It's all in your mind. You are imagining there must be a difference and so you hear one and somehow through this determine the difference to be a improvement. You and a billion(s) others have been tricked. Me included.
It's good to see enthusiasm and drive to delve into the workings of the PCB and swap out parts that you have it on good ideas will work if you roll OP amps. I was into soldering PCBs entirely to increase current capacity. It was pointless but I learned to solder fast...LoL.
Can you please describe the controls and experimental setup you used to arrive at this remarkable claim?
This is the expectation bias working at its best.
Even just listening for a difference - you will hear one. You are now listening carefully, and noticing things you don't notice when just listening to music.
Audible noise is one of the few areas that can change if you swap to a lower noise device, assuming you don't mess up something else (such as stability) at the same time.
Sounds like the water is ready.
That is a horribly unstable amplifier. Stop using it now if you value your speakers. Your problem is you have no idea what energy it is putting out at ultrasonic frequencies** - that you can't hear, but can possibly toast your tweeters.
That's bad. I would recommend not using it until Fosi have investigated.
That might be EXACTLY what Amir was talking about in respect to "messing with the design" and others mentioning problems of stability that can lead to oscillations.
Frankly, I would stick with what was originally in there, as it's generally only golden-ear people who seem to hear differences. What was the original spec - 5532s?
"It's very musical."That might be EXACTLY what Amir was talking about in respect to "messing with the design" and others mentioning problems of stability that can lead to oscillations.
But you know that already. And what is the risk? Maybe the amp and opamp, maybe a speaker. That's not nice, but it is not going to burn your house down, will it?
So lets look on the bright side.
With the stock opamps all this nice whistling would probably be lost for good. Who knows, with a bit of drift in some part of the circuit you might even hear a full symphony. Isn't that what everybody wants: an amp that acts like a musical instrument? Great improvement in sound, no doubt!
Ha, I knew it.
If the original is the NE5532, then these. The LME49720 is the best replacement regarding SINAD. It's 6 times faster and I would not use it without measurements, but since Fosi recommends it it should not be unstable. Both are so cheap that shipping is more expensive then the price of the chips.
Famous last words. They're selling a gimmick to deal with a parity (and commodity these days) product.
You may as well replace your power cable too while you're at it. The last 6 feet are the most important, I was told.
Since the sound of the DAC with any properly functioning replacement opamp will be the same, you may want to either sell the DAC or use non-digital sources.
It's called a placebo.
