I unsoldered and resoldered two blown caps and I’m up and running again! About $2 and an hour’s worth of work.
And the degradation must have been gradual because with the new caps … the sound stage is like better than new! Wider deeper, more ooomph in the bass, clearer treble, better imaging, better … BETTER!
It must have been horrible two weeks ago?
If you have a Emu card and you are not about to change just yet you owe it to yourself to check that place out!
Shockful of all kinds of info for not only Emu owners!
Well, the thing is that the problem caps is probably much more of a 1820(M) thing than 1616(M) since (as I understand it) the 1616s have a separate external power supply and the 1820s have the power supplied through the CAT5 cable from the PCI card, and Emu made some cheapniz decisions (including the price/quality of the caps) for how to build the 1820 AudioDock. So I guess you were lucky this time!
Have you ever considered a “Big Knob”? I think you would really like it. Four inputs; DAW, 2-track a, b and Phono with grounding post, Analog volume control, mute, two head phone jacks with volume control, three monitor selects and more. There are other product that will do this but have first hand knowledge of the Mackie. It really make my rig very connected and easy to use. Just a thought.
It looks like the capacitors in question are not on the power supply but do do with the converters, so most probably a shared problem. Renewing electrolytics on older equipment is a common procedure and can transform the performance.
Yes that is a useful place for us 1820m users. Mine is still going strong ATM except that I had phantom poer supply problems about two years ago. I was getting a lot of noise. When I check the voltage it quite low, can’t remember how low now. I bought a stand alone phontom power supply and I have been convinced that my mics perform better since I did that.
I should probably replace the caps in my audio dock. They must have degraded by now. I think it would be relatively simple. I took the dock appart when I had the phantom problems. I have been considering changing to something like a new Steinberg, RME or Liquid Saffire but I wouldn’t want to spend the cash to find I hadn’t got a significant sonic upgrade. Plus they are firewire and I wonder if I’d be better sticking with pci.
If you’re used to poking around with electronics it’s not hard per se, but the holes are s m a l l !!!
And the old caps seems to like it there so they don’t want to leave the board
But it’s not difficult, hard or anything like that if you’ve done similar stuff before. It’s hard to fail, that’s what’s hard about it hehe!
OTOH if you’ve never used a soldering pen … maybe it’s a better idea to ask a friend who has?
And if you ask me, any old EMU card around 5 years old like mind should have the caps replaced because now I hear again . . .
