Electrocompaniet EMC1 CDP owner's suggestions

The wiring inside of the EMC1-UP is not 75 ohms or even 110 ohms, so the connectors are not going to make much difference. In fact, the AES/EBU is wired directly to the 75 ohm outputs and there is an attempt to match to 75 ohms for all of them.

The EMC-1 as a transport can be very good, but probably will never compete with the Sony transports. The real advantage is using it as a CDP. It has the best upsampling chipset inside. With mods, it is exceptional due to the discrete analog output stage.

Modding the EMC 1-UP has a positive effect on all digital outputs. Unfortunately, unless the transformer is replaced, the outputs are all 75 ohms. The balanced outputs would be 75 ohms as well, which is a mismatch and will cause reflections. With the stock player, the risetimes are very slow on the digital outs, so it is possible that the AES/EBU connector might sound better even though there is a mismatch. The mods speed-up the risetimes from 25 nsec to 5 nsec. This allows the use of all lengths of cables. With slow risetimes, it is advisable to use longer cables, at least 1.5m. I prefer to wire only to the connector that the customer wants to use and disable the others. This provides the cleanest, jitter-free signal.