Bypassed Marantz Blueray player UD-7007 HDAM module in the DAC PCB

[Hari Iyer]

ICs being sensetive, and if are decided to be soldered. it would be safe to switch off soldering iron from mains when it reaches maximum temperature.

Imo, this is more of hype than substance though you should not be very stupid. I have removed and soldered many smd chips many times( at least 12 to 15 times) and till date have neither damaged track or the chip even after repeated soldering at the same place and same chips. It all depends on your soldering tool, solder quality and soldering skills. IME, my elder brother is an expert in these kind of soldering.

 

[Hari Iyer]

The LM4562 that I replaced in the Blueray player has a history. I had initially purchased this smd chip for replacing in my Pioneer DVD in 2008. It played well for 4 years. Later I replaced the same chip on my then Marantz 5400 cd player and it played well there too. Later I removed it from there and placed them on my pre- amplifier anit played wellll there for 2+ years. Now i replaced the same chip on my Marantz Blueray player. It's been with me now for 14+ years now.m..

 

[Hari Iyer]

After the successful modifications done on my Marantz blue-ray player 2 months ago, it was time to get the next level of improvement. I am planning to replace all the polyester capacitors (looks like cheap Chinese) used in the differential amplifier section and low pass filters after the DAC stages. I have ordered WIMA FKP type capacitors. For resistors all the carbon 5% resistors will be replaced with Intron - 1% Thin Film Resistors. There are a total of 20 capacitors and 28 resistors to replace and that means will require an extended weekend to do this activity.

FMs may be wondering why this mod - I have noticed that my Dell laptop which has a Lynx soundcard sounds quite transparent and open compared to my Marantz BR player. This intrigued me into going for this mod as the signal path in the Marantz gets corrupted by these cheap components imo. Lets see how this plays up. Am expecting to complete this by end of June as the capacitors needs to be imported and not locally available.

Thanks for looking.

 

[Hari Iyer]

Further modification please follow this link

Passive Low Pass Filter for my DAC Chip

This post is in continuation to the below post https://www.hifivision.com/threads/bypassed-marantz-blueray-player-ud-7007-hdam-module-in-the-dac-pcb.87599/ After almost 2 years of tinkering with my Marantz Blueray player DAC board,, i finally am able to conclude on them. I have wasted 2 years...

www.hifivision.com

Thanks.

 

[manek]

This mod has a long history as long as 10 years of my listening time. In 2004 i owned a Pioneer DVD DV-373. This was followed by a used Marantz CD player CD-5400 from around 2011 til 2018. I later purchased a Marantz blueray player UD-7007 for its DAC quality and other attributes. I always did notice that some details from the UD-7007 were missing - not huge but surely yes compared to the Pioneer and the Marantz CD player. I attributed that to my listening degradation due to aging and did not bother much with this and ignored them.

I four months ago came across a video from Amir (ARC founder) where he was comparing some DAC and was mentioning briefly about Denon and Marantz cd players and was telling how the Marantz players added an unwanted HDAM discrete buffer after the Low Pass Filter there by loosing some details and being slightly compressed. Denon did not suffer from this issue as they followed the KISS principle and less was more for Denon. Since i viewed that video 4 months ago, i always wondered how to remove the discrete buffer from the Marantz and i did this today. It was quite simple - just add a jumper wire from the input of the HDAM to the output of HDAM after the coupling capacitor and you are done. As current will always flow from where the resistance to its flow the lowest - the HDAM gets bypassed without any other alteration as it would offer higher impedance than the simple wire. I used a Belden silver wire to make this jumper. I don't know if this jumper also acts like a +ve feedback from the output to the input of the HDAM - but who cares if you are getting a better outcome.

I have been listening now for 2 hours and noticed that there was nothing wrong with my ears and actually the HDAM circuitry was masking the details with the unwanted circuitry. Now i can hear all the masked details like it was in the Pioneer DVD and Marantz CD player. Now i really believe that less is more and this entire mod was done in just 20 minutes.

Thanks for looking.

First and foremost that Pioneer dvd player was superb for its price and what it did. I used it as a transport for many years(a decade probably) and still do use a newer model as a transport. The newer model doesnt have a coax out so I use the optical toslink out and all my reservations about using toslink have gone out of the window.

With regards to bypassing hdam, well if it works for you then .

 

[Nitin K]

First and foremost that Pioneer dvd player was superb for its price and what it did. I used it as a transport for many years(a decade probably) and still do use a newer model as a transport. The newer model doesnt have a coax out so I use the optical toslink out and all my reservations about using toslink have gone out of the window.

With regards to bypassing hdam, well if it works for you then .

In my experience too Pioneer transport whether for cdp or Bluray player is excellent. Plays almost everything without a fuss.

 

[Hari Iyer]

First and foremost that Pioneer dvd player was superb for its price and what it did. I used it as a transport for many years(a decade probably) and still do use a newer model as a transport. The newer model doesnt have a coax out so I use the optical toslink out and all my reservations about using toslink have gone out of the window.

With regards to bypassing hdam, well if it works for you then .

I have now graduated to a passive LPF