So the main mixer I like to use is an ASHLY LX-308B. It worked great, except the following:
#1 the first two channels (which were also mic channels), had awful white noise hissing constantly.
#2 there was a general line hum that was annoying (and yes I followed all of the precaution, all devices run into an 8-port ISOBAR).
#3 the bass response could be better.
Well upon cracking the thing open, I saw what the problem was. It uses 100uF *chemicon* GP decouplers. 100uF is a pretty dinky amount, and chemicons are some of the flattest sounding capacitors-- they're great for motherboards and power supplies, but NOT audio circuits. Yuck!
Obviously the Ashly engineers didn't have experience with the way different capacitor brands and series behave.
Here's a picture of the dinky chemicons (it's so pathetic looking):
You'll also notice some other random cheap chinese caps between the brown chemicons. barf-o-rama.
So since I had some 220uF RX30s and 10uF RE3 ELNA caps, I popped them in:
Ahhh much better. I bent them in that pattern to look more tidy.
I also did the same for the main output:
You'll note the VERY nice chemicons on the power supply.
After the recapping, the white noise on the first two channels is gone. The hum has been silenced by 80%. And the bass response is better.
ALL FIXED!
(I also changed some LEDs, but that's minor, I thought the power LED should be red instead of blue)
#1 the first two channels (which were also mic channels), had awful white noise hissing constantly.
#2 there was a general line hum that was annoying (and yes I followed all of the precaution, all devices run into an 8-port ISOBAR).
#3 the bass response could be better.
Well upon cracking the thing open, I saw what the problem was. It uses 100uF *chemicon* GP decouplers. 100uF is a pretty dinky amount, and chemicons are some of the flattest sounding capacitors-- they're great for motherboards and power supplies, but NOT audio circuits. Yuck!
Obviously the Ashly engineers didn't have experience with the way different capacitor brands and series behave.
Here's a picture of the dinky chemicons (it's so pathetic looking):
You'll also notice some other random cheap chinese caps between the brown chemicons. barf-o-rama.
So since I had some 220uF RX30s and 10uF RE3 ELNA caps, I popped them in:
Ahhh much better. I bent them in that pattern to look more tidy.
I also did the same for the main output:
You'll note the VERY nice chemicons on the power supply.
After the recapping, the white noise on the first two channels is gone. The hum has been silenced by 80%. And the bass response is better.
ALL FIXED!
(I also changed some LEDs, but that's minor, I thought the power LED should be red instead of blue)
