Stereo separation

For those that are concerned about the stereo separation on early Mk 2 players (Rio-branded players are not affected), you can identify if you have the fault by visual inspection.

Open up the player and remove the drive tray (follow the guide in the drive upgrade article at riocar.org if you haven't done this before).

On the left of the mainboard is the DSP (it has a Philips logo on it). To the left of that is a small blue resistor pack. You want the resistor next to that, shown in the blurry picture below (finally the camera in my phone is useful for something!).

If it has '000' printed on it, you're ok. If it has '1000' or '100' printed on it, then you are affected and have the following options:

1. If you're competent with a soldering iron (that is, you've worked with SMT components before), remove the resistor and either bridge it over with solder or fit an 000 resistor.

2. Send the player in for repair. All affected players are out long since out of warranty, but I will carry out the repair free of charge, provided you pay for shipping.

Again, with the resistor marked...

Thank you very much for the great information.

I didn't know there was a such thing as a "0 ohm resistor". Interesting.

Can either you or Hugo explain exactly what one would expect to hear out of the player in this situation? Would a reduction of stereo separation be the only thing we'd expect to hear, or would there be other things we might notice? How much of a reduction in stereo separation would there be?

I didn't know there was a such thing as a "0 ohm resistor". Interesting.

If you build by hand there's no trouble fitting a short piece of wire to bridge over another conductor, but pick-and-place robots used in automated assembly can't handle wire as easily as a component -> 0 Ohm resistors. They exist not only as SMT components, but as through-hole too...

/Michael

I figured that in that situation they'd just make a circuit trace there instead of a pair of pads.

Okay, I've added an entry in the troubleshooting FAQ about this, basically paraphrasing what you said, and resizing your photograph. Let me know if the text needs any corrections.

Yeah, usually called "Jumpers". Some thru-hole look like honest-to-gawd resistors ('cept they have ONE black line on them, for "0". Or, in the case of early 90's pinballs, white round ceramic looking things.
Of course, us techs called 'em "Wyre" (in a souther, hillbilly accent), because that's what we replaced them with if we ever had to adjust settings or some such junk. :> (In those earlier games, some reall-custom settings were enabled/disabled by use of those jumpers..)

Me.

The only difference is ~20dB difference in stereo separation. You can hear this on affected players if you play a track with full-scale on left and nothing on the right (and don't encode it as joint stereo!) and you can still faintly hear something on the right channel (and vice-versa).

You can't tell by fading using the balance control, as it doesn't do a full channel cut.

Hugo

Thanks, I'll add that information to the FAQ entry.

Okay, I did this on my player (the resistor on mine said "1000" when I looked) and have lived with it for a few days.

Because there's a circuit trace running beneath this resistor, I didn't want to take the chance of accidentally shorting it, so I left the "1000" resistor in place and just solder-bridged over the top of it (with the help of a small bit of wire). Only took a couple of minutes. The most time-consuming part of the job was disassembling and reassembling the player.

I did not perform any empirical tests either before or after the modification. I could have pumped it through SpectraLAB just for detailed info, but I didn't bother. I figured, regardless of any testing, I would be doing the mod anyway, so what's the point.

Now that it's done, I believe that I can hear a significant improvement in the overall sound of the player. It could just be my imagination, but it feels like there's more than just better stereo separation. The music just seems to have more presence and punch.

Has anyone else done this yet? Any comments on perceived improvement?

Thanks again, David and Hugo, for the information.

Double blind testing! Can't trust a plain before and after

- Trevor

Agreed. I will concede it might be my imagination.

Maybe instead of a wire, you could have installed a switch. Then you could flip the switch back and forth and see if it sounds better with the 1000 ohm resistance or with no resistance!



I just got another hard drive for my player so I will be checking the resistor later this week...

David, do you know of the range of affected serial numbers for such units? I'd like to avoid having to open my Mk2 up if it's definitely too recent for the problem.

Thanks

Send the player in for repair. All affected players are out long since out of warranty, but I will carry out the repair free of charge, provided you pay for shipping.

I'm not affected, this this just proves again that you guys are the best.

Thanks.

Ahh.. Dana Scully (as in X-files), rather than John Scully.. I was trying to figure out that T-shirt of yours..

Ahh.. Dana Scully (as in X-files), rather than John Scully

You didn't see the picture on the back?

Well, I guess I can tell you it looked like the image
here.