Hello everyone,

I now have a nice, near-mint CDX and I love it. It sounds so unlike other CD players! Mellifluous and musical, a bit soft maybe but involving and enjoyable. After years of harsh CD sound this is a relief. Those Philips engineers were so right the first time around!

Anyway, on another site I saw it is possible to improve the beast yet, by suppressing oversampling (hence NOS: No OverSampling). But this seems like one man's opinion...

What do you think?

Philips CD101/104 NOS mod

I have done the NOS mod on my extensively modified Philips CD650, which is IDENTICAL to the BeoCentre 9000, and 9500 - of those I am sure, as I have worked on them and they are the Philips CDM2 circuits with TDA1541 and SAA7220. It is not the same as the BeoCentre 9300, as that has the CDM4 circuit, so I cannot be sure that it will work.

The SAA7220 is removed, and the drop-in replacement from www.net-audio.co.uk is soldered in.

When I posted this mod a few months ago on this forum (do a search), there were a few objections from members that the sound would be distorted, but I am very happy with the results, not having encountered any additional distortion.

Menahem

Thanks. I have a Philips CD 582, it is virtually the same as yours (no FTS). I know it well!

My CD3300 also has the 16-bit 2nd gen. chipset, and it sounds like the Philips, but has superior op-amps to the usual—and not so bad, really—NE5532.

The CDX I've fallen in love with (what a musical device!) is an altogether different machine. Some say it's B&O's best—this is of course open to discussion!

It uses the TDA 1540 14-bit DAC (X2 for stereo) and the adaptor you show obviously won't fit.

I prefer it to the TDA 1541, not to mention the horrid Burr-Brown chipsets of the same generation... Some people say the NOS works very well on the CD 104. I too was afraid of getting awful distortion!

Did you also change the op-amps? 

Jacques

Hi Jacques,

I changed the op-amps, yes. I first installed sockets, because I knew what was coming ;-)

I tried about 15 different op-amps, all those which are talked about on the op-amp forums, including the expensive high-spec AD797.

I used Brown-Dog adapters for those op-amps available only in SMD.

And, at the end of the day, the OPA2134UA was tops.

So today, I don't bother to try other op-amps when a customer asks for an upgrade, I use the 2134 every time - easy to setup electrically with bypass, no oscillating, and great sound.

I did major surgery on this, but that's not for the topic on a B&O forum!

Menahem