Denon DCD 2560

spring 2006
and summer 2008


This is beautiful player. Well built, with plain front, buttons hidden, superb Sony kss151A mechanism, four mighty Analogue Devices DAC chips AD1862, 20 bit resolution and very detailed sound. Thanks to four DACs I was able to convert this single ended player to fully balanced, hence 4 triodes not two.
It's sound  is so detailed and precise it is scary.  Also geometry of sound stage is spectacular. The biggest and deepest I heard to date. This player is an electron microscope to the recording.
Almost routinely I added a super clock visible on one of the pics.
You can also read about similar player with same dac - TEAC VRDS-25


Beautiful player, with champagne colour, hidden buttons, and cherry wood cheeks.
My top plate is made of mahogany and hence slightly different colour.





Notice the XLR outputs next to valves.





The old RCA jacks still play the old ugly sound, the new high-end jacks offer SE output from Lampizator


My camera is shitty at close-up. Sorry.








Master clock replacing the old crystal. The error in timing reduced from 50 parts per million to circa 2 ppm.



The DAC chip - one of the four. Why Denon wanted to mask the part number - nobody knows. It is still visible anyway. Shame Denon, shame!







I really had to squeeze the new toroid behind the original trafo.



View of the tube elements from under the hood. The copper wire is the new ground reference node.


Box test lampizator testing the capabilities of the Denon prior to modification. Very promising indeed.


What a superb mechanism. Sony does their best to challenge Philips. IMHO  Sony works better, but Philips sounds better. Go figure...
2 years later ...
I think, that this DAC should be treated with the resistor I/U conversion from chip's current outputs. I did it before with first half of op-amp. I wish I have tried the resistor. Sound should be much more liquid and analog-like.
So in the end I tried the same DAC with R=570 Ohms in the TEAC and the result is MUCH better than from the op-amp as I did in the DENON. I will re-work the denon asap.
A week later: encouraged by the TEAC - I did re-wire the Denon to be I-out. The quality increase is quite dramatic. The sound changed from a touch mechanical to very natural. A huge leap in a good direction.

I Isolated (floated ) the pin 11 of the DAC and I wired it directly to the lampizator input. I changed the tubes for more dynamic E88CC from Tesla (gold pin version)
I also added a capacitor to improve power supply across two digital input power pins (+5 and -5 VDC): number 4 and 8. I used a tantalum 47uF by 16 V. One input is positive one is negative.
In this DENON the power supply regulators and caps are very far away from the DAC chips so I soldered te new caps directly onto chip's legs.
The detail and treble quality increased VERY significantly. Recommended  !!!

The player after these mods is one of top three in the whole experience of mine. It jumps to category zero without any debate.
I also added a headphone section - two unused tubes of the BALANCED output. I wired lampizator output from RCA to the pot of the headphones (after floating all the legs of the pot (20k) then I returned to the triode and then to the cathode follower output.
On Sennheisers which have 300 Ohms this sytem works  like a charm. Very good headphone section. See description HERE
























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