The ES9028 introduced filtering that significantly improves midrange clarity (easily audible improvement in a good rig). It's backwards compatible with Ivy/Legato (but you need 2 of them to come close/equal the 9038)

The ES9038 added gain stage. It sounds at least as good as dual mono 9028s IMHO. In fact, there is no dual mono option available on the new boards (you have to create custom firmware to do it). The output current is significantly higher - so you must use the Mercury

You'll also need to upgrade the Tridents because of increased power consumption (at least for the 1,2V reg). The new Series Tridents offer an audible improvement (even on your existing 9018). I also highly recommend powering the AVCC and XO with separate clean power supplies rather than both the digital and analog regs running off of the same 5V supply. This makes a substantial difference. You can do the mod to your current rig as well.

The Cronus Hermes does make an improvement too

So if you have the money you will enjoy a substantial improvement

Interesting idea. Perhaps something for my new build:)

How did you hook this up?

Thank you

Im tempted to give this a try. What difference in sound have you observed after this mod?

Do you have any pictures of your installation?

Are you still feeding 5v into avcc, xo and vd or have you adjusted the voltage?

Thank you.

My current plan is to use 4 Placid HD (one each for AVCC_L, AVCC_R, XO and VD) and feed 5V into the tridents and VD.

Although the AVCC tridents share the same board they are seperated so there should be no crosstalk when using seperate power supplies for L and R?

But if keeping the tridents I wouldnt i feed them 5v ?

Edited by moderator Tuesday, September 22, 2020 4:43:55 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Possum, I tried to PM you but your inbox appears to be full.

I wanted to ask you if you use separate transformers and psus for each of the tridents?

Hi Possum,

I remember the difference in sound after the Trident Upgrade from the originals to the V3.0 I have now.
I'm very interested as well since I was looking to optimise my BIII set.
Do you indeed have some pictures of this tweak?

For the first option you omit the regulator. You refer to the LT3045. Would these be suitable? They come in different voltages.

For the second option you suggest to cut away only the IN pin from the regulator to the DAC board and feed it with clean power? Where do you connect the GND of your clean power regulator?

[img]http://[/img] Screenshot 2021-03-11 at 22.07.45.png (275kb) downloaded 14 time(s).

Maybe we should start a separate thread?

Cheers,

Jordo

Edited by user Thursday, March 11, 2021 9:17:29 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I solder a dupont header pins to the top of the reg - use all 4 pins for strength even tho you will only use 2 of the pins

try soldering it horizontally (i.e. so its lying down on the reg board) bridging each pin to the existing 4 soldered pins

"Can I use the 5V of the Placid that feeds the DAC Board"

NO - Definitely not! The entire point of this mod is to completely separate analog and clock power all the way back to the mains from the noisy digital circuits in the DAC

YES - The noise does reflect back to the output terminal of the Placid.

The AVCC and XO regs are already being fed by the 5V Placid so doing that would achieve absolutely nothing.

Seeing your current build (a dual mono BIII ES9018) which looks like each Placid has its own XFormer, the easiest initial approach is to re-purpose your 5V Placids to use one for digital only to both DACs (i.e.: connected to the main 5V in terminals of both DACs) and the other for analog (i.e.: wired directly to the inputs of the AVCC reg on both DACs after cutting the 5V in pin connector from AVCC reg to the main board)

Additionally separately powering the XO will require further mods - but clean power to the AVCC provides the greatest improvement to sound quality (clean XO power more subtly improves imaging)

Just keep an eye on power draw/heat. One placid should be able to power the digital of 2 DACs minus AVCC and XO with the standard heat sinks but if you're also powering 2 XOs this will push power consumption towards 500ma (from memory digital of each DAC is around 220ma, AVCC is around 120ma and XO is around 40ma)

If you have dual windings on your 5V Placid's XFormer then I'd suggest replacing one of the HD Placids with 2 LT3045 regs like this one which will give you separate clean power for AVCC and XOs:

https://www.diyinhk.com/...gulator-3357v-14ax2.html


Input ground and output are marked on the AVCC and Trident regs (IN, GND, OUT) - easily confirmed by checking continuity back to the 5V terminal.

BTW If you're handy with a soldering iron (or know someone who is) it is possible to replace the ES9018 chip with an ES9028/38 (I'd use ES9028s as you won't have to mod anything else in your build). This gives a substantial improvement as the newer chips include digital filters that noticeably clean up the midrange in particular.