When shopping for mods you need to have as much information as possible to make a good decision. Obviously, anything I print here is simply my opinion. So you can take it with a grain of salt.....but if you look at my webpages, history, etc. I think you will find I am very honest and straightforward. I have often....mucho times in fact, sent people to other modders or suggest they buy other products that fit what they really need. I think life is service.....I want my products to serve people and give them the best value they can possible get. I want to feel that my customer is getting the absolute best that their money can buy. I try to treat people as if they were myself and only make products that I would personally live with.....so, on with the show!
We have been modding and manufacturing high end stereo gear since 1977. We have been modding CD players, DVD players, SACD players since they first arrived on the scene. We are constantly browsing the web for new mods, different tweaks and trying new things......we do not do something just to sell you something. We are not a distributor for any parts we use and only use those parts that give the best sound in the here and now. We tweak each machine individually and listen and tune each machine to make sure it has the most detailed and musical sound it can give at that price point.
There is going to be tremendous interest in the new Blue Ray Player from Oppo. There will be mods galore to choose from. The information below is specifically about Oppo mods but also is good information about all our mods as some things below are applicable to all we do. Here is some of our comments on some of the other Oppo Blue Ray mods out there and on what we do:
1. One company puts a toroidal isolation transformer inside the unit along with another line filter. An isolation transformer is not a bad idea (I use a balanced 600 watt split bobbin one myself sitting up on bolts off the floor) but putting one inside a unit and clamping it directly to the steel chassis and using a steel plate and bolt through it is really bad. If you are going to use an isolation transformer then it should be isolated from any steel, and not close enough to other circuitry to radiate into. A small toroidal isolation tranny is not very good anyway. You can buy a $35 75 watt spit bobbin transformer and put it on bolts in the air behind the unit that would do more good than the one installed here. There is already 4 poles of line filtering before the diodes in the Oppo switching power supply so adding another ordinary power filter before it will simply make the analog sound atrocious. If you want to do some serious line filtering that will actually make the sound better then please consider the Alan Maher line conditioners and also the Hammond chokes across the line. Info on these things is on the Audiocircle and Audioasylum forums. Good power cords are a must too. This same company says that to make it a super digital transport then they disable the analog output board and put caps on the analog output jacks. If you completely disable the analog board (remove the power supply cable going to the board and also the digital input ribbon cable to the board....a two second job that anyone can do) then there is no way that you would need the output jacks capped....in fact, you could just remove the whole board and have no jacks there at all. You are paying for caps you don't need. Silly! This company does no power supply mods (isolation tranny and filter aside), no transport damping and who knows what kind of clock they are using. Their analog mod consists of better caps? and dedicated power supply that they don't give any details on. This is not serious!
2. Another "upgrade" company makes strong statements against installing low jitter clocks inside a player. He argues that it only makes it worse. He says that there are no testimonials on better sound using these clocks but indeed there are probably hundreds of such testimonials on various forums/pages including those who have upgraded from stock clocks to better clocks and then changed them again.....all for the better. I have read dozens of reviews myself. There are also lots of testimonials on the websites of the clock manufacturers. Almost all the other modders use better clocks and have found them to be sonically beneficial (the list includes myself, Richard Kern, Kyle Takenaga, Dan Wright, Allen Wright, Doug Jesse, etc.). Are we all just crazy "garage modders" and this guy the only true modder who knows what he is doing? Hardly. Anyone who preaches against something that is obviously beneficial is very suspect in my book. Also, he does not tell you anything that he does, saying it is "proprietary".....yikes! I certainly understand proprietary, in fact, you see no pictures of the insides of my modded players on my site because I want to keep the other modders from learning some of my secrets.....and certain mods and parts are not described for that very same reason.....but if you really want to know what I do and are seriously interested in my products I will describe each mod to you on the phone, if you want...and even send you pictures.....as long as you keep it to yourself. I have been modding gear for over 30 years and do things no one else does, but I am not really a secretive kind of guy......but I do understand that if I showed and described every little thing on my webpages I did then all the other guys would do it too.
3. Clocks.....this is an interesting subject. I first discovered the benefits of better clocks 15 years ago with the $100 clock from G&D Transforms. Since then I have been using the Audiocom Superclocks to benefit and finally my own superior clock using an existing clock module with my own power supplies and wiring. However, a clock upgrade is the last thing to do to a player for best analog performance. The most important things are: analog output stage purity, power supply purity and transport purity. So mods to the output stages, power supplies (both AC and DC) and to the transport are the most important thing you can do. However, having a really good clock after those things are done can take a very transparent player to another level. Clocks have to be installed correctly or there will be little benefit and it can even degrade the performance. There is no clock that does not need a super power supply feed. I have the Dexa clock here and it is just as sensitive to power supply purity as a Superclock or my own clock. The wires you use, the way you ground and the length of wire all affect the signal purity and change the sound. This takes much experimenting and we spend lots of time making sure our clock is fed super clean power and is installed for the best sound. We are not distributors for clocks or regulators so only use the best parts that give the best sound. Our clock is sonically superior to the DEXA and Audiocom Superclock 4. The Superclock 4 is slightly better than the basic Dexa clock and according to one modder, the basic Dexa is better than the Burson clock (used by Modwright) which is his bottom line clock. We have never heard the more expensive clocks from Audiocom or Dexa so cannot comment on those.
Update: As of 11-07-09 our clock is now powered by its own transformer, raw supply and power supply feeds completely separate from the switching supply and noisy grounds. The new EVS Clock 2 is simply more real and analog sounding. A major breakthrough. We have to raise the price to $350 but this is what most charge for an inferior clock running off the stock power supply.
4. Output stages. I have been using op amps, custom fet discrete stages, transformers and just caps as output stages for years. So, I know them all. I first starting using a transformer on the output of a DAC back in 2000 and turned Kyle Takenaga of RAM on to the idea and he then ordered trannies from Audioconsulting that he has been installing ever since. I use what makes the most sense and gives the best sound. When using a DAC with current output there must be a way to change it to voltage. I find the purest way is to use a single discrete stage of pure fets, one pole of filtering, one coupling cap and straight out. When using a voltage out DAC (like the DACs in the Oppo players) I have now found a super high current wide band op amp (no one else is using it, to my knowledge) when used with my latest modded regulators to sound so close to a single cap (except way better dynamics and bass) that it is now my preferred output stage. Kyle of RAM found that he had to use buffers (opa634) on the output of a voltage DAC in order to drive the low impedance of a transformer or else there is a lose of bass and dynamics. However, the opa634 is not absolutely pure and adds a little coloration. I found that running a single cap off one pole of a DAC better than running through the opa634 and the silver AudioConsulting trannie or running through the trannie alone (which did lose dynamics compared to running through the 634 and even the cap alone had better dynamics then running just the silver output trannie). All this was all tested on a Marantz player that RAM had modded with silver AudioConsulting transformers that we have here doing additional mods on (the Marantz player uses a Cirrus 4397...very similar to the Cirrus 4398 in the Oppo). So, our output stage gives the purity of a passive (world class cap or world class transformer) stage but with the drive, dynamics and bass of active. A breakthrough no one else has. We can do the 2 channel outputs both unbalanced and balanced with these output stages. Dual mono takes it to the max! One the multichannel side, we are now using zero feedback buffers as the output stages in our advanced mods to the front three channels. Though they do no have any gain, you can compensate in the Oppo set-up menu for the difference in gain between the front 3 channels and the surround channels.
5. Power supplies and parts: The AC line conditioning, fuses, transformers, diodes, wires, regulators and caps, etc. used in a power supply all affect the sound. We have listened to many many diodes, power supply regulators, caps, wires, etc. and are using the best parts that over 30 years of modding have lead me to. Our latest modified discrete regulators (as of 11-07-09) are simply stunning. The hook up wire we currently use is a combo gauge wire in cotton. If you are going to use an active output stage (like Modwright and I do) then the best two channel sound you can get can only be had by having separate regulators and power supply caps on each channel (dual mono). We are the only company offering this amazing upgrade.
6. Transport mods: We have been modding transports on CD players, DVD players, etc. for years and years. We damp certain parts and do other proprietary things that make the sound better both for analog out and digital out (also these mods make for a better picture via HDMI...noticable even with the MBBM). If you do not get it right off the disc correctly, you cannot correct it later on. We spend an hour modding the Oppo transport and these mods make an incredible difference both sonically and visually. Our latest breakthrough in early Oct. 09 has me so excited I decided to call our transport mods "Transport Magic". The three most important of these mods are available on the Mind Blowing Baby Mod....and all Transport Magic mods are implemented on the basic mod. No one else does these mods.....no one. One modder shows a picture on his site of a few tiny strips of not very good damping material stuck on the top of the transport.....does he really think this does anything?....he is not even touching the tip of the iceberg. Not even Ayre in their upcoming $10,000 Blue Ray player (using the Oppo transport, display and mother board) are doing anything to the transport. If you don't get it right off the disc, you will always have these distortions.
7. Damping: We hand damp various components in the player. We do not use Soundcoat. Soundcoat sounds dead and syrupy. We use a constrained layer material that is super linear. We use just the right amount in just the right places.....too much and no good....too little and no good. An art. I know of no other modder that has EVER damped individual components....a must for linear sound. Very time consuming. One reason why no one else would do it.
8. Other tweaky things: We do all kinds of mods that no one else does. For instance, we have a switch that will allow you to disconnect the multichannel DAC and multichannel output stages in the Oppo for better 2 channel analog sound. Most of these tweaky mods are proprietary and I cannot divulge them here but if you are a serious customer and really interested and not a spy...he he....I will be glad to discuss them on the phone with you.
9. Value: We do the most and charge you a seriously reasonable amount. We work on the basis of making $50 for every hour of labor and nothing on the parts.
One modder told me that he has to make at least $125 an hour on any mod he does. So, if his parts cost is $500 and the labor is 8 hours he needs to charge $1500 ($1000 for the 8 hours) to pay the bills. Obviously, he probably does not actually solder for 8 hours a day, so you can see that he does not make $1000 every day....maybe some days though. I had an Oppo here that had transport mods done to it that another modder had done and the work on it was done very well. However, I figured out the parts cost and estimated the labor was about 2 hours and realized that the guy had made over $400 in two hours of labor.....pretty darn good. The modder was moving so quickly that he put the Oppo in its shipping bag before the feet he had glued on the bottom dried and they moved at least a half an inch over from where he had put them. The guy is a "crank them out" super money maker. That is all right for him, but this is not my way. I would at least allow the glue on the feet to dry the one or two hours before sticking it in the bag. I want the person working on my machine to treat it like it was his own.....not just some more $$$$$. And no way would I charge someone $625 for a mod that took me 2 hours of labor and had $210 in parts in. I have over three hours of labor in my basic $195 mod to the Oppo........I do things no one else does....in fact, some of the transport mods I do at the basic level have never, ever been done by anyone.
10. We warrantee our own work forever. If anything on any modded unit ever fails that we installed.....we will fix it. Of course, this does not cover abuse, wrong use, shipping damage, and the like. Does not include shipping costs.
11. We give a full 30 day money back guarantee on the modded Oppos.....another words, if you do not like the sound of the modded unit.....you return it and we will send you a brand new stock unit back......even if your machine was used. We know you will like it....but someone, somewhere might not. We want happy customers!
More to come
