Modifying soundcraft mixing console

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substitutes for Tl072 and 5532

  • substitutes for TL072

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • substitutes for NEC 5532

    Votes: 1 100.0%

  • Total voters
    1
  • Poll closed .

Leonardo_007

Member
Joined
Oct 31, 2011
Messages
19
Hi Folks,
i plan to modify my soundcraft delta 200 dlx 16ch and would like to exchange the op amps (tl072 & nec5532) with ones with higher performance.

do you know which high performance op-amps i could use for them?

thanks in advance.

bw,
LEO
 
If you can get the schems to see where are situed each one... hard to know wich opamp is better without schems, I dont have them... so if you have please upload them.

without knowing anything I dont know if change them, NE5532 are very good for audio, for example SSL uses NE5532 in signal path and TL072 in resonant filters and other stufs... and that little baby is a hit-maker.

JS
 
You could put in anything pin-compatible. But this doesn´t make sense as long as you don´t specify what you want to improve. Different opamps have different parameters which are optimized for different uses. There´s no such "better" opamp like many half-educated gearslutz will tell you. If a circuit is designed well then many weak parameters of an opamp can be designed out of the way so they will have no influence at all on the circuit.
Deltas have very very well designed circuits e.g. many unconventional solutions are inside to improve performance. I have highest respect for the designer´s (Douglas Self and/or Gareth Connor) work. Simply exchanging chips will not attack at the weak point. You´d better think about recapping and increasing coupling caps in strategically important places, maybe adding bypass caps and buffering the rails locally at the chips (if space allows). This will improve your desk´s phase margin and transient response so much more than thoughtlessly putting in some überchips.
New chips may need circuit tweaks to make them work stable. Are you able to calculate this? Are you able to measure instability? Probably not, otherwise you would not ask here but simply do it (no offense). Ignoring this fact may turn your desk into a ham radiostation.
New chips may have or certainly will - in case of replacing TL072s - have a higher power consumption. This will increase PSU load and may create thermal problems. Is you PSU beefy enough to supply the needed current?
There are many threads here about this subject and many members have refitted TL072s after having tried modern superchips for one reason: TL072s do have a sound of their own which seems to work very well in the mix, esp. in EQ-circuits.
The monitor section is another can of worms, though.
 
I also think recapping will make a difference you will enjoy, its also cheaper. I had a delta 200
and I liked it. I had one channel made by jim williams. He has a certain aesthetic, he likes super fast response, sometimes thats nice, sometimes not. I prefered actually the channels where I just changed the caps to panasonic FC 100mF in the interstage and input sections. I also like the lm4560 in pan and fader buffer and summing stage. you have to add 0.1µF from the ± supply pins if each chip to ground. As far as I remember the most apparent positive change where two interstage caps in the masterfader
 
I have one modded by Jim.  Its great.  But again I use it for clean and clear stuff. I get my color from outboard.  But it does big and clean really well.  Great for summing multi mics down and stuff.  I even have mixed full records on it and its great.  Jim did everything to it. 

Also, be sure to beef up the PSU!
 
I tried pretty much everything with my Harrison 24c but ended up using the old HA4605 in most of the places. Only in the mic pre's the API2520 DOA was clearly more musical sounding and the mix buss worked really nice with OPA1611 biased in class A. Monitor section was equipped with LM49470 chips, sounded most transparent. But Harrison was designed so that every chip is carefully stabilized and the PSU is a 20A double monster (+/- 18v only).

I agree with the guys here, do the recap first THEN see where you are. And if you need some more, concentrate to the critical places like mix buss and input stages. 
 
wow wow...

thanks very much guys, some very interesting comments!

now i'm honestly a bit surprised and think about whether it would be worth to do any changes on the board at all...

so i will follow your advice and not change any op amps...

 

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