Squeeze Box upgrades

Take a look on audiocircle.com. Both Bolder and Red Wine have "circles" (forums) there and there is a lot of discussion about these mods. There is also a Square Circle circle, where everything having to do with PC driven audio is discussed. There is a very recent thread regarding a head to head comparison. Good reading, but the bottom line is that they both seem to offer very good mods. There is a difference of opinion about the use of battery power versus a very good linear battery supply.

"Hi - I have both and they are both very fine units"

ck, have I asked you this already? How would you describe the differences between the two modded units? And is your Bolder mod'ed unit using one of Wayne's upgraded power supplies?

Thanks Ck. I've been running my SB3 (unmodded, but with one of those Elpac linear power supplies) as a digital source into my (heavily modded) EAD DSP7000 Mk.III. The SB3 does sound pretty great for the money (but not quite as good as my PDT3), and given that I'll be using it strictly as a digital source I'm guessing that either Wayne's or Vinnie's digital mods will be roughly equal. I think that the PS will be a big player in this sort of mod. Between the help I got from both diyaudio and audiocircle I'm in the process of gathering up the parts I'll need to build my own PS on the order of one of his Ultimates or Superiors. (Fortunately I have a little skill in building this sort of stuff.) So for me I guess the question is really whether a digital-modded SB with a kick-a$$ PS can replace my current transport. Time will tell.

Yes, my design is based in part on the info posted by Wayne and others in that "circle" during the evolution of his various power supplies.

The current dilemma is around the argument of massive capacitance before and after the regulator (Wayne and just about everybody else is a fan of big capacitive storage in PS design) versus a smaller capacitance in the circuit. There are a couple of detailed threads in diyaudio where people have indicated regaining the "rightness" of the musical presentation when moving to smaller caps (i.e., 100uF after the rectifiers versus 1000, 10000, or more). In general the thought is that the large caps, while great for low end presentation, tend to introduce a "slowness" or lessening of articulation compared to less overall capacitance. I've heard this before, but it seems that the most well regarded designers of high end equipment lean toward larger total capacitance both after the recitifiers and at the driving end of a PS.