bypass capacitors by mounting them directly to the crystal's pins and adding a ground wire direct to chip's ground. |
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| Find CD player's clock crystal. It is usally near a chip called the digital signal processor (Often a CXD2500). The crystal often looks like a plastic coated capacitor and has
a silk screen identifier on the board as "X1" or "X2" ect.
There will be a pair of ceramic capacitors connected from each crystal pin to ground on the board. Ususally these caps have long bent leads to make them sit above the board and they are often a bit far from the crystal. The trick is to de-solder the caps from the board and take them to the under-side of the circuit board. Shorten one lead of each cap as much as possible and solder the short lead of one cap directly to one pin of the crystal. Solder the short lead of the other cap directly to the other pin of the crystal. Orient the free ends of the caps so that they meet above the middle of the crystal. Take a piece of 18 guage wire and connect both of the free leads of the caps together with the wire. You may slide a tiny piece of shrink tube with a two short slits at the end over this connection. Connect the ground wire to a ground connection nearest to the digital signal processor chip. I connected mine right to the negative pin of the power supply decoupling electrol!
ytic capacitor that was right next to the chip. This can be found by folowing the ground traces where the ceramic caps once connected on the board. |
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| This modification reduces the CD player's clock jitter.
This improves accuracy of the digital decoding. I think that it may be by reducing the series inductance in the crystal's bypass caps and lowering the impedance of the ground connection. |
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| I noticed a definite improvement in sound clarity and tighter bass reproduction after doing this quick mod. It was well worth the effort for me. |
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| Top "bang for the buck" mod I have done.
$0.02 (three inches of wire) |
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