OpAmp replacement on PC soundcard (and maybe the ClockGen.)

[Foxer]

@Lightages
 "Some people have tried to express that changing an op amp all by itself without any consideration for the whole circuit can lead to worse sound.  [...]  Perhaps there is added distortion and perhaps it is second order. Many people enjoy second order distortion as has already been said, so perhaps that is what they get and not more accurate sound." This had actually crossed my mind a few times..

also..
"the OP. He got his answers and didn't like them."
Really? Coz I have a hard time consider 3 & 1/2 pages of criticizing my question and "snake oil" banners, as answers.
Half of my posts are still without answer! Now, new ppl coming in giving their 2 cents without even reading the whole damn thread...



@Bassman59 & @Lightages
Read posts #18 and #44
...you should actually at least browse through the thread before replying

and in regards to speakers being the best investment.. um... No. The best investment is in the actual weakest link of the whole setup. Which in my case is the sound card which (among  other things) has worst bass than my previous Audigy2.

@blueskull
well, that was one of the points of this entire thread.. the opamps that i want to replace are final stage i think. That's why i posted the data sheets; to get some opinions if the replacements maybe suitable for that stage of the circuit. I even gave a link to a picture of the card where it can clearly be seen the opamps almost next to the output jacks.

[Foxer]

How do we know without measurements or double blind testing if the fallible human is actually hearing some improvement or not?

How do we know without measurements or double blind testing if the music is beautiful or not? Or even if it is music or not? Surely it is impossible  .

Cheers

Alex

 

[Foxer]

however I've found that if you rely entirely on the measured performance it is easy to create an apparently technically competent device which would give you very little enjoyment even from your favourite music - less than a pocket AM radio can (and so that device misses the most important design requirement IMHO) .

 If you really believe that then you should not consider yourself an engineer but rather an audio priest that works in a different domain.

No, he's right. Bass is the perfect example.
Rather have a good all-round sounding bass, than perfectly reproduced bass that hurts my head or is too muted.

The human ear likes what the human ear likes.

[Foxer]

The "funny" thing is, i never said i was in the quest for the most perfect studio-grade sound. Or that i believe that +5HP stickers actually give you 5 extra horsepower.
I just wanted to replace some stuff & needed some electronical guidance, so as not to fry my card. (Not to mention that newer sound cards nowadays have their OpAmps mounted in DIP-8 sockets so that you can swap them with anything you want)
If you replace a shoe with 10 holes, with a shoe with 9 holes, that's still an upgrade. I just gave all the detail that i could in the first post, because the forum rules said i should. I now realize that was a mistake. Almost everyone is besides the intended subject.

This whole fuckin thread reminds me of feminism.
10 times worse than any bad sound.


--Thank you to the very few people that provided the few answers i got; take care.

[Dave]

The human ear brain likes what the human ear brain likes.

FTFY.

You got very clear answers from what I read. Replacing components on your sound card is not going to make a noticeable difference. Period.

If you say there is a night&day difference, prove it. Show the measurement results to support your claims. Just because you can hear it, doesn't mean it's there.

By all means, replace your components with more expensive ones if you are going to "hear" better sound quality, however don't bring that bullshit to an electronics forum and expect actual electronics engineers to accept it.

[Lightages]

Essentially, you are saying that it is not possible to design sound reproduction equipment that addresses that enjoyment from music.

You really like the straw man argument, don't you....

When did I say that you cannot design a system to please a person's taste? I think I said it outright. Some people like second order distortion. In fact I would bet that many people would find it pleasing in the right amounts. Build it in and people will like it. People also tend to like more bass than real and some hate clear highs. That is the market for Bose. Bose (the consumer arm) is an engineering company that builds equipment to what people want to buy, not necessarily what is more accurate.

I said "You can't engineer how a person feels about what they hear. " not "You can't engineer things to people's tastes". Is it accurate? Who cares,  if the person likes it and that is the goal?  If the goal is to improve the accuracy of the reproduction then it has to accurate, not how a person feels that day with a head cold, or just listened to machines all day at work, or they want to rave all night.

So please, i really need some help on weather or not this swap us fully compatible and is not going to kill my card after some time.

My question is about compatibility; what is safe and what isn't..... from an electronical point of view, what could be done, and what are no-no's.

and you got the caveats:

The NJM2114 is allready a good quallity audio OP. It depends on the circuit wether the OPA1602 will be better or worse.

The trend is because the woowoo promoters have lost the battle about digital and are attacking with more magic potions. Please don't take the other comments personally in this thread. It is just that we have all seen these kinds of unscientific black magic claims many times before. None of the things claimed are backed up by anything other than wishful thinking of the people who "hear" these amazing differences. Some audio forums have even banned talk about ABX testing as it proves them wrong. There is nothing real to be gained by replacing the op amps in normal use. Capacitors, maybe, if they have failed or are of poor quality, which many are. Clocks? A total waste of time as already mentioned.

Have fun and change what you want. Make sure you don't fool yourself that it is making a difference for the good. Some people love single ended 300B tube amps pushing 2 watts into horn loaded single driver speakers. They sound good to them because of the distortion, not because of the lack of it.

Make some real measurements of the performance of your sound card before you make the changes, and then again after. That will be the real proof you have improved it, not the fallible human ear and brain.

If you don't know how to analyze the noise behaviour of a circuit, then you can't choose a better op amp.
If you don't know the requirements on each amplifier stage, then you can't choose a different op amp anyway.
If you don't know what decoupling capacitors do and in what way they interact with a circuit, then you can't reasonably choose "better" values or "better quality" capacitors.
If you don't know a thing about digital signal processing and jitter (also phase noise) propagation in delta-sigma converters, you cannot possibly judge the impact of exchanging the clock source (which, just by the way, is very likely not the converters actual master clock, because that one will be synthesized by the audio codec from the main oscillator, and the chances are pretty awesome that this synthesizer is a lot worse in terms of phase noise than any crystal oscillator).

As just said, without seeing the schematic, or seeing some details of the circuit and working out some certain things, it can't said if changing what you want to change will cause problems or not. Probably not, if you know how to solder, unsolder, and follow some basic anti-static protocols. If you need to ask, then you don't have enough knowledge and are relying on everyone else here to research the data sheets and schematics, find a sound card and measure the voltages, etc.... just so you don't have to.

You basically don't need to read schematics of the opamps in most cases (they are simplified anyway). Consider opamp as a black box with input/output parameters specified. What matters is the circuit around it and how it works with those opamp parameters.

Just replacing the op-amps is a silly thing to do. The circuit may be designed specifically to work with the original op-amp and changing it (even for a better op-amp on paper) could cause it to become unstable, oscillate which making it sound inferior and dissipate more power, therefore reducing its life.

and I took the time to read and respond, now being accused of not reading. Why bother do we bother if we just get accused of not reading when we are only trying to help?

@Bassman59 & @Lightages
Read posts #18 and #44
...you should actually at least browse through the thread before replying

[Zero999]

and in regards to speakers being the best investment.. um... No. The best investment is in the actual weakest link of the whole setup. Which in my case is the sound card which (among  other things) has worst bass than my previous Audigy2.

If you're certain the sound card is the weakest link then it must be a really shit sound card and replacing the op-amps will not do any good, as they're certainly not the weakest link in the sound card.

Even the best speakers introduce more distortion than average op-amps such as the NE5532 so getting better speakers is a more sensible idea than replacing the op-amps inside the sound card.

So far you haven't properly explained what issues you're having with the sound card. All you've done is asked about two potential solutions: replacing the op-amps and the clock. Both of which we've told you will not have a positive outcome.

Is it noise?

If you're having problems with noise when content is being played from the Internet or on your PC then it'll be filtering on the power supply or the source which is the problem. If the noise is only a problem with an external microphone then get a decent low preamplifier and microphone.

If it's distortion then that will be the speakers or power amplifier.

If you like second order distortion then perhaps you could investigate the idea of adding that in software.

[Monkeh]

it must be a really shit sound card

It is an X-Fi...

[Simon]

I think i need to invent a really expensive super cool linear power supply, he'll take like a fish  to water with that 

I found one simply way of improving my sound years ago when onboard audio was crap and picked up all of the noise from the motherboard - I just used a crappy old soundblaster card that meants the analogue was removed from the motherboards and away from noise, I bet you's not be able to tell the difference from your hi tech cards of today.

Anyone wanting to poor money down the drain will soon find a que of people lining up to take that money in return for dubious products.

[tron9000]

And I repeat: you said you didn't know much about op amps, yet here you are preaching to us that changing them would improve sound quality! It's the equivalent of holding up an orange and saying if I paint it green it's an apple!

You foxer, buddy, have wandered into an EE forum ill informed and blinded by your own righteous ideas to bother to listen us, who are trying to help and guide on the correct path, if you throw that back with your own brand of pseudo-babble science, then you are going to get no help, mocked and eventually booted.

If you think you are right, as stated before, show us some actual hard data, not theory. Maybe if you did the experiments you'd find how hard it is to measure audio quality in the small amounts you are stating.

Heed the warning.

[Alex Nikitin]

And I repeat: you said you didn't know much about op amps, yet here you are preaching to us that changing them would improve sound quality! It's the equivalent of holding up an orange and saying if I paint it green it's an apple!

You foxer, buddy, have wandered into an EE forum ill informed and blinded by your own righteous ideas to bother to listen us, who are trying to help and guide on the correct path, if you throw that back with your own brand of pseudo-babble science, then you are going to get no help, mocked and eventually booted.

If you think you are right, as stated before, show us some actual hard data, not theory. Maybe if you did the experiments you'd find how hard it is to measure audio quality in the small amounts you are stating.

Heed the warning.

I think it is a bit unfair to the TS. There is a difference between, say, building or repairing a car and driving it. If I don't know that much about tyres but know how to replace these and would like to try a different kind to improve my driving experience, I may go to a specialist forum and ask questions if a particular tyre would be suitable and safe, is there something I should take a special care when replacing it etc. And these are perfectly valid user questions. If instead of providing a straight and sensible answer the experts on the forum would have a go at me saying that this kind of replacement can not change the way my car performs and any possible improvements in my driving experience are due to my imagination, would that be helpful? of fair?

Cheers

Alex

[Simon]

Alex, a car tyre has a standard interface to connect to, it's called a standard size wheel that many tires are made to fit. In the case of the opamp it is different. The interface is the passive circuitry put around that particular op amp and matched to that particular opamp taking it's carachteristics into account. Putting another opamp in is not at all like changing a tire on a car.

The clock jitter is absolute rubbish. The clock is stable enough in frequency and any jitter is filtered out by the fact that you have MHz of cristal that will clock a device generating KHz of signal, there are so many clock cycles in every output sample that any jitter will simply filter out to the average clock frequency never mind the fact that it is a load of bollocks anyway.

[Alex Nikitin]

Alex, a car tyre has a standard interface to connect to, it's called a standard size wheel that many tires are made to fit. In the case of the opamp it is different. The interface is the passive circuitry put around that particular op amp and matched to that particular opamp taking it's carachteristics into account. Putting another opamp in is not at all like changing a tire on a car.

Even more reasons for the TS to come and ask questions.

The clock jitter is absolute rubbish. The clock is stable enough in frequency and any jitter is filtered out by the fact that you have MHz of cristal that will clock a device generating KHz of signal, there are so many clock cycles in every output sample that any jitter will simply filter out to the average clock frequency never mind the fact that it is a load of bollocks anyway.

Tell that to any hi-res ADC or DAC user  . Not in audio field, mind you.

Cheers

Alex

[Lightages]

If instead of providing a straight and sensible answer the experts on the forum would have a go at me saying that this kind of replacement can not change the way my car performs and any possible improvements in my driving experience are due to my imagination, would that be helpful? of fair?

The OP got both responses, straight, and extra advice. Some of the responses were to give him advice on the folly of thinking that the naive changes would improve things, some were to answer his concerns over compatibility, and some to ridicule the motivating ideas behind the want to change things. The other alternative is to have everyone ignore him. I don't think giving someone advice is a wrong thing. The OP can take the advice or leave it. I certainly did not insult the OP but rather tried to help. So did many people. He got the answers as best could be determined from the information at hand.

[dom0]

I think i need to invent a really expensive super cool linear power supply, he'll take like a fish  to water with that 

FYI there is a German company selling ultra-low noise low drift low tempco ultra-low output impedance linear supplies for audio (about 200 € each). They essentially build a 78XX with no thermal protection out of some LM4040, LM358 and a couple transistors and put a 500 mA current sink on the output. Print transformers are 08/15 units from Block ; don't even have electro-static shielding

[Simon]

Well mine will be shittier but more expensive. You see it's about what the unit looks like and what it costs, if it's expensive it much be good and has more bragging rights.

[dom0]

Well mine will be shittier but more expensive. You see it's about what the unit looks like and what it costs, if it's expensive it much be good and has more bragging rights.

I suggest using tons of cheap NOS transistors in some old metal case. Maybe even polish them chemically.

Look how shiny zis is, musst be gud ware!

[tron9000]

I think it is a bit unfair to the TS. There is a difference between, say, building or repairing a car and driving it. If I don't know that much about tyres but know how to replace these and would like to try a different kind to improve my driving experience, I may go to a specialist forum and ask questions if a particular tyre would be suitable and safe, is there something I should take a special care when replacing it etc. And these are perfectly valid user questions. If instead of providing a straight and sensible answer the experts on the forum would have a go at me saying that this kind of replacement can not change the way my car performs and any possible improvements in my driving experience are due to my imagination, would that be helpful? of fair?

Cheers

Alex

OK here's a better analogy -

you want to get more power out of the engine and you decide to turbo charge it, you don't just bolt a turbo onto a car without taking into the considerations of how much hotter your engines going to get, if you even have enough space to fit it, are you going to have too much manifold pressure, what happens to the pressure when you close the throttle off suddenly and so on.

You don't just say I've bolted on a turbo therefore it has more power cos without taking into account what the manufacturer has done, you could have compromised the mechanical integrity of the engine or made less power due to not taking into account certain things.

true you can ask questions in relevant places,like: "what turbo would be suitable for...?", but you don't turn round to those people and say: "oh I bolted a 109mm turbo without intercooling, blow-off valve and didn't tune it and I made 1000HP even though I have no access to a dyno!, cos you can't say that when all you done is overtake some biddy doing 40mph in a 60mph zone.

I know he's trying to improve himself by asking said questions, but I find it highly insulting to tell US the very people he's asked help from that we are wrong in some ways and that engineers that have been designing products for 30-odd years

Don't know what the **** they are doing!

I find that insulting!

going back to your tyre analogy: you don't walk into the garage, ask the mechanic what tryes he'd recommend for your budget and conditions and then say to him "no I don't accept that! you suck at fitting tyres!" cos you'd get told to go somewhere else.

sorry, not aimed to you Alex, but that sort of attitude grinds my gears!

[Messtechniker]

I know he's trying to improve himself by asking said questions, but I find it highly insulting to tell US the very people he's asked help from that we are wrong in some ways and that engineers that have been designing products for 30-odd years

Quote
    Don't know what the **** they are doing!

As I already hinted above in this thread, we are deep in to psychology here.
Judging by the quote above and the discussion here, it seems that we are here
seeing a fine example of the "Dunning-Kruger Effect".
For details on this psychological effect, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

I've seen this effect quite a few times over the past years and the experts here probably too.
My own brief description of this effect is: Overestimation of own capabilities and
underestimation of expert's capabilities. And not only in the audio field.
Anyway, let's stay scientific.

Yours - Messtechniker

[tron9000]

Not into psychology but that is an interesting study, had to chuckle about thE guy robbing a bank with lemon juice on his face!

[ConKbot]

Is this still a giant clusterfuck?

[DuPe]

I provided the schematics for all 3 opamps in the first post! And regarding the schematics for the X-Fi E.P. i think it's next to impossible to source out... So NO, i'm not relying on the people here to do the work that i could do; i was HOPING that the people here would help me with what i don't know/understand i.e. how to properly read the  provided schematics for the opamps & compare them , or guide me to what measurements i should do and where! Plus maybe some other advises on how i could improve the sound (like how Alex Nikitin said about the 100pF film resistor on the voltage supply of the stock opamp).
(i don't have an oscilloscope, sadly )

Been soldering since i was 5 y.o. , and i have replaced way smaller IC's. So it's ok

1) for a start, it is a 100nF film capacitor, not 100pF film resistor  .

2) Just to try my suggestion on NJM2014 first, before replacing any opamps. WIMA is OK, just use a smaller size capacitor (100nF 63V) .

3) No, you can not replace a crystal with a clock module if you don't know where the clock input pin is on that chip.

4) Don't expect 44.1kHz playback/recording to be any good at all on a card with the only 48/96/192kHz native sampling frequency. Not worth a hassle. If you are serious about the sound quality at 44.1kHz, at the very least find a card with a second crystal clock for that.

5) Don't get upset by all this EE talk about the sound quality. There are very few good EEs who qualified to talk about the sound quality - these people do respect the subjective side of it and do not rush with suggestions about "objective measurements" and so on .

Cheers

Alex

Edit: (pushed the wrong button the wrong time)
Thanks so much Alex for getting this thread back to the level of open minded attitude that I used to like in particular within this forum.
I accidentally  stumbled over this thread and was disappointed about the level of arrogance I found in some responses to a question that was posted under (sic) "beginners".

The attitude of "you can't trust what you can't measure' sometimes just reflects the inability or non-willingness to measure it.

I remember long long time ago a problem that I was facing when I was designing "high resolution video ADC's  (ice age, before I mutated to R&D management): The reason for underperforming ADC (also) was a clock issue:

That time it took four 6 Bit ADC's to make a 8 bit ADC.
Reason for underperformance was a clock signal that (on PCB) went the opposit direction to the signal to be digitized
I.e just 2inch of wrong PCB trace did cost me performance of a complete Bit (6dB)

I did cost a lot of very expensive measurement gear (40 MHz pure sinus -70dB spurious free range)  and engineering work
(doing weighted FFT and computing SNR) to track down.

What I've learned from this: Be humble and open minded if you dont understand something as I did that time

Cheers
Peter

[Lightages]

The attidude of "you can't trust what you can't measure' sometimes just reflects the inability to measure it.

Just to be clear, I said

If it can't be measured or statistically shown to exist by ABX, then it doesn't exist.

If it a difference can't be demonstrated, how does it exist?

[DuPe]

I am completely with you, but i dont see a contradiction to my post.

[MagicSmoker]

N.B - I did not read the whole thread; I saw enough of the usual "this is all audiphoolery" and that the OP doesn't feel his questions have been answered.

...
There has been a trend in the past few years of modding sound cards by replacing the OpAmps, capacitors, and even the quartz clock generator with an ultra-precision TCXO 1ppm (or even 0.3ppm) of the same frequency as the original (in this case 24.576Mhz). And all of this was said to have VERY good audible results.

Generally speaking, jitter - or cycle by cycle phase skew - of the clock is more important than absolute frequency accuracy, especially for delta-sigma (aka "1 bit") DACs. Fortunately, most crystal oscillators have exceptionally low jitter; unfortunately, most DACs get their master clock via a fractional-N PLL, which tends to dramatically increase the jitter. Thus changing the crystal oscillator is unlikely to have any effect whatsoever on sound fidelity.

See Maxim App Note 5477 for more on clock jitter.

Problem is, after a while some of the cards started experiencing problems.. ranging from crackling noises in the speakers, to just plain dying....

Crackling noises are usually from vibration causing "piezoelectricity" in high-K ceramic dielectric capacitors, particularly in local IC bypass and coupling applications.

What i'm mainly interested in, is changing the 4 original dual OpAmps (1x NJM2114 for front + 3x NJM2068 for surround), with 4x OPA1602AID dual OpAmps. Some also suggested to put a 0.1uF ceramic capacitor on the V+/V- of each of the 4 opamps as a little backup power or something, as it would help normalise the sound.

It has been my experience - and I am speaking as a bit of an audiophile (who at age 43 can still hear up to 16.5kHz) - that replacing really crappy op-amps like, say, an LM358, will improve sound quality (lower distortion, better power supply rejection ratio, less phase shift w/ frequency due to higher gain-bandwidth product, etc.) but once you are at the level of an NE5532 or an LM833 there isn't much benefit to be had (exception - if driving headphones directly then an op-amp with higher than usual output current capability helps - I like STMicro's TSH22).

The OPA1604 is better on paper in most respects than either of the two NJM op-amps, but I honestly doubt you'll notice the difference. One aspect of the OPA1604 that isn't usually good for audio applications is its rail-to-rail output - this output configuration tends to have higher distortion as the signal level approaches either rail (of course, if the signal is at or exceeds the rail it will be clipped, and that results in huge amounts of odd order harmonics that sound downright harsh).

Bottom line: I'd leave the NJM op-amps in.

...
Voltage-wise the OPA1602AID seems ok ..i'm thinking nothing on that sound card is going to go above 12 volts, so i'm well within limits.. but more than that, i have no clue. So please, i really need some help on weather or not this swap us fully compatible and is not going to kill my card after some time.

The OPA1604 is a fine op-amp and will certainly not be the limiting factor in how well a soundcard sounds (even though it is a rail-to-rail type) but as I already said I don't think you'll actually notice an improvement. Sadly, the things that most affect sound quality in a soundcard are difficult or impossible to change such as board layout, power supply noise/ripple and the filtering/decoupling thereof, and EMI/RFI from all that digital crap, both on the soundcard itself and inside the computer.

As for capacitors, it always helps to make sure all aluminum electrolytic types are good quality Panasonic, United Chemicon or Nichicon brands intended for switching regulators (look for "high ripple current" and "low impedance" attributes), and replacing any high-K ceramic surface mount capacitors with X7R types rated for at least 2x the voltage they will experience, where possible, will reduce "piezoelectric microphonics" as well as phase shift errors from capacitance change due to temperature and bias/signal voltage (only a problem with coupling capacitors, not those used for bypass/decoupling).