POSITIVE
FEEDBACK ONLINE - ISSUE 1
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POSITIVE
FEEDBACK ONLINE - ISSUE 1 |
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| The "mostly" Audiocom modification of the SCD-777ES
Disclaimer I don’t envy professional reviewers, or anyone who reviews more than one product of the same type. If the first product reviewed is hailed as the entrance to sonic Nirvana and the second is deemed even better—especially when the writer uses some of the same adjectives to characterize that second product—some readers may question the reviewer’s credibility, perhaps even his or her sanity. I’m not a reviewer, much less a technical wizard, but having played one on the Audio Asylum stage for what is now my second entry into the realm of SCD-777ES mods, I can offer only this defense: it’s a matter of context. If you start out your driving career in a Yugo, then move on to a Corolla, you’ve achieved something akin to paradise—until you get behind the wheel of an Accord. Then if someone gives you a lucky lottery ticket for your birthday, and out of curiosity you head for a BMW showroom.... The Audiocom Mod The Audiocom "mod" (www.audiocom-uk.com) is a comprehensive parts upgrade to the Sony SCD-777ES that involves no circuit modifications. Developed to reduce noise and enhance "quickness," the upgrade replaces audio board and power supply capacitors with Black Gates, voltage regulators for the digital and analog supplies, the stock OPA2064 op-amps with OPA 627s, and stock carbon film resistors with Vishay VSRJ bulk metal foil resistors. Since the basic ($480) mod performed last spring by Richard Kern on my 777 incorporated Vishay bulk metal foil resistors (albeit not the premium-grade VSRJs) and I had other system priorities contending for disposable income, I opted to have Richard do the full Audiocom mod less the premium-grade Vishays. I have also, at Richard’s suggestion, retained the Rel capacitors he installed as part of his original mod. The cost of the Audiocom mod was $1256 for parts and $330 for Richard’s labor, for a total of $1586. Opting for the premium-grade Vishays would have increased the cost approximately $900. As I’d come to expect from my earlier experience with his basic 777/SCD-1 upgrade, Richard’s workmanship and attention to detail were flawless. Delivery and Installation Time The mod kit arrived from the United Kingdom six weeks after I placed my online order to Audiocom. I delivered my 777 and the parts to Richard on a Wednesday morning and picked up the modded and checked-out unit two mornings later, sans one of the Audiocom regulators. Audiocom should have shipped a plus-7-volt regulator, but sent a minus-7-volt part instead. I decided to pick up the 777 and begin burning it in with one of the original Sony regulators reinstalled pending arrival of the correct part. Richard e-mailed Audiocom and received the appropriate regulator a week and a half later. Richard Kern’s Basic SCD-777ES Parts Upgrade
With the Kern mod installed, the 777’s soundstage breadth and width expanded from previous best-case wall-to-wall to through-the-side-walls in some instances, and images remained rock solid all the way to the rear corners, which had sounded somewhat diffuse pre-upgrade. More air was evident between instruments, voices, and vocal choirs. This, in combination with a more timbrally accurate vocal and instrumental presentation, effected a more realistic illusion of three-dimensionality all across the soundstage. Bass was heftier, quicker, and more corporeal, with better attack and decay than pre-upgrade, providing an authoritative foundation for everything from symphonic music to jazz and massed choral to solo vocal performances. Midrange became more detailed and precise, but neither euphonically warm nor ice cold. The top end was likewise more detailed, but not zingy or tizzy. These effects were discernible whether playing SACDs or Red Book CDs, and represented a significant improvement in performance over that rendered by the stock SCD-777ES. System Changes Since My Review of the Basic Kern Mod Since my review of the basic Kern mod, my system has changed in the following ways: (1) My original four-corner ASC Tube Trap array has been supplemented by Super, Studio, and Tube Traps, so that traps now occupy eighteen positions in my listening room, providing better absorption and diffusion control, (2) A PS Audio Ultimate Outlet (connected to the wall via a PS Audio Mini Lab Cable) now cleans the AC to my captive-cord hybrid amp; and (3) Kimber Select KS-1021 interconnects have replaced Kimber Silver Streak interconnects. Parenthetically, the improvements wrought in overall system performance by these changes have enhanced my respect for the efficacy of the basic Kern mod in both SACD and Red Book modes. (click here to read more about Jim's system) Evaluating the Audiocom Mod All "pre-Audiocom-mod" reference listening was done with the aforementioned system changes in place and, where appropriate, burned in. The SACDs and CDs used to evaluate before-and-after-mod performance are listed below, with a legend indicating the mastering provenance of each where that is determinable.
The Audiocom mod supplies breathing space aplenty. The result is, on the one
hand, more stable and palpable imaging and, on the other, greater instrumental and vocal
"presence," which is manifested in more natural timbre, lightning-quick attack,
more pronounced (and detailed) decay, more perceptible ensemble layering and composition,
more discernible nuance (the stuff of which art is made), and air, air, and more air. You
hear everything that is plucked, struck, sung, blown, tapped, brushed—even grunted,
dropped, or kicked over—with The spatial illusion conveyed by the best SACDs is more than holographic, partly because of the extent and palapability of the soundstage. I noted in my review of the basic Kern mod that the front-to-rear imaging at the soundstage’s outer boundaries (which in some cases transcended the side walls) was precisely defined. The Audiocom mod both extends those boundaries and renders them more fluid and corporeal. With the best CDs, the illusion is indeed holographic (more so than with the basic Kern mod), if not quite as fluid as what SACDs project. The Audiocom mod also calls into question the sometimes-voiced criticism that SACD is soft and undynamic. Spin the Latin American Symphonette or Blues in Orbit, for example, and you’ll find no holding back, no unduly-rounded edges (leading or trailing), no truncated dynamics, no lumpy bass, no blunted top end. Only those whose listening palette craves super-crispness may walk away undernourished. The Audiocom mod is heartily recommended to SCD-1 and SCD-777ES owners who don’t mind voiding their warranty. This mod unleashes the power and reveals the musical soul of great—and even not-so-great—recordings. Evaluation Program Material SACD (Master: A=analog; D=DSD; S=Soundstream PCM) Virgil Thomson, The River/The Plow That Broke the Plains (Vanguard VSD
501) A CD (Master: A=Analog; A20=Analog remastered at 20-bit; A2496=Analog remastered at 24/96; P=16-bit PCM; P176=Mastered at 176.4kHz sample rate; H=HDCD; H24=24-bit-mastered HDCD) Manuel de Falla, El Sombrero de tres picos (Decca 289 466 991-2 DM) A2496
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Since the baseline for this review is the Audiocom mod’s
performance relative to the basic Kern upgrade performed on my 777 in March 2001,
it’s appropriate to summarize here both the composition of that upgrade and the
substance of a detailed review I posted online in April 2001. The basic Kern upgrade
replaces stock components on the 777’s audio and power supply boards with
higher-grade Vishay resistors and Black Gate and Rel capacitors. Like the Audiocom mod, it
involves no circuit modifications.
Advised to burn in the mod for 400 hours before commencing serious
listening, I cheated and sneaked in several aural peeks along the way. Between 95 and 120
hours, output (not unexpectedly) turned brash, congested, and brittle, then smoothed out
and seemed to improve progressively. But the real "hit" occurred at about 320
hours, when music suddenly burst out of its electronic cocoon in an explosion of color,
dynamics, and spaciousness that all but mandated a diaper. The soundstage says it all.
While it’s almost obligatory to salivate over overall width and depth (and, yes,
that’s impressive), what really matters is just how the area within the
soundstage’s apparent boundaries is populated. Or isn’t. Does discernible space
separate instruments and/or performers? Is that space "allocatable" to the cues
that convey vocal and instrumental timbre, size, composition, palpability, dynamics,
attack and decay, venue acoustics, and the subtleties of inner voicing? Or is it cluttered
by noise that we may not "hear" until we perceive its absence, but that muddies
both the sonic and virtual visual presentation?
startling clarity, body, air, impact,
cohesiveness, liquidity, plangency, bloom, rhythmic flow, and authority, or, as
appropriate, delicacy. And not just on SACD or the better CDs (e.g., the Reference Ports
of Call and Copland 100 or the Naxos Elgar/Payne Symphony #3). The
marvelous acoustic of the Concertgebouw is nearly there in Ashkenazy’s passionate
reading of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances (why, he laments, couldn’t
this 1983 DDD have been mastered in analog?), which leaps out with rhythmic drive and
dynamic impact in a valiant effort to thumb its nose at the Nyquist theorem.