Friday 11 March 2011

Madrigal Proceed PCD

Madrigal Audio Laboratories, the company behind the Mark Levinson line of audio equipment, decided in 1989 to enter the CD player market.  Instead of releasing a Mark Levinson CD player they formed a new brand called Proceed.  The brand was discontinued in 2003, generally thought to be due to the disappointing performance of its multi-format PMDT transport, and its remaining product line was rebranded as Mark Levinson.

Proceed's first products were a family of three; the PCD, the PDT and the PDP.  These are essentially the same thing boxed in different ways, the PCD is the one box CD player, the PDT and PDP are a transport and DAC respectively.  All shared an unusual upright form factor.


The PCD uses an unusual combination of parts.  The transport half is straight out of a high end contemporary Philips player (or many other European players), consisting of the CDM1-Mk2 laser mechanism, the TDA5708 / TDA5709 servo chipset, the SAA7210 decoder IC and the SAA7220 digital filter IC.  The SAA7220 is not used as a digital filter in this player, it is only used to output a S/P DIF digital audio signal.  The DAC half on the other hand was more like what would be found in a contemporary mid to high end Japanese or American player, consisting of the Yamaha YM3623 S/P DIF receiver IC, the Nippon Precision Circuits SM5813 digital filter IC and a pair of Burr Brown PCM58 DAC ICs.  The output stage uses a pair of Analog Devices' OP42s for the I/V converter and a quad of AD845s for the buffer, each with a LT1010 current buffer within its feedback loop.  The two halves of the one box player are connected together by S/P DIF, just the same as they would have been in the PDT and PDP separate DAC and transport.



This S/P DIF link is a very poor feature of this player.  S/P DIF is designed as an external single line bus for use between digital audio devices.  By compressing down what is normally carried on three or four lines into one, the S/P DIF format saves on cables, but there is a trade off.  Converting to and from S/P DIF inevitably introduces timing errors, or 'jitter'.  This is detrimental to sound quality, and should have been avoided.  It also doesn't help that the S/P DIF receiver the DAC half uses is one of the worst available, and introduces far more than its fair share of jitter.


I received this particular PCD in non working condition.  During playback the analog outputs produced a horrible, loud noise signal.  This fault had suddenly started in the middle of playing a CD.  I took the case off, and seeing nothing obvious, fired up my oscilloscope and started my examination.

I first noted two things:
  • The horrible noise was present on the digital output, meaning that the fault was almost certainly in the transport half of the player.  It's always good to have a digital receiver, be it a DAC unit or a PC with a S/P DIF input, so that you're able to test a digital output.
  • The player was reading the table of contents of a CD (listing the number of tracks) and changing tracks fine.  In most cases if a CD player does this then the laser mechanism and servo are working fine.
This means that the fault was localized somewhere between the digital output and the decoder.  This put the focus on three functional blocks; the digital filter (which outputs the S/P DIF signal), the decoder (which interprets the output of the laser and converts it to digital audio) and the power supply.  Never forget to check the power supply, nothing works right when it's not fed power correctly.

The power supply was fine, so I looked at the digital bus entering the SAA7220, the digital filter this player uses to create the S/P DIF signal.  The signals were all present, and looked valid, so I removed and replaced this IC.  The fault was not eliminated, so that IC wasn't faulty, it must have been receiving correctly formatted yet corrupted data.


The third item I checked was the decoder functional block.  This block consists of two main items; the SAA7210 decoder IC, which does most of the work, and the MN4264 64kB dynamic RAM IC that forms the frame buffer.  In this player the decoder interprets the signal from the laser into frames consisting of a pair of audio samples.  It then stores these frames in the frame buffer, and then retrieves and outputs them at a pace determined by a clock signal fed to it.  If the frame buffer is near empty the decoder speeds up the spindle motor (the motor that turns the CD), if the frame buffer is nearly full it slows down the spindle motor.

The decoder block was outputting valid looking digital audio, and was controlling the spindle motor correctly (the motor was slowing down as it player tracks further toward the outside edge of a CD), so I didn't suspect the main IC (which performs those functions).  I therefore replaced the RAM IC, and hooray, the problem was fixed, and the player would now output clear, undistorted audio.  The RAM IC was damaged, and had been giving the decoder IC random garbage when it requested a frame.

Now that the PCD is up and running it's time to modify it.  I'm considering doing the following things:

  • Replace the electrolytic capacitors.  This is always something I look at doing.  This type of component has a limited life (usually between 2000 and 4000 hours), after that they won't meet their original specifications.  This can cause a number of bad things depending on what they are used for, including preventing the CD player from reading any discs. 
  • Install a low noise clock.  Almost all CD players will benefit from a low noise clock, but this one will benefit more than most.  I intend to feed a low noise clock signal into both the transport and DAC halves of the CD player directly.  This will bypass the S/P DIF bus and feed the SM5813 a clean, low noise clock signal in place of the noisy recovered clock from the YM3623.
  • Replace the output stage opamps.  Leaps and bounds have been made in the design and manufacture of opamps since the PCD was designed in the late '80s.  It currently uses two OP42s for the I/V converters and two AD845s for the buffers.  At the moment I'm thinking about the OP132 and the LME49710 as replacements for the I/V converter and buffer opamps respectively.
I'll post an update to this entry once I've completed modifying the player and have had a listen.

Update (14 April): How the PCD Sounds

At this stage I have only done the first and last modifications listed above.  I used six OPA134 opamps to replace the original ones.  This choice was due to the OPA134s lower bandwidth compared to many other modern opamps.  The output stage of the PCD uses current buffers within the feedback loop of the output buffer opamps.  When using current buffers this way it is best to select an opamp that has a lower bandwidth than the current buffer itself.  The LT1010 has a bandwidth of 10MHz, while the OPA134 has a bandwidth of 8MHz.  This is not as much of a problem with modern current buffers, as they generally have higher bandwidths (the popular BUF634 has a bandwidth of 180MHz), effectively nullifying this limitation.

The sound quality of the player has much improved, especially in the higher frequencies.  Most of this is down to the opamps, the replacement capacitors were as much for reliability as performance.

The owner and I still intend to install a low phase noise clock into this player.  The design of clock I am currently using is satisfactory, but is too large to install in many players.  Unfortunately when I designed that clock I didn't consider compactness to be a high priority, a large oversight.  I am in the late stages of developing a replacement, when it is ready this player will get the first of these new clocks.

I will post a further update when I have installed the clock, as well as a separate post about the clock and low phase noise clocks in general.

25 comments:

  1. Hello Anton
    You might be able to help me as I'm thinking of buying a Madrigal/ML Proceed mkII transport, background history unknown. Your generous gift of publicising all the info for competent upgraders impressed me alot. I thought I would atleast ask you if you could accept this transport for refurbishment, as I don't have the skills or know anyone i would entrust the work to here in the UK. Please email me on anthonyrcollard@gmail.com. Sorry,I don't blog.

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    Replies
    1. Hi,

      The Proceed PDT2 is a fairly nice transport. Spare parts for it are easy to come by, so I'd be confident it could be fixed. Whether I'd recommend that you buy it or not depends on the price.

      Thanks,
      Anton

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  2. Hello Anton
    I'm a Christchurch boy who also has a Proceed CDP and would like to talk with you.
    Any chance of a chat?
    Cheers
    Muzz

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    Replies
    1. Hi Muzz,

      I'll give you a call tomorrow. That's a beautiful player you have, the PCD3 was the best of the family. The PCM63 is one of the nicest sounding DAC ICs ever made.

      Thanks,
      Anton

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  3. Hi Anton,

    you wrote: "The two halves of the one box player are connected together by S/P DIF, just the same as they would have been in the PDT and PDP separate DAC and transport. This S/P DIF link is a very poor feature of this player. S/P DIF is designed as an external single line bus for use between digital audio devices. By compressing down what is normally carried on three or four lines into one, the S/P DIF format saves on cables, but there is a trade off. Converting to and from S/P DIF inevitably introduces timing errors, or 'jitter'. This is detrimental to sound quality, and should have been avoided. It also doesn't help that the S/P DIF receiver the DAC half uses is one of the worst available, and introduces far more than its fair share of jitter".

    I would be grateful if you could please let me know if this problem exists also for the PDC-3 CD player and in which fields the PDT3/PDP3 combo is a real improvemente respect to the PCD3.

    Thank you very much.

    Luca

    Pisa, Italy

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    Replies
    1. Hi Luca,

      Yes, the PCD3 shares the same basic structure and has an internal S/P DIF link. However, it uses a CS8412 receiver (versus the YM3623 used in the PCD), a far better IC that will introduce less jitter.

      I'm not familiar with the PDT3 or PDP3. If they're analogous to the PDT and PDP combo, then the main advantage would be some additional power supply separation, but I wouldn't expect the difference to be great.

      Thanks,
      Anton

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  4. hello From Paris.

    i am the owner of pcd from 1989... which reminds i am 25 years older now....
    the thing is i am having problems with it now as i have a lot of difficulties to read a cd. i got retail cd and copied cd as i always make a copy of them for i have realised sometimes it is hard to find rare old cds...they used to both play without any problems since last year. the thing is when i try to play a copied cd, the player doesn't even recognise ther is a cd in and doesnt display the table of contents (number of tracks and duration).
    maybe you would be able to tell me if the laser components are too old and tired and it that case is there a way to replace it by finding a new one... 25 years after. and how would it be possible to make it repaires as i have no skills in elctornic and i guess it won't be enough to take back the damages one and replace by the new and just press "play"...

    any help would be much appreciate..

    Georges

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    Replies
    1. Hi Georges,

      Although the laser could be at fault, it's more likely that the servo is the source of the issues you're having. It is almost certainly repairable, but not by someone who is inexperienced in electronics repair. Unless you wanted to ship it to New Zealand, I'm not sure I can help you.

      Thanks,
      Anton

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    2. hi Anton

      soory for the late reply but i am just back from greece...
      actually i just have my proceed player back from a hifi shop who sells state of the art products and they say there is nothing they can do as the optical part is not distributed anymore and they charge me 70€ for that... although i have found this:
      http://www.ersatzteil.justone-schnepel.de/html/cdm-1mk2_lasereinheit.html
      what upsets me the most is now my player is not reading any cds (retail or copied)at all - i should have kept it.
      i am seriously thinking about the idea you mentioned to send it to you (or was it a joke ?)because i trust you far more than these people who only think to make money...

      if you may accept we could correspond via email, herre is mine:
      georges.agopian@hotmail.fr

      thank you anyway Anton

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    3. Hi Georges,

      That's a disappointing experience, especially for 70€. While it is true that the laser mechanism the PCD uses is no longer distributed, they shouldn't have charged you so much to tell you.

      I'll get in contact via email.

      Thanks,
      Anton

      Delete
  5. Hello, Anton.
    No Do you have a schematic circuit diagram and service manual on CD-player Proceed PCD-3?

    Regards.
    Alex.

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    Replies
    1. Sorry Alex, I don't have anything like that for the PCD-3.

      Delete
  6. Hi, Anton

    Perhaps you could help me fixing my 1990's MRC100.
    The issue is :
    - one channel is completely mute,
    - the second one is OK for 2 seconds and then is increasingly distorting.
    I'm a DIY man but not very trained in digital electronics.
    In your opinion, which is the wrong IC ? The interface receiver YM3623B... ?
    How can I check the signal shape in each part of the circuit up to PCM58 ?

    Best regards.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's a fairly tricky problem. Without hearing it (and exactly what sort of static it is) myself it's hard to pinpoint what the cause may be.

      The fact that it affects the two channels unequally makes me think it's something in the analog section, as most of the digital section is multiplexed.

      As with any piece of electronics, I'd start by looking at the power supplies, checking for incorrect voltages and excessive ripple.

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  7. many many thanks to Anton for having repaid my cd player madrigal
    so good to be able to listen to music through it !!!
    georges

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    Replies
    1. I'm glad you're enjoying your PCD Georges. It was a tricky repair, but the good thing about these Philips based CD players is that they can almost always be repaired.

      Anton

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    2. hello Anton

      i have a CDP thats plAYİNG UP A little , it sometime skips by 1or 2 notes and sometimes there is a dip in the sound for a secound ,

      can i reset the machine to facrory setting or is there a nother issue that i need to take care of

      cheers
      emir from sunny istanbul:)

      Delete
    3. Emir - unfortunately it will be a hardware repair. Take a look at the blog on the CD150 to get an idea of what you might have to do.

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  8. Hi Anton,

    in the PCD3 user's manual this warning is reported several times:

    "NEVER operate the master power switch without first making sure that power is turned off to your receiver, integrated amplifier, or preamplifier/power amplifier".

    A technician told me that this warning is not so important as when the master power switch is operated the player goes in the standby state, which turns on just secondary circuits. In his opinion, the real power button is the standby button on the front of the player.

    May problem is that my preamplifier needs to stay always on and I have to know if switching to off the master power switch of the player can damage the preamplifier's circuit as suggested in the Proceed's manual.

    Thank you very much.

    Regards.

    Luca

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    Replies
    1. The manual's recommendation is justified.

      The PCD3 has a low impedance, DC coupled output with no turn on muting relays or transistors, and it almost certainly produces a large power on transient. I definitely wouldn't put that transient through the rest of my system.

      Using the standby function won't help at all. The standby function in the PCD3 dims the display, stops CD playback, and disables the controls. It doesn't effect the DAC stage at all, and won't effect the power on transient.

      The standby function is controlled by a bistable switch. The player won't automatically power up in standby mode, it is totally controlled by the position of the standby switch.

      However, in most cases you'd be safe to power up your PCD3 with the preamplifier powered on, but set to a different input. Very few preamplifiers would be bothered by a transient on an unselected channel (maybe something with a switch IC, rather than a mechanical or relay selector).

      What preamplifier are you using?

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    2. Dear Anton, thank you very much for your clear explanation.

      My preamplifier is a Classe' Audio DR-5 and the Proceed PCD3 is connected to DR-5 XLR inputs following the Proceed recommendation (although someone told me that these are not true balanced inputs).

      Luca

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    3. Okay, with that preamp you should be completely safe if you select a channel other than balanced while you power on the PCD3.

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  9. Anton, thank you very much.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anton - really cool post. Do you know if it is possible at all or completely replace the now obsolete transports with more modern electronics like from an oppo? Is the labor to great? I love the Proceed PMDT, but need a blu ray player too... would love to get both! Ever heard of that type of an upgrade?

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    1. I haven't worked with the Proceed PMDT (and it's very different to the PCD featured here), so I can't say specifically. More than like it would be extremely difficult, and to pull it off you would need to reengineer most of the player.

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