Hi all,
Just wondering if there can be done any (audiophile or not) mods to DCC players.
I read this thread:
https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-source/298638-philips-dcc600-upgrades.html
and especially post #12 (and #13) look interesting.
Maybe someone with more technical knowledge can share their opinion?
And is it true about the clock being horrid?
-Philip.
P.S. maybe there are some mods for other players as well…?!
I don’t understand audiophiles. A DCC600 may not have the best opamps and replacing the electrolytic capacitors after 26 years may improve things, but if they don’t like what’s in there, why don’t they grab an external DAC and put it on their favorite $10000 tube amplifier through a $250 oxygen free gilded chrome copper monster cable with vanta-black insulation to prevent light from disturbing the music, and no right angles in the path or the music falls out. And leave the DCC recorder alone. It’s probably fine.
As for timing: I don’t know what’s horrid about the clock? There are two crystals in each DCC recorder: One for 32 and 48kHz and one for 44.1kHz. Yes the clock signals get passed around and divided as needed, but after an analog signal has been digitized, it doesn’t matter how stable the clock is because the entire system works on the same clock. I can’t imagine what would make a clock “horrid” and they don’t mention it either. Maybe they have a bad machine. But again, it doesn’t matter. If they have an external ADC, they can feed the signal digitally through SPDIF and the system is perfectly capable of dealing with mismatched clocks between the crystals and the incoming SPDIF signal. What do they want? A cesium-based clock generator? Gimme a break.
===Jac
@jac Well, I agree with you, that is why I did not use the word ‘audiophile’ in my forumpost. I used the word ‘mod’, because I always look for things or modifications to make things better (pun intended!) however small or insignificant they may be.
And that does not necessarily has to be an audiophile thing at all. If, for instance, replacing a few caps will improve the power supply in some way I would probably do that with my main players. Can you hear a difference? I don’t care actually, knowing my player ‘performs’ better, or is better equipped to perform it’s function (maybe because Philips was very marginal in its design, or maybe cost related, they are notorious for that) is enough for me.
Small mods like that in electronics are actually very common. Note that I refrain from using the word ‘audiophile’, because that is not the subject of these mods.
So while I stay far away from external DAC’s that cost 
or expensive interlinks and that kind of stuff, I always want my equipment to perform optimally within ‘normal’ parameters and with (what I consider) normal tweaking and tinkering.
I hope I explained my reasons a bit better with this post.
-Philip.
Of course everyone will have to decide for themselves about modding. I made my own mods in various audio and video equipment over the years to fix problems (like a small circuit that would push the Stop button of an early V2000 VCR every once in a while to keep it from going to standby, but only if the Auto-Rewind LED was off and the STOP LED was on). I’m working on a giant mod to a DCC730 to allow it to hopefully one day record prerecorded cassettes.
I just think that some people like to make “mods” for meaningless benefits. Replacing electrolytic caps to improve the sound is a good idea but I wouldn’t call that a “mod”. Replacing opamps with different types may cause some improvement but if the existing ones are good enough, there’s no point. I’ve seen people sell “modded” early Philips CD players on eBay (for lots of money) where the mod consisted of removing the oversampling. “It sounds so much warmer!” – Yeah, duh! you just changed the digital-to-analog conversion from 16 bits to 14 bits.
===Jac
I did this mod:
I have to say my DCC players sound a lot better now. 
Audiophiles don’t use their equipment to listen to music.
…Audiophiles use your music to listen to their equipment”
Alan Parsons
I think it is up to everyone to mod or upgrade. Or not. But some seem more obsessed with the process than the goal.
I care about music and good sound and own nice gear which I like but don’t obsess over it.
I bought a couple of cheap Samson headphones (2 for EUR 40) and they sound more open and transparant than much more expensive Sennheiser, Audio-Technica and Sure ones I own.
In the end you should just enjoy the music and the hobby of it.
As a musician I must say: so true!
Hey FF, been meaning to talk to you: so you play fretless a Fender, most likely a J-bass (although it doesn’t look like it in your avatar)?
I play keys and drums and some bass - in my avatar is a DIY 5 string I build a while ago.
OK, sorry for the interruption, back to topic.
My avatar shows a BMG red special, but my main instrument is bass. And that is a fretless fender. A jazzbass from 1992…