Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions cd mods...Music Hall MMF-CD25

I'm not sure if this is the proper place to start this thread, but I've got the upgrade bug thanks to my new m60s. So first, has anyone picked up a music hall cd25. If so some feedback...please.
And finally what is the actual 'real' audible difference (if any!) in these so called upgrade mods on the cd25 and other units? The mod details for the cd 25 are available at

http://www.underwoodhifi.com/mod_musichall.html

Thanks for the help folks!

http://www.underwoodhifi.com/mod_musichall.html

Curt, modern players provide audibly flawless CD reproduction. Any "mod" which would actually cause an audible change would therefore be by definition a degradation of sound quality. Don't be fooled by the charlatans floating around the audio world.

JohnK, just curious, but do you base your statement on theory or have you compared the sound of different CDP's?

As for me, I have auditioned CD Players and have heard a definite, not so subtle difference.

I have always hated the term "Mods" when it comes to this stuff. When you break it down, it's an upgrade from stock components.

Now that I have that out of the way, I'm with 2X6, I have seen a few players that benefited greatly from being upgraded. I should note however that most of the upgrades that I have seen have all for the most part been on the video side.

Now the bad part. The price most of these guy's charge for "Mods" is brutal to say the least.

I believe in better capacitors when it comes to CD players and of course DAC's but some of the stuff is pure smoke and mirrors.

I agree, NH. I see what they're getting to upgrade to Burr Brown OPA 627's, an arm and a leg. Interesting, I upgraded my Ah! with 627s for about $50, and then swapped the Burr Browns out for the Upsampler.

In any case, reviewers seem pretty uniform in their praise of Music Hall equipment.

Before you hand over cash for the MMF-CD25, you might wanna check out the Onix XCD-88...same thing, different box, LOTS less money. Any "mods" done on the MMF can be done on the XCD.

And I gotta agree with 2x6 AND NeverHappy.

The mods can make things better - but this player is pretty dang good to start with. Also, the price for the mods is an outright fleecing, so watch out. Those new op-amps are nice, for instance, but a "pricey" op-amp is in the $10-20 range bought one at a time - and it takes about 30 seconds to change it out.

There are other changes they throw in there, but this discussion has been about the SOUND, not the rest, like gold plated connectors and the like.

JohnK, I was once skeptic about it too. But "audibly flawless" and actually flawless can be worlds apart. I don't know if I'd hear a difference if I "modified" my Onix, because it's soooooo good right now, that last 1/1000% of change is probably NOT audible. But I blind A/B'ed it (as is) with my $39 kmart special - and you can absolutely hear a difference. (I'm trying to avoid saying it's "better" - that part's up to you!)

Abe
Not sure if this will be much help or not. I did a lot of research on CD players and auditioned quite a few in the 500.00 to 1200.00 range. As you know this is a fiercely competitive price point for the person that is looking to get into "entry level audiophile" territory. Along the way in my research I hit an article on 6 moons site on the Music Hall explaining all the upgrades levels and pricing. That led me to the Underwood site. The guy that runs Underwood is right here in Atlanta. At this point I had already decided to purchase the NAD 542 new unless I hit on something great on ebay which I had bee searching regularly. I was just about to order the NAD when there was an auction on a mint condition Music Hall CD25 with a level 1 upgrade and portions of the level 2 upgrade already done. I decided to wait out the auction and if I didn't get it I would then order the NAD. Well I won the bid and got the unit for $400.00
Since the upgrade was already done I have no before / after evaluation on the effect of the upgrade. But I can tell you the Music Hall sounds as good as anything I have auditioned up to the $1200.00 range. The highs are not bright at all. I dare to say it actually has a more analog sound to it. (please don't flame me too bad guys I'm new here) The main reason I decided to go with the MH was that it was HDCD compatible. I love the Music Hall but I don't particularly like the remote. It has small buttons and feels weird. This is easily fixed with a universal remote if it becomes a real problem. The previous owner who had the upgrades done claimed it added much more to the bottom end and cleaned up the sound overall.

In reply to:

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But "audibly flawless" and actually flawless can be worlds apart.

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This is not a thumb in the eye to the "brand name IC snobs", but rather an educational post for those who don't understand quite what we're talking about when we say audibly and just how good CD playback is, no matter WHAT chip is used.

I'd prepared 3 sample wave files, listen to them on your home stereo, burn them to a CD, loop them, do whatever you want to to compare them. If someone can tell me which is which after listening (and no cheating, don't go using a spectrum analyzer or other equipment, just your ears!) I'll send you out a golden ear trophy.

The three files are (in no particular order) - all are just shy of 6 seconds in length:

Album cut - exactly as the line appears on the album - I used the song Tender Feet by Liza May Johnson, a Christian Contemporary artist, as it's pretty listenable to anyone's ears (rather than say, Argh, F***, Kill by the Dayglo Abortions) and is a good master recording.
Elevated analog noise floor - this one will probably come back to bite me in the arse. I've mixed in a false "noise floor" at 21dB below program audio (to give you an idea how loud that is, most HTIB would perform about 50ish in S/N ratio, this is a LOT louder than that - every 3dB is twice as loud!)
Extreme jitter errors - I've falsely put 6 jitter errors (at maximum points) into the waveform (that is, single samples inverted - the biggest possible error) that equals almost one 16-bit jitter error a second. This is a ludicrous amount, even a cheap player without a 1-bit DAC with a dusty lens might exhibit at most 10 in an entire song, here you have 6 in a 6 second clip.

Listen for yourself - if you can pick out all three (hopefully at least the noise floor one) and which is which, congratulations, you hear a LOT better than the rest of the world.

And no, there are no tricks here, I'm as curious as anyone, so I've made sure that I've far overcompensated and used some worst-case examples. These are really as I say they are, no trick questions where I uploaded the same clip 3 times or anything.

Here they are:
Clip 1
Clip 2
Clip 3

Bren R.

BS! thats the same track three times..

i couldnt hear no difference.. of course, thats with my windows media player here at work, and a 10 year old pair of headphones.

very non-scientific...these burdens are too heavy for me..

bigjohn