840c bake off

One of the ZG guys came round today with his shiny black 840c and we played it back to back with my shiny modded silver 840c.

set-up: TAG PA20-r pre-amp, only using passive volume control, gain stage switched off, 2x TAG 125m monoblocks, KEF Ref 203's not the brand new ones but the few year old versions, these are re-crossovered with a new board that has the same functonaility as the new 203/2 crossover. ( though i run them flat, not compensated).

the players:Mine, 840c with uprated schotkys, Tentlabs XO and shunt reg for XO, Neil Hynes local reg for the dacs, upgraded op-amps, heavily dynamat damped casework.

His: 840 most caps on main board replaced with black gates and those little blue shiny cans, don't know the brand, but they are on my PH Reg, schotkys replaced with same DQ10's !, and a cap change on the servo board. nearly 90 parts in total.

the sound:Mine sounds about as close to the Rega P5 Dyna 20-x front end i can get it. Tonally it's much better than the stock 840c player, the stage width is wider, though no deeper and the decay of notes has markedly more clarity giving a better sustain, like a motor upgrade for vinyl. The bass goes deeper with force and is much tighter with more slam. There is a large reduction in digital glare and the sheen you can get from stock player, basically it's more analogue less digital.

His: Obviously i prefer the sound of mine, but i'll try my best to couch this in none negative terms, there are some plus points too. We both noted that his player didn't have quite the stage width of mine and wasn't quite as rich tonally, it was notably further away in tone than mine, when compared to my vinyl front end. The high frequencies definately had a bit more bite, this could be level or balance of overall frequency range, maybe highlighted by the difference is bass presentation.

Where his player did show mine the door however was in the attack and leading edge of transients. His player definately caught them with more focus than mine. I think in this respect his is closer to the stock player, but more so, as mine is a touch laid back in this respect. It was a very Naim style focus to the handling of transients, and definately not overbearing. The effect is likable enough to make me consider trying to regain some of this.

Overall, we both felt that mine had the more analogue presentation in terms of width and tonal accuracy, mine also had the tighter, deeper bass, but not by much. His player had a richer top end with the more forward balance, not unduly so, and firmly trounced mine on its ability to catch and portray the leading edge of transients.

Both highly listenable and enjoyable, and displaying differences between them that i would consider to be similar to stepping between models in certain brands, though neither was 'better' than the other, just obviously different.

Compared to the un-modded player, as best as memory can serve, we both agreed that the changes were definate improvements, though we would do wouldn't we, as we'd both busted £300+ on the mods.

If there's one thing to take away from this, then it's the following. you get a much better return on your investement for £20 worth of dynamat than you do for £100 worth of parts and £200 labour... ;-)

 

I was the other guy, with the Black 840C

Firstly

Thanks to sq for hosting me with tea and the use of his system.

I have to concur with the observations above. It is pleasing when somebody hears the same differences / changes that you have. It helps convince me that I am neither mad nor cloth eared.

Sq's knowledge of electronics and indeed of the musical reference pieces was far superior to mine yet the critical observations were shared. I didn't quite get the different sound stages between the players but I was sitting right in the sweet - spot throughout. I know this should have made it more obvious but it didn't for me.

The two most revealing moments for me were:

1) Vibraphone on Ricky Lee Jones. Sq's player clearly got the texture of the notes right and separated each strike well. Mine ran the quicker strokes together somewhat and it didn't sound quite as 'right' as the other one, a bit fast maybe.

2) Led Zepplin, Dazed and Confused. Mine sounded like there was slightly more 'headroom' at the top and had a bit more impact, especially on the instrumental break at the start.

Learning Points (for me anyway)

What is interesting is that Sq delivered his player to 'Colin' at (insert name here on edit) with a brief to make it more 'analogue' in character. In isolation it certainly sounded that way to me. I gave mine to Wadia Meister and asked him to put some of the drive back into the player which I felt had gone missing with the increased resolution brought on by the Dynamat.

Both experts delivered on their brief, both tuned by ear and listened to us. I am tempted to try a bit of a hybrid / combination of the two sounds.

We both liked bits of each other's players sound. Really would like to hear both against a stock 840C. I'll demo mine against one in a couple of weeks.

The time and effort spent Dynamatting the internals of this CD player are very well spent. The electronic improvements have certainly been just that and IMHO worth the money; but the Dynamat is a total no-brainer. Along with component choice I feel that budget gear skimps most on the physical construction and that is maybe where a tweaker can have the most impact. Especially an inept one like me.

 

two punters in agreement, what's the chnaces of that then...

 

Just goes to show what you can squeeze out of these units....

What caps are you running in the dc blocking positions ?

 

Er, Blue ones.

Ha Ha Ha. You'd better tell me where those are pete and then I can find them for you. Don't have any internal pictures at present but think SQ does.

 

i cant find them online for the life of me,but they are the little shiny blue ones.

 

if you have a pic ...that may help

are they silvery light blue with a black - on top ?