2. digital
  3. 989728713

Build Your Own CD?

I know people have tried to build their own passive preamps, tube amps, and tube preamps, and that companies offer kits for these purposes. As I look at home theater and digital (CD components and players) I get the sick feeling that they are all the same on the inside and just packaged differently. There seems to be no reason you could not buy a phillips transport, Crystal D/A and the rest of the stuff necessary to put in the box to make a kick-ass cd player (a D/A would seem even easier), so who amoung us has thought of this? SACD components seem obtainable as well. The only problem is the interconnection and compatibility of the various of digital components, but if someone could tell us what to connect, I believe that it could be done. I am not saying that we could build something as good as Wadia or Sony SACD, but hey, could we build something better than most of the stuff out there?
south_park
jeffloistarca
1,004 posts
 
I sell both Burr Brown and Crystal, if anyone needs a free sample, get in touch...Jeff
space_tech_lab
1 posts
 
This is Albert of Space-tech Lab., the guy Kublakhan mentioned about. My CD player is using the special remote control edition of Creative 48X/52X CD-ROM drive as back-bone, I designed and built a very heavy duty power supply section for it with a decent chassis. I didn't use it's analog output, it is because the on-board D/A is really bad sound, instead I use my own 26bit 512x over-sampling D/A converter with balanced tube output stage, that makes a killer system.
thorty40
149 posts
 
Hi Albert,

Can you give us a rough estimate of the costs involved in the completion of your cd player? Thanks.

Chris
j_thunders
173 posts
 
Well, Albert wins the cool guy award looks like. Khan, since you're friends with him, you get cool guy honorable mention. I'm with thorty40, how much for this, this, creation?
kublakhan
718 posts
 
actually, i'm not friends with him really. i just bought a preamp and a cd tube buffer (when i needed it) from him and thought, MAN this guy really, really, really knows what he's doing, he's super nice, and his prices are so low it's stupid. See, i believe South Park's original post is right. this stuff that wadia, audio research and the likes can be done for a fraction of their sales prices. when you buy from them you're paying their advirtising, r&d, payoffs to certain publications, owner's yachts, all that crap - which they deserve in my opinion because they worked hard to create their companies. but when you hear a real set up system of a knowedgeable do-it-yourselfer there is just no comparison - the quality is HUGE and the prices are tiny. I think albert is that kinda guy. if he would try to market himself better he'd really go far, the the yacht and we'd be back to where we started with the other guys, paying $3000 for his $300 introductory preamp. the fact that this little Space-Tech Laboratory $300 preamp held up to a $3000 arc preamp actually pisses me off. and you know what, arc didn't hand-wire that new preamp, and they didnt' pack it up for you after they did and send it out asap so you could enjoy your music the sooner the better and they didn't write long long letters to you about setting it up and they didn't talk you out of their higher priced items because the rest of your system wouldn't gain from it at that time. i could go on - sorry, i just got on my high horse there for a moment.

anyway, albert's a cool guy but i never met him. maybe he'd take a swing at me if he really knew me for who i really am. but in cyberspace this guy's a winner.

in fact, he's a mad-scientist type and doesn't visit audiogon and didnt' even know audioreview and some other places like that existed. I'm the one who told him about this thread so he'd respond. I'll tell him again.

sorry about the rant, i just came off a nap.
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