Time for an Upgrade
Bored with his old CD player, David Price decided to give it a new lease of life, courtesy of Trichord's latest Clock 3 mod.
There it was, sitting on my equipment rack, looking sorry for itself. It was a good mid-price player in its day, but time hadn't smiled on my Sony CDP-X303ES. Although still capable of making a nice enough noise, with a tidy, smooth, detailed sound, it consummately failed to excite. I'd put a CD on and sit there thinking how much better my old Rega 3 sounded. So why not, I thought, give it a new lease of life courtesy of Trichord's new Clock 3 modification?
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Photo of Clock 3 board fitted to David Price's Sony CDP-X303ES |
Trichord Research claim to have fitted over 8000 Clock modifications in the last five years, from CD players and transports ranging in cost from £70 to £10,000. The mod doesn't pander to hi-fi black magic or alchemy, but simply addresses a common failing in all CD players, their substandard clocks.
Clock 3 features an active crystal oscillator module specially made for Trichord by one of the big UK crystal manufacturers. It produces a square wave with extremely fast rise and fall times of 4 nano seconds, thus greatly reducing the window of time available for the generation of jitter. Clock 3 also comes with its own on-board voltage regulator supplemented with wideband capacitive decoupling to reduce noise even further. It uses an extremely low noise precision voltage reference and pass transistor, with Sanyo Oscon filter capacitors. Then there's the dedicated power supply, which not only generates the required current but isolates any clock noise from the rest of the players circuitry. (Clock 2 users will be interested to learn that Clock 3 retains their oscillator module, but changes the voltage regulation circuit. Clock 2 used a Linear Technology, 3 pin regulator chip and tantalum capacitors for its power.)
So what does all this mean in practice? Anyone of a tweaky disposition will know that Oscons need a while to run in, so Graham was at pains to point out I shouldn't rush to judgement over the results. I have to say however that I spotted a difference immediately. Even from stone cold, the X303ES was noticeably more fluid, and after running it in for a few days it was a revelation. The Sony sounded sweeter, cleaner and more detailed - as if a thick veil had been lifted from the speakers.
Soundstaging improved dramatically, and discs that had sounded two dimensional suddenly developed real depth perspective. Bass was tighter and more tuneful, yet no less powerful than before. Treble seemed softer yet better resolved - like going from a good moving magnet to a moving coil. And the midband gained a life of its own, with real energy and emotion pouring forth.
Most impressive though was the way all these little detail improvements come together to transform the Sony's overall character. It already sounded a very 'hi-fi' (i.e. smooth, clean and civilised) player before the mod, but Clock 3 not only built on these abilities but brought much needed musicality and fluidity to its repertoire. In short, it taught the Sony how to make music.
Criticisms? I had wondered about the dynamic improvements which Trichord claim. I could hear better 'micro dynamics' - small rhythmic inflections and phrasing changes- but the overall picture wasn't dramatically better in this area. Puzzled, I connected the Sony to an external converter via its optical digital out and quickly realised this was down to the X303ES's onboard 1 bit DAC. Via RME Audio's multibit ADI-1, the sound was far more powerful and commanding,
To conclude, Trichord's Clock 3 isn't hype or hi-fi black magic. It changed my ailing CD player's character quite dramatically, making silver discs far much more enjoyable. After several months of use, I've stopped noticing the differences and am just enjoying my CDs more. That couldn't be a better recommendation.
David Price