Modifications to digital ... SCD777ES

There's a guy in the club I belong to, South Florida Audio Society by the name of Andy Bartha. He is a techy and a nice guy. You may have heard of him. I am currently using a pair of 45 amps he built. He does a lot of modifications and may be able to help you out. He does this full time, it,s not a hobby. Drop me your P.N. number and i will ask him to call you. You can go over his credentials with him yourself.

Simon,

I was considering a few sources. Musical Design, Stan Warren, and Dan Wright for the component bypassses. I just talked to Jerry O. at Audio Logic and his price to add his tube output stage went up from $1250 to $1450. I'm concerned about the output stage on the 777. I could bypass all those components and still by stuck with thin sounding op amps (luckily the Aloia inductive ps preamp cured this). I am trying to contact Audience. Stan Warren also offered to replace the op amps with mosfets (on the Pioneer 333, maybe he could do the same on the 777). The other side of the coin, Jerry O of Audio Logic said all of the engineering journals list DVD Audio as the winning format because SACD isn't being readily accepted by the record companies (betamax syndrome). If I'm going to spend $1450 for an add on output stage with power supply then I might as well spend more for a used Dodson DAC. I'll have something of value. Was wondering how your Sony DVD9000 is coming along as modified by Stan? Regards, Mike Girardi

Mike:
Thank you for detailed answer. Stan Warren still investigating 9000es (about two months by now) and I don't know what he will do at the end. I will post results in the same year I will get back my unit - Simon

Audience has emailed me. The upgrade detail is given below:

Thank you for your inquiry. The full modification is more of a reengineering. The result is a state of the art player. It will benefit CD and SACD. It solves the biggest problem of digital disc playback, inadequate analog output
stages. There is a lot of big talk out there but not much in actual performance. Our proprietary circuit is not equaled by any other manufacturer. The following is a brief description.

Yes, we do mods on the 777ES. There are two basic levels. The first level includes reworked power supplies with new wiring, added noise filtration, IEC or Neutrik PowerCon power inlet connector with optional powerChord upgrade,
better power supply capacitors, new op amp and auricap output coupling capacitors. This step costs $450.00 to $900.00 depending on options chosen. The second step is more than a mod. In addition to what I mentioned for the
first step we completely replace the stock analog section with our own CableDriver analog section. This is an absolute state of the art analog stage which is direct coupled to the output, eliminating output capacitors. It has no overall feedback and an output impedance of 3 Ohms or less! In this second step we upgrade the digital filters and add more power supply decoupling and internal shielding along with additional cabinet damping. The cost is 1,500.00 to $2,000.00 depending on options.

The result is a truly state of the art disc player which will compare favorably with any player on the market regardless of cost or reputation.

Sincerely,

Richard A. Smith
audience

I just ordered the service manual so i could get the cap and resistor values and may just do my own modding like audiocrazed on the audioasylum board,only i will replace the main power supply caps with blackgate and use film caps and resistors in place of polystrene wherever possible. I don't no how long this will take but it should be faster than sending it out to be done, and since no ones even had one done and got it back yet to post results.audiocrazed has posted even better than initial results after a little break in, the player now compares well to his wadia 860. Now those are results.