The HiFi chat, build and modification thread!

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Always a pleasure ;)

Picked up a nice Marantz stack last week. Late 70's matching amp, tuner and cassette in champagne gold! Huge, with rack mount panels. Tuner and cassette work, amp has 30VDC on one channel, though works!
 
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Fixed at last! Pre-amp for playback head on right channel, duff BC548 in input circuit. Sorted and now running sweet! Very retro, very very cool! :D

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Only what I've been recording tonight to compare it with my other sources. It is surprisingly good. Very dynamic with no hint of bandwidth compression. The heads look like new so I suspect it's carried the fault for a long time so not had much use. Think I'll keep this for a while, if only to stare at! :LOL:

How're you getting on with the CD player?
 
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apache":23c9afjw said:
Only what I've been recording tonight to compare it with my other sources. It is surprisingly good. Very dynamic with no hint of bandwidth compression. The heads look like new so I suspect it's carried the fault for a long time so not had much use. Think I'll keep this for a while, if only to stare at! :LOL:

How're you getting on with the CD player?

Ooohhhh it's good!

Had it on for about 5 hours straight yesterday and a few hours tonight. Of course i can't compare it to how it was, going on memory now but there are two things that really stand out. First is the remarkable change in high end detail, on some tracks you can almost see the cymbals :) Vocals really seem to have been lifted as well, especially female ones like Goldfrapp or Norah Jones and acoustic guitars sound awesome. There is a track on the Whicker Man soudtrack called Willows song and the vocals are gobsmacking. Second is the bass which i wasn't prepared for. Its not bassier as such but more enveloping and rounder. The wife has noticed as well which is always a good sign :LOL: Drums on some tracks sound a lot cripser and drum like - i know that must sound daft.

So overall i am soooo happy, but the most important question is what mods next :roll:

Many thanks Andy.
 
Funny how you noticed Goldfrapp vocals as that's one that stood out for me too. 'Seventh Tree' actually brings Alison into the room with me (if only!!) ;)

What I found was the changes allow a sort of immediacy to come out. Not 'aggressiveness' but sort of rawness. The edges to the music are there, rather than being softened. Be aware though, I have a few bad recordings which only came out as *really* bad after I'd modded my player, but good recordings are fantastic - also noticed by non-hifi friends of mine.
 
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Yep, already found some duff ones :D

I bought the remastered Ziggy Stardust many years ago and it sounds trousers, I thought my speakers had bust :D Hunky Dory sounds really good though.

Road to Somewhere on Seventh Tree was one of the first tracks I played on it.

My question is why would Marantz make a big thing about the HDAM when the player sounds better without? Is it because that's the type of sound that was popular at the time?
 
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I think HDAM was a marketing exercise to be honest. The CD67, the SE and KI were all aimed at the 'audiophile' and it's well known that audiophiles have a deep distrust of modern technology (why else would valve amps be hanging on in there?) and don't trust op-amps. Marantz therefore stuck a load of transistors in there (a classic op-amp built with discrete components no less!) and called it High Definition Audio Module. Sadly, it's pretty much impossible to build a discrete op-amp with better accuracy than even a basic IC op-amp, as you need unbelievably accurately matched components, and this just isn't possible at non-ludicrous money. On the other hand, decent op-amps are built on a single die and accurate enough to give practically unmeasurable distortion, drift measured in nano-volts, power supply noise rejection of the order of 120dB>. Figures which are just a dream to discrete designers.

And here's one for the Big Cheese... got inside yet? I'm close to throwing in the towel! I've got as far as getting it to boot up, all displays working. If I spin the disk by hand, it spins up and displays the track numbers / times etc, but the damn thing still wont play! Everything points to the CPU, but as I cant find any diagrams I think I might be screwed!

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Mine spins and spins with the lazer trying to focus. I reckon one good one could be made put of the two. Mine is tricky to run with the lid off as there is a power supply socket at the back.


With your lid off have you bypassed the magnetic interlock for the fascia lid? That prevents the CD spinning to protect from laser radiation. Can't see from my phone
 
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