Best Sonos ZP-80 Mod?

Mrjstark,

From direct experience, sustained now over four+ months, I know that improving the Sonos ZP80 power supply does improve significantly the quality of both the analog and digital output signal. No doubt the Sonos clock and jitter can be improved, too. But, as evidenced every time I turn on my system, power supply is also a path to improvement

Played from the digital output through a high quality DAC, my Sonos system has attained the threshold you describe: "a SONOS interface, ease of use and sound quality that is on par with my CDP, listenable and without edginess usualy associated with DIGITAL DONE WRONG ..."

Life is good at my house. I hope Joseph Chow (Audio Horizons) gets around to offering this product for sale.

There is the Empiracle for $1100.00 +
OR
The Cullen for $550.00

I wonder if the Empirical is worth the extra money?
Also
Does anybody know if either of these mods upgrade the power supply?

I am currently running a Sonos zp80 into a PS Audio dl3 and it sounds more fleshed out than my Denon 2910. I too am interested in upgrading the sound so I emailed Cullen and inquired about the mod to the dl3 and the Sonos. He told me that the mod to the dl3 would yield a more significant difference in sound quality over the Sonos mod. I am planning to do one at a time. I did also note that the Sonos mod includes replacing one power supply, a "Low noise power supply for the clock and SR", I would think replacing the clock and circuits would yield a greater sonic difference than just modding the power supply.

Does anyone know what it would take to basically remove the psu from the ZP80 and use a outboard unit such as the musical fidelity x-psu? This would seem to me to be a pretty easy and cost-effective approach.

Steve

Stumpeyjoe, my sonos runs through either an apogee dac or a bel canto dac2 (also had benchmark for short tryout). Both sound great, but not as "full" or robust sounding as a cd through my old adcom gcd700, which has dual ladder type 20 bit burr brown stuff (whatever that means). Maybe what I'm really hearing is some "hash" and I like it better than a really clean signal from the newer dacs, but everybody in my family notices the difference and likes the adcom sound slightly better. That's why I started thinking that maybe there's something to this concept of a sonos mod. But I can't help thinking that the only thing the sonos mod cleans up is the jitter, and that can be largely done within the dac (especially with a mod superclock), so I think I'm going to go the same route and try the modded DL3. If and when you do it, PLEASE report back in with your results. Dying to know if it makes a significant improvement. Regards...Jeff