The audio equipment on your rack, perhaps a CD player, or the new Blu-ray player you are considering to buy end has far greater potential than the ‘quality it is manufactured to.

From ‘fine tuning’ through to comprehensive modifications, Audiocom has 14 years of knowledge gained from passive component quality, synergising and balancing of audio components

The Audiocom modification approach removes system faults like jitter, power supply noise, etc., to release untapped performance. Here are some examples;

Main Power Supplies

The quality of your music, or picture and sound is directly reflected by the quality of the mains power supply. Even with elaborate AC regeneration, balanced power supplies; once the AC power enters into the product the quality of the AC power is often degraded by substandard power supply components; diodes, capacitors, etc.

By upgrading the quality of power supply components, reducing EMI/RFI borne noise we can ensure that your investment into AC conditioners, audio quality mains leads is protected and the next stage of power supply management, the DC regulated supplies, gets the head start it requires.

DC Regulated Supplies

The DC regulated supplies are often the most overlooked because they are buried inside the equipment, out of view and out of mind. The understanding and role of the DC supplies is generally not fully realised.  When the AC at the output of the transformer is rectified, a ripple is added to the DC voltage. This ripple translates into noise at all audible frequencies and has a negative effect on the sound and picture quality. The better the power supply can filter this ripple the better the sound  or picture will be.

The most common way to reduce ripple is to use a linear voltage regulator such as the LM7805, LM7812 orLM317. According to the LM317 datasheet it has a typical output noise of 0.003% of the output voltage. For an output voltage of 24V the output noise will be 0.72mV, which is not negligible.

Audiocom have developed a Super-regulator, now in version 3, to replace the 3-pin linear regulators for very low noise, wide bandwidth. We also use the recently developed Direct Current Power Conditioners (DCPC) from Bybee Power to eliminate DC noise directly at the load. The DCPC is a highly efficient polishing filer that reduces power supply noise through the audible spectrum up to 100 KHz. It is designed to be placed between the power supply and the load circuitry. The conditioner provides 45 db of noise suppression to a limiting noise floor of less than 20nV/root Hz.

Master Clock

The master clock in most CD, SACD & Blu-ray players is wholly inadequate. This problem is not so much as case of unawareness or ignorance because the desire for very low jitter is digital systems is widely realised. The reason is cost! Take a current CD player or Blu-ray player costing £1000, the master clock inside the player will consist of 3-4 passive parts, and share the same noisy power supply as the digital signal processor. Some manufacturers take measures to improve on this by using a Temperate Controlled Oscillator (TCXO). The TCXO will provide improvements in temperate control, the ability for the oscillator to remain at a specific frequency over a wide temperate range, but do not address the many other issues that contribute to jitter.

Now consider this, an ultra-low jitter clock that consists of 76 components on a Gold plated 4-layer PCB. A unique, ultra-low phase noise oscillator with 2 separate discrete, ultra-low noise, wideband DC regulators for analogue and digital circuitry. Enter the Superclock 4!