Sony D-555 (1990) Capacitor replace & pictures

FSOL in another I forgot. Some of the trance of that era are interesting and well done. One such amusing one is Mediocre Affiliate from around 2000 that always cracks me up "...this is our evidence of brain dysfunction..." That was on a 3CD set called "Trance Life" I picked up on discount at "Future Shop" at the time. There were a few decent ones on it. Years later, before throwing it out, I ripped that one track "Affiliate". But overall I was more into either Euro dance (a quality example would be General Base - Poison, or Captain Hollywood - Only with You (House mix), a few of the original Torsten Fenslau Culture Beat tracks and remixes etc.,) or instrumental ambient that was energetic and purposeful. Spent much time going through lots of junk trying to find the excellent ones. Or things like Basil Poledouris soundtrack for the Conan movie, Gustav Holst "The Planets" (Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus) and so on.

The D-555 Surround effect is useful when applied 2 or 3 bars worth to a lot of tracks. Yeah it's great. I need to go and listen to some tonight. Thanks for reminding me

 

Just for the record: Toshiba XR-9459 (aka XR-P22, also XR-9471)



Sounds different from D-Z555 but, to be fair, Surround effect in D-555 depends a lot on the headphones used. Since I prefer closed-back cans (to keep Boss and kids out of my hearing distance ) it loses some of its magic

Cannot advise on plugins, I do not use my computers to play music, but as a Surround Effect attachment for anything with Line-Out jack I use Sennheiser DSPpro LUCAS, it is infinitely adjustable to 'almost' D-555 sound

 

Wow that Sennheiser "thing" looks very interesting.

 

Hi guys, ok, I’m ready to replace my 4 capacitors on my-d-555. A read through the thread twice, having trouble filtering through all the capacitor brand and model number talk. Can someone give me the brand and model numbers of the 4 caps I should use. Obviously want to go with the best version of each. Thank you guys.

 

Nichicon KA series (blue ones) audio capacitors 470uf at 6.3v for the two (2) caps at the back. Now these could be better, I just used what I had and which fit. Sorry I can't remember the diameters off hand. 8mm x 11mm? Try getting a pair of the other Nichicon yellow / gold color ones in the same values.

And Nichicon FG (fine gold) audio capacitor 220uf 10v for the two (2) aluminum SMD leaking headphone coupling capacitors.

And one (1) Nichicon FG (fine gold) 100uf 10v for the other part of the power supply to replace the leaking silvery aluminum SMD.

So it's 5 in total that can be easily replaced. It's the odd 150uf other one in the power circuit that is a bit tricky because of that 150uf value very hard to find. I left mine alone. Since then I was able to get some small China made dubious quality 150uf that might fit... not used them though. I always wondered if it could be substituted with 220uf. If one could get safety confirmation from somewhat like Kaosun I would do it. I find it unlikely to cause a problem going to 220uf but wouldn't want to try "in case"

 

Thank you “hyper scope”, much appreciated. I didn’t know there was a 5th. I always read of the two headphone ones that are together and on the other side the other two, one slight wider than the other. Suppose I won’t bother with the 5th, partly as I’ve never seen it nor heard people talk about it, lol.

 

6 total... you have to replace that 5th one that is a silver metal 100uf SMD that leaks - just like the headphone one. Removing these SMD (Surface Mount Device) requires a technique shown in various youtube videos. Familiarize yourself with it. And often the leaking SMD damage the pads and you will have to run little jumper wires if it is really bad...

 

Can’t believe I missed this until now… I love prog house. I got so many proggy records from the 90s and 2000s. Some fav artists of mine are Sasha, Speedy J, Fluke, anything from Guerilla like Spooky or William Orbit’s mixes, Hooj, Rhythm Invention, Breeder, anything on Limbo records… the list goes on and on. I do like FSOL, but not all of it. Cascade is amazing especially on Northern Exposure… that record is insane btw. Antique Toy is also a weird but awesome FSOL track.

Prog trance is also up my alley… Anjunabeats, Bedrock, distinctive records, Jonas Steur, Solarstone, Chicane… so many.

 

Hi everyone,
I hope someone here can help me. I inherited a D-Z555 and have replaced the gear and the three bad 100nf/6,3V capacitors (exchanged for 2x 220nf/4v 1x 100nf/10v) in it. The music is a bit louder now, but it "scratches and hisses" very heavily during playback. And when I turn up the volume, the sound actually gets quieter. Does anyone have an idea what this could be, or how I might fix the problem?
Best regards
Marc

 

@Marc2025 - the first thing to do is to check how it sounds through Line-Out. If still garbled then check the sound from Digital-Out

this should narrow down the problem

 

Thanks for your reply!
Everything is fine via the line-out and the optical output, and it sounds exactly as it should.

 

Good job! You narrowed it down to somewhere between h/p amp and h/p jack.
The ‘usual suspects’ for what you describe are oxidized h/p jack and scratchy volume pot. Extra sign that it’s these two is uneven volume/noise between L and R ch

did you treat volume and headphone jack with DeoxIt?

 

I used Isopropanol for the headphonejack but i did the work perhaps too fast and imprecise?
Do you have a recommendation on exactly how I should do it?

I haven't cleaned the volume control. Is it possible to clean it if it's digital? After all, it's not an analog control, is it?


EDIT:
I have now thoroughly cleaned the headphone jack (from the inside) once again. It looks fine, and according to my multimeter, the contact also appears to be working properly.
Unfortunately, however, this has had no effect on the sound.

It still sounds very muffled, rough, scratchy, and distant (as if the sound were far away), and features a constant background hiss. You can barely make out a single word because it croaks and screeches so much.

Incidentally, the volume on both sides of the headphones is equally good/bad.

 

No easy fixes then! Time to pull out its Service Manual and check what is out there. And No, digital volume cannot be fixed by DeoxIt - my bad!!

I had similar problem with a few CD-3400 that I fixed over the years and it was fixed by removing all recapped electrolytics and then re-checking and thoroughly cleaning all the traces and vias affected by bad caps. Tried to but never found some specific problem because CD-3400 has real crazy and convoluted mainboard layout.

Anyway, its time to get to D-555 Service Manual, once I get home I will take a look

 

I pretty much thought so.

Nevertheless, I am very curious to see if you come up with an idea once you’ve taken another look at the service manual.

Thanks a lot in advance!

 

Re-replace the headphone coupling caps and clean every board trace / pad before during and after should do the trick.

Oh and pictures please!

 

Hi Hyperscope
I followed your recommendation and desoldered the two capacitors again, replacing them with two new ones (once more).

Unfortunately, however, the result remains exactly the same.

Any other ideas?

 

I presume that you double-checked the continuity for all these black vias, they look affected by leaking SMDs:


Now, if what you described is 'just so' then we have the following for the Left Channel: all is good up to IC102(4) and then, somewhere downstream, signal gets garbled.
Where?


Since you note exactly the same badness for L and R channels, and in D-555 these are totally discreet, the prime suspect is IC306 which works as Volume Control for both

OR bad Ground // Power for both IC103 and IC203 would give the same result for both channels - check those also. (5) for VDD, (2) for GND

Check that IC306 gets good VCC at pin-5 and good Ground at pins 4 and 13. With music playing check what happens to Left Channel when you short, for a sec, with mini-probes (or piece of wire) in steady hands, pins 8 and 6

IC306(12) is the pin which gets Volume signal through CN805(15), from IC851 located in the lid of D-555. CN805(15) is at the edge of a connecting flexboard, when these crack because the lid was opened/closed one time too many, this is where cracks usually start...

 

I have same problem with Marc2025. And in my case I found the root cause but I don't konw how to fix it.

The root cause in my case is that one of vias underneath IC306 is blocked. As a result, pins 4 and 13 of IC306 cannot be connected to ground.


When I used tweezers to connect pin 13 of IC306 to ground, the sound in the headphones became normal. I don’t know how to repair that blocked via.


I tried using alcohol and a sewing needle, but I still couldn’t repair the via.
Does anyone have any good suggestions?

 

@Chen Bin - that is easy, just use a 'bungee' to connect IC306(4) to the neatest GND. Short piece of isolated wire, I use 28AWG PTFE-coated single-core wire.
Here is Denon DCP-50 upgraded for me by the King of Discmans, Master Kaosun (kaosuncd.com) to DCP-150 status. Red Arrows point to the fixes to the damaged board, pieces of Orange wire