Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Power supply upgrade

Hello

Just for interest this is the inside of a vintage Meridian 101b pre-amp, the whole thing is only 300x150mm:



Presumably a small Linear Power Supply complete with dainty toroidal transformer.

From the days before M started making extremely expensive kit with cheapo bought in power supplies.

Switched mode power supplies have only really become cheap in recent years. They used to be expnsive 15+ years ago.

Nice one Neil!

Remember the actual G02, and its 'father' 502, do have linear PS with toroidal tranny.

Thank you. I don't have a 500 or 800 player, but from all the pictures I've seen, it looks like the transport uses half the available space. The conventional Condor and Power One supplies are too big, but the FG NMC 905 will fit. That's what I used in the C61 that you can see a few pages ago. The secondary PSU board would have to be relocated, but I doubt that's a great problem. I'd be tempted to use an external PSU case, like KCLee has done (see above).

BR, Nick

So does the G07 player!

OK, now I�m going to make life difficult for myself. If a linear supply is good for controllers, then what are the prospects for improving players? I�d like to get the most from Blu-ray, and if Meridian won�t oblige, then maybe Denon or Oppo will. Unfortunately, while both the A1UDCI and BDP-95 (both of which I currently own � for now) do use linear supplies for their analogue boards, they still use switching supplies for all their digital boards.

In South Korea there�s a very enterprising electronics engineer called Dr Lee, who has been thinking along the same lines, and designed and built a fully linear supply for his Oppo-93. I believe his claims for improved sound quality (not sure about improved video quality just yet) so I�ve ordered a linear supply from him, and I�ll fit that into an Oppo 93 guinea-pig in a couple of weeks. If this is successful, I can see a few more people walking in his footsteps.

http://blog.paran.com/pcaudio

Nick

That has been my thought exactly on the Dune HD-Max / Dune BD Prime 3.0 streamer transports. I think we can really take a leap here with these transport and LPSU's

I'll declare myself interested in Oppo '93 PSU upgrades too.

Cheers

George

Will this PSU work in a BDP-83? I can post pics of the interior and the specs (if visible) if that will help.

Not impossible, but it might be a long shot. As electronics improve, the voltage and power consumption tend to reduce, so a PSU for an old player might work with a newer one, but not the other way round. The earlier bdp83 has a couple of relatively large heatsinks on the processor board, which is indicative of high power consumption, but having said that, the total power consumption of both players is given in Oppos specs as 35W. I foud some good pictures here:
http://vtbsd.net/bdp83/IMG_2621.JPG
http://www.laaudiofile.com/images/oppo_bdp93_inside.jpg
which show that the supplies are different, but that doesn't mean they can't be adapted with new connectors. I have lots of player and amp schematics, but I've been able to get hold of any Oppo schematics, so the real answer is that I dont' know.

Nick

I was quite surprised to read that the BDP-95 having switching supplies, so I emailed Oppo and asked if the BDP-95 uses switching supplies for all its digital boards. This was their reply:

The player uses a toroidal power supply which is fed directly into the analog audio board and into a linear power supply which feeds the decoder board.


Nick, can you verify either way about the switching supplies?

I've read info from several sources including reviews that claim the Linear PSU is used for the analogue stage only.

This extract is from the HiFi Choice review linked from the official Oppo UK website. If this info is inaccurate (I don't think it is) Oppo don't appear to have corrected it.

"And there�s plenty of such effort evident. Inside the player is a big toroidal transformer marked �Custom designed and manufactured by Rotel�. Oppo informed us that the Japanese hi-fi manufacturer�s role in the BDP-95EU�s genesis extends to nothing more than the supply of this key component.

The transformer in question is associated with a linear power supply that caters exclusively to the analogue audio sections � everything else is energised by a switch-mode power supply that lives under a metal shield."

Avii