Question for the really smart guys . . .

[chessrock]

Is it possible or even practical to perform mods on a sound card in the same way you would an outboard piece of equipment? What would a person's chances be of, let's say, upgrading the converters on their card? Is it a matter of swapping a few chips, or would this be something you'd be better off just upgrading to the next best card?

Thoughts?

 

[Barometer]

Wow, never thought about opening up a piece of audio hardware to tweak. But we do it with computers all the time. I would say if your audio hardware knowledge is up to par, it would be just like messing with anything else. But not sure, that seems like a ballsey move to me

OOH! I didn't mean to imply that I was a really SMRT guy...

 

[M.Brane]

If you have a spare Soundblaster laying around why not go for it.

Swap out all the caps with Black Gates and you'll have the trickest one around.

Seriously if you can solder good enough, can get the right components and know which ones are the culprits it might be worth it.

 

[barefoot]

Thought of it many times chess!

The only problem is, you can never find any schematics for the damned things…. probably because they change the designs every 5 minutes. So, replacing the caps and possibly the output IC’s is about all you can do.

So, I think about, then I say nah it’s probably not worth the effort. Then I think…. then I say nah…….

??????…. nah, probably not worth the trouble.

barefoot

 

[Sangram]

In theory, you need hardware that is pin-compatible, and firmware that can detect the new hardware and instruct the software to work accordingly. Not easy.

The closest I have seen card mods are on video cards, where some simple hacks can turn cheap and tacky nVidia cards into professional cards by just moving a couple of resistors. Or replacing a Via Northbridge on the motherboard to give an added performance boost. Or boosting image quality of the vido cards by crushing (that's right) and removing a few filter components.

On soundcards or any other piece of hardware if you are going to make any substantial changes it should not be a problem so long as you are able to repgroam the s/w to recognise the new hardware. That is the main thing. However changing passive compnents for higher quality compnents should not be an issue.

 

[barefoot]

Calcutta? I thought all of you Indian computer geeks were over in Bangalore!

 

[RWhite]

in my opinion, it would be a huge waste of time, unless you're the kind of person who finds board-level hacking to be fun. Most of these cards are fairly proprietary, and as was mentioned have no public schematics.

 

[Sangram]

Calcutta? I thought all of you Indian computer geeks were over in Bangalore!

Seriously, though, I was at Bangalore for quite a while. So you were right

I'm an ad-man by profession, Computers are just a hobby

Bangalore's a great musical place to be, too. Lots of good jam sessions and amatuer and pro musicians. So is Cal, but well, Bangalore just has better weather. May relocate some day, soon.

 

[barefoot]

I'm an ad-man by profession.....

Get to work with any of those devastatingly beautiful Indian actresses?

My wife works on Saturdays, so I stay home and take care of our daughter. Saturday afternoon there’s a program on the TV that shows music videos intended to advertise new Indian movies. The music is usually not so good and I don’t understand a single word, but the women are so gorgeous it makes it worth watching.

Yeah, I think India must have some of the most beautiful actresses in the world.

barefoot

 

[Sangram]

Yeah, they look good on the TV but most of them are absolutely talentless bimbos. I've worked with quite a few of them. The new crop are really terrible, can't sustain intelligent conversation for more than a few minutes. The older ones are OK, so-so but the young 'uns are a waste of client money, mostly.

I'm not surprised you don't care for the music. IT's absolutely horrible but it's what sells.

 

[barefoot]

I'm not surprised you don't care for the music. IT's absolutely horrible but it's what sells.

Glad you said it first. I was trying to be tactful.

barefoot

 

[TexRoadkill]

Yeah, they look good on the TV but most of them are absolutely talentless bimbos. I've worked with quite a few of them. The new crop are really terrible, can't sustain intelligent conversation for more than a few minutes.

It's completely different here in the states. Most of the new young performers here hold masters degrees and dabble in quantum physics.

 

[barefoot]

Damn, where was I? I never even met one fine young actress in the physics department.

barefoot

 

[Sangram]

By Golly, we've hijacked the thread, haven't we? Chess (if he still is subscribed) must be irritated.

In India, Women are traditionally relegated to domestic and sexual duties. This is reflected on screen in most movies, where women play the roles of villanous vamps or virtuous wives/girlfriends who appear during the song-and-dance sequences, of which there may be upto eight or nine in a typical film. This further reinforces their stereotype and the circle goes on.

Cinema is a mass entertainment medium, and is largely defined by the 'commercial' film industry, not by the 'niche' or art form. As a matter of fact all films which have deviated significantly from the expected storyline have flopped. And there were some great movies in there.

The average Indian potboiler (as they are called) are based on the format of the Hollywood musical, but have razor-thin plots (if at all one). There are a total of six plot lines in existence, and every film is a variation on these. Pathetic.

There is also no music industry in India. Really, there isn't. the industry survives on film music, which is the mass market. There are small niches for fusion and folk, also classical music exists to some extent, but largely Indian Classical music has found greater acceptance in the West (States, Europe, Britain) than in India.

Some bands are however doing a great job at their music. There's a lot of good rock and folk-based music that you can hear. Classical also survives, but is gradually becoming extinct. Sad.

OK I'll stop boring the wits out of you guys.

Laterz.

 

[M.Brane]

It's completely different here in the states. Most of the new young performers here hold masters degrees and dabble in quantum physics.

LOL!

In India, Women are traditionally relegated to domestic and sexual duties.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

 

[Roel]

Ok, back to the original topic.

I'd say it's doable.

There will be opamps used to amplify the signal. And there probably are ALOT of pin-compatible opamps that have better specs than the one used. Just find out a good one and replace it. You can know what components are used just by looking at the chips on the board. No need for a schematic. (Although you won't know where exactly it is located in the signal chain...) You can trace back the schematic. Now that's hard work, but if it's not to many layers on the pcb, it's doable...

For the convertors: same here probably, you just need to look what chip is used, and find a pin compatible substitute with better specs. Or, looking at the specs of the original chip, you can find out what signals come in where, find a chip that has better specs and takes about the same signals, meaning, you can get it to react in the right way (so it basically uses the same protocol to get it's data), then replace the chip, not by soldering it on the board, but by using tiny wires to connect the pins at the right places. This means, you don't really have to be pincompatible. Just connect it with wires, and stick it on it's place using a piece of rubber in between the chip and the board.

The firmware doesn't have to 'recognize' the hardware. DACs just get controlsignals, and don't talk back. So, you just have to make sure the DAC listens.

And the same for the mux and S&H parts if any of that is used...

Now, am I smart or what??

Does it show that I'm doing modifications on CD/DVD writers all the time? Getting signals out, getting them in our testboards,....?

 

[Sangram]

Hear, Hear Roel!

Going by a SB Live! kind of card, though, I figure there's one Chip that does the DSP and the DAC/ADC all in one package, so I dunno whether it's possible to change, say a Live! to an Audigy by just changing the DSP from EMU10K1 to EMU20K1 (if they are pin-compatible or similar in nature).

Air-soldering's a tight art, though in the days of VLSI where chips had 64 pins max, was easy. Nowadays with SMD IC's I find my hands to be too unsteady to solder 400-odd pins.

Passives are easy though. And, if you have the right kind of gear, i've had KL133 motherboards changed over to the KLE133 (For 133 MHz FSB CPUS since you don't get 100 MHz Athlons in India) for 20% of the cost of new Tualatin mobos for a few customers, just by changing one chip. A new BIOS flash implemented 90% of the feature changes without problems, and the boards are running solid and stable.

Since you are heavily into modding, I have one question: Is a noise-shaping 1-bit DAC better than, say, a high-quality 24-bit DAC? I'm looking to buy a CD player and I can't figure which would be better

 

[Roel]

Since you are heavily into modding, I have one question: Is a noise-shaping 1-bit DAC better than, say, a high-quality 24-bit DAC? I'm looking to buy a CD player and I can't figure which would be better

I'm not really into modding. I'm just good with a soldering iron (How about lifting 1 pin of an SMD 200pin device with a soldering iron, eh? ), so every change there has to be done on our testboards is done by me. But this mostly is just adding/removing resistors, some track cuts in extreme cases, soldering wires to test points, or wires on the pins of an SMD chip when there's no soldering pads on this line...

I dunno about those DACs. Think it kinda depends on the oversampling used on the 1bit DAC really... They can both have good results, but the oversampling really makes the difference here. (That's what a one bit dac is based on eh...)

As for the soundblaster... If you only have one DSP with an onboard DAC, I guess you cannot do alot of things. You can upgrade the DSP, but you'd have to change the firmware too... And the quality of the convertors will be still pretty bad if they are on chip.... But adjusting the passive components on the output of that DAC will probably be a good thing. Anyway, if you got an onchip convertor, I doubt that it's really worth the trouble. Those devices are not designed to have highquality convertors on them I guess...

 

[barefoot]

Yeah, see this stuff is why I usually come to the conclusion that it’s not worth it – especially for cheap cards.

Now, it might be worth it to mod a mid line outboard card like a Delta 1010, Layla, or MOTU 2408mkx though. But I would not touch any of the digital circuitry at all. I would consider replacing caps, op amps, and solid-state relays.

In fact, upgrading any solid-state relays that switch audio signals would probably be the biggest bang for your effort. Looking at the specs of even high quality solid-state audio switches, my guess is that these are some of the weakest links in the signal path for the types of cards I just mentioned. Something like the Mona which can select between line, preamp, and hi-z inputs almost certainly has these types of switches.

A really cool upgrade would be to replace these with mechanical relays. This might require a separate power supply depending on how much reserve the unit’s power supply has. You would also need buffers for the control circuits to drive the relays. Or, you could possible even drill holes in the front of the box and mount hand switches. I seriously doubt these relay circuits have any kind of status indicator feedback, so the sound card should have no clue what you’ve done.

barefoot

 

[djc]

We interrupt this thread for these important messages.

In India, Women are traditionally relegated to domestic and sexual duties.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lucky bastards.


And now, back to our thread..

I don't think it's worth the time and trouble myself. The 24/96 cards are getting cheaper and will continue to get cheaper. I just found out about this DSP24V 24-bit/96kHz soundcard from ST Audio for $100.00. Shoot, I paid that much for my SB Live Value just a couple years ago.



Lucky Bastards.