VRDS-X25 from TEAC

Feb 2009

The owner of described one year ago TEAC VRDS25 wanted to upgrade to the X modell.
So he spent 1000 Eu to buy it on ebay.
I was very gentle and kind but I had to disappoint him: these are THE SAME players.
The mechanism - mid range VRDS from composites is the same
Chassis and box is the same
Set of features is the same
Remote is the same
PCB is the same.
Power supply is the same.
I only detected some very small add on PCB which I dont't know what is for.

Generally the upgrade is NOT WORTH the 1000 Euro for sure.
As far as I am concerned, Teac can go and stuff themselves with the X. I vote for the plain 25.


As already explained, the inside of TEAC is looking excellent. Very positive impression, really.  Premium parts, audio grade electrolytes, very very neat auto cad of PCB layout, fully differential balanced topology and OH MY GOD - the AD1862 super duper chip. What a rare DAC. A white raven. To be found only in world's best players, like for example in the best denon - the 2560.

This DAC has current output (the better, more kosher type) and it can be lampized with R conversion. I used 570 Ohms which I had on hand.
I quickly cut the leg 11 of the chip from the PCB track (I mean I cut the track leading from leg 11 to next parts - 4 opamps in a row.)
I wired the now freely floating leg 11 to lampizator leg 7 and then from leg 7 to leg 9 - a resistor of 570 Ohms.
I used 4 triodes (two double tubes|) to obtain fully balanced quadruple signal.
Lampization is possible as SE ( RCA)  and balanced  XLR at the same time.






I quite like plain and simple face plates like this one. The only minor reservation in this played rating is very slow drawer.





Great PCB - neat, simple, beautiful - everything is first class. Hats off.


ASD-Audiotuning company from Germany offers upgrade replacement chips for these two suckers on the picture's right - the demodulator and the upsampler- NPC and the AD1893. The better parts from Mr. Andreas (we paid some 100 Euro plus) are 24/192  compatible and the DAC is a 20 bit one. The clock is not typical - 18 ,xx meg. The upgrade allows to squeeze the max from the 1862 DAC. It took me 10 minutes do de solder and solder the upgrade.

I suspect that 1862 is the same as Burr Brown 1702. Something is telling me ....

Enter Analog Devices AD1862 N-J DAC chip

Four DAC chips in a row. Mmmmmmm. Nice. One per channel per phase. They go like this from bottom of the photo :  L-, L+, R+, L-. I took the signal from the inner pair.





Please ignore the most right yellow wire - my mistake (left channel phase neg). Top-most blue wire is the earth.






Test hookup of the lampizator. (traces are cut underneath the board to free the leg 11 of the DAC,  so it is not innocent kind of reversible test.)

SOUND of TEAC VRDS-25