Get real!
I have been playing with CD transports for a while now, culminating with the really excellent CDPRO2, but with the advent of PC based music, and related media players like the Squeezebox, CDPs slowly lose out in favour.
And with media players, once you modify them ala Crazy DIYers, the gain in performance puts many esteemed CD transports to shame. What more, these media players are really cheap! I don’t have to tell you how expensive it is to procure a CDPRO based transport. Go google yourself.
However, as much as I enjoyed my highly modified Squeezebox, CDPRO2 based transport still trumps. There just seems to be a glass ceiling where we are still trying to break.
But then when I heard of SD card players, I got interested. This got the makings of an ultimate digital source.
What’s so great about it? Purportedly no moving parts, hence better reliability; less jitter, hence better sonics etc.
I consider prototyping one myself but the engineering efforts takes time but fortunately our Chinese brothers in Shenzhen QLS Hifi offers a built up WAV player for not a lot of moolah.
On the other hand, this WAV player ONLY plays 16-bit 44.1kHz WAV files. So no MP3, no FLACs, no 24-bit gizmo etc. No, nope, None, Nilch, Nada.
So what’s so great about this WAV player? You just got to listen to it.
Easy. Just play music through it.
Feeding it WAV files and playing off stock, the first few hours was good but not great but after some hours of running in…. Wooooooooooowwwwwww!!!!!!
I was speechless.
I was stunned.
I was… dumb strucked.
Here is this humble looking fella (stock standard!), trouncing my highly modified Squeezebox with upgraded external Paul Hynes power supply.
And putting the CDPRO2 transport to shame.
What more does one want?
Being a greedy bastard, I opened it up and looked for modding potential.
There are Sanyo Oscons all around. Not exactly SA grade but still no slouch. There is a 7805V pre regulator followed by 3 LM1117 regulators. One for the DSP chip (this guy does all the hard work, reading off the SD card, updating the display and sending out I2S signal), one for the oscillator clocking this chip and another for the I2S-SPDIF generator. Impressive!
The pic below however, isn’t stock standard anymore as itchy-fingered me just have to work on it. I swapped the pre pre-regulator cap with another Oscon and removed the SPDIF RCA and Toslink sockets. I replaced the SPDIF RCA with a BNC socket. This should be the way to go!
Also, I replaced the output pulse transformer (there’s already one inside) with a Newava make.
Note that there is I2S output available on this player. On another player, I tapped this out and fed to an I2S-EIAJ convertor to feed directly to mojo (which accepts EIAJ readily). This my bro, beats the SPDIF interface! But it took me a while to hear the difference while Gabriel (who has much better ears than me) detected the improvement right away. So if you can’t hear any improvement, get a pair of better ears!
All in all, I’m so happy with this little guy, I use it as my reference these days. Yeah, the Squeezebox has a nice display and offers loads of convenience but the SD player gives the best sonics.
Sounds familiar? It’s like the CDP offers lots of convenience but the turntable gives best sonics.
So what do I make out of it? This SD card WAV player is like a Digital Turntable.
Hey Yeo, this is great. I wondered about getting one of these a few times recently, but the low storage capacity on SD cards put me off. You mention you thought about prototyping one… how about doing this with storage on a higher capacity solid state hard drive. Expensive but more practical as a long term solution. The purchaser could provide the HD according to budget. There are solutions like this out there, but maybe not audiophile quality.
nope. don’t think i’ll spend time reinventing the wheel. the qls guys did a great job.
2gb isn’t that bad. with a 8gb card, that’s about 12cd albums in there. searching for the right track is quite a pain.
do you think that using the sd card in lieu of a hard drive as the storage medium for the computer would produce a similar result? so you would have sd card with foobar/asio combo to usb isolator to usb monica mojo.
thanks
k
hi k
don’t think so. been using the squeezebox for so long among other media players.
this player is special because it makes do without all that unnecessary software, conversion and hardware.
so it’s a very direct path. read raw data, wave file, convert to i2s. that’s it!
yeo
Hi, Yeo
You say there is an I2S output “available” on this unit.
Is I2S output standard on this unit or does one need to request I2S output when ordering?
Thanks.
Ed
hi ed
i2s is standard on the player.
yeo
I don’t think so….
Don’t delete this message please. I posted a while back and got spammed by spambots from Yeo’s blog. Yeo: can you please make sure your stie is clean. Thx!
Yeo: you did not research the topic before Blogging. Folks looking into Flash (Solid-State) media devices should Google “Flash memory pro con”. Bottom line: Flash (SS) is still pretty fragile (even compared to HD), and $$.
Hi,Yeo!Sounds great!Is it possible to feed my USB MONICA directly with I2S from this device?
Thanks
hi pavlo
unfortunately no. your usb monica can only work with usb input.
however you could build yourself an i2s-to-eiaj convertor to feed mojo directly from this player’s i2s.
yeo
thx for informing
Why don’t you offer an upgrade components path? 8)
thx Yeo
hi kyrill
perhaps i may do so later. i’m still modifying it, not done yet.
thx!
yeo
Your last comment was from 2010. I am late to this party. Have been listening to my QLS QA350 and been very happy. Found a used un modified 550 that i am breaking in as we speak. Will do some listening tommorrow.
Have you done any other mods? If so what?
Thanks
Everard
hi everard
sorry, all the work i have done to it is already listed on my site. no other work.
though fun, the SD format could be a bit limiting. furthermore, higher sampled rate music is more fun to listen to.
i haven’t kept track on the progress and updates of their offerings, as i’ve moved on other toys.
boys and shiny new stuffs, you know?
thx!
yeo
Thanks Yeo,
I found the 550 to be an incredible device and blows away a very heavily modified transport on battery. I think i will try and take this as far as it can go. I like the fact that the SD card is not convenient. helps bring back a ritual to listening.
regards
Everard
hi everard
yes! it’s an incredible little device. to me the benefit is from discarding the spdif format and going straight to i2s.
i get what you mean about being a little inconvenient. you are “less tempted” to fiddle with the tracks. it makes for a more invigorating listening. 🙂
enjoy!
yeo