By Paradigm X
Mon Dec 20, 2021 10:11 am
Been looking into improving the audio quality of the 1000s, and can see some potential upgrades. Ive also seen similar posts in here on the 500.
The output board uses a load of dirt cheap (probably bare minimum sizes) electrolytic capacitors and cheap as chips mylar polys. I was thinking of replacing these with high quality low esr caps (probably make biploar in the audio path to reduce distortion) and WIMA polyboxes for the mylars. And upgrading the psu filtering caps with similar HQ caps. I like the panasonic FR/FM models and ive got a ton on hand. Its also likely/possible that increasing the size of the audio caps/psu reservoir caps will help, possibly bypassing the audio ones with a small poly prop or similar.
Ive recapped a number of old desks/fx units/synths and the difference is usually very noticeable. IN a good way. but the mpc isnt as old as most of these so not sure if the difference will be as big. that said this was defnitely built to a budget so i hope that there will be some improvement.
Just wondering if anyone else had tried this first, and/or had any tips/findings? Im thinking i might try to do just channels 3/4 first so i can compare to 1/2. But quietly optimistic it should be an improvemet.
In an ideal world id also experiment with replacing the opamps, but they are smd and a pita to desolder and this is an order of magnitude more difficult (high speed/quality opamps can need all sorts of additionally filtering/decoupling etc which is beyond my skills at this point). theyre already 5532s which are much better than the cheapest types so will leave them be.
Ive fully searched and spent an evening on this website going through all mentions of 'capacitor', 'opamp' etc and theres some interesting topics, especially the 500 post relating to a similar upgrade, but none specific to the 1000.
If i go ahead ill share photos/results. As i said im quietly optimistic it shoudl improve things, but a bit reluctant to lose the centre of my studio. should be doable in a day tho.
cheers
The output board uses a load of dirt cheap (probably bare minimum sizes) electrolytic capacitors and cheap as chips mylar polys. I was thinking of replacing these with high quality low esr caps (probably make biploar in the audio path to reduce distortion) and WIMA polyboxes for the mylars. And upgrading the psu filtering caps with similar HQ caps. I like the panasonic FR/FM models and ive got a ton on hand. Its also likely/possible that increasing the size of the audio caps/psu reservoir caps will help, possibly bypassing the audio ones with a small poly prop or similar.
Ive recapped a number of old desks/fx units/synths and the difference is usually very noticeable. IN a good way. but the mpc isnt as old as most of these so not sure if the difference will be as big. that said this was defnitely built to a budget so i hope that there will be some improvement.
Just wondering if anyone else had tried this first, and/or had any tips/findings? Im thinking i might try to do just channels 3/4 first so i can compare to 1/2. But quietly optimistic it should be an improvemet.
In an ideal world id also experiment with replacing the opamps, but they are smd and a pita to desolder and this is an order of magnitude more difficult (high speed/quality opamps can need all sorts of additionally filtering/decoupling etc which is beyond my skills at this point). theyre already 5532s which are much better than the cheapest types so will leave them be.
Ive fully searched and spent an evening on this website going through all mentions of 'capacitor', 'opamp' etc and theres some interesting topics, especially the 500 post relating to a similar upgrade, but none specific to the 1000.
If i go ahead ill share photos/results. As i said im quietly optimistic it shoudl improve things, but a bit reluctant to lose the centre of my studio. should be doable in a day tho.
cheers