TOPIC:

Hi everyone, 
i don't find (easily) info regarding the minidsp shd in regards to upgrades. 
is it possible to swap opamps? Easily or requires technician? 
likewise upgrading clock to eg crystek cud-957? 

you know, when you get old and you can only mtn bike for a couple hours and not for a full day, I get bored and want to tinker 😜😂

thanks for any guidance ( even for existing posts!) 

cheers
hank

Hi friend
well an answer to your question ..anything can be replaced , but you need some skills to be able to solder.   if im not mistaken , I  believe miniDSP makes most of their boards using SMD'S.  It's a much more cost effective for mass production to have boards made this way.

 It's not difficult to replace surface mount opamps if you know how,  but my bigger question is why would you?

 As somebody who's been designing audio electronics for 18 years,  ive  wondered  why some folks like to what I guess is called opamp "swapping " or "rolling".  Not to discourage the learning curve or just people's desire to be creative or modify their system, the issue here is swapping opamps at random without the use of an oscilloscope is kind of like playing roulette with your electronics.  Even if something sounds " different" after you roll the op-amp it doesn't necessarily mean it's better. Psychoacoustically, you're looking for a change and so if you get a change when you roll an opamp, you may be sort of predisposed to think that it actually sounds better. But without measurement, you really don't have definite way of knowing .

In addition rolling some opamps in certain designs,  can have consequences.  
The preamp , buffer, and I/V  circuits in the SHD are designed to operate within certain specs using exactly the opamps supplied.  If you replace them with a new ones, you will inevitably change how the circuit works, introducing artifacts and potential problems such as phase shift, and oscillation. 

To avoid these issues, ( if they do crop up when you change the op-amps) you will need to redesign the I/V stage as well as the preamp and buffer stages  and make measurements inside all the circuit stages. But this make no sense at allbecause you are going to redesign a well designed unit, trying to tame artifacts you have introduced with the rolled Opamp in the first place.  See where I'm going with this..?? Therefore replacing op-amps inside a well designed unit is counter productive at best and pretty much a complete waste of time. If you're looking for better performance you either need to redesign the entire device or buy a more expensive one.  The shd is a very good device and  it performs extremely well vanishingly low THD+N amazingly complex DSP capabilities and network streaming ...it's quite a bargain .   but it is what it is and  like all things there are limitations .  So like I said before,  the only way to improve performance is to either redesign the entire device in terms of the audio section,  or buy something more expensive.

 my two cents anyway .  I know there's a bunch of guys that roll opamps
. And they have varying degrees of success with it.  If you like doing that sort of thing , then go for it , why not!! As long as you're careful you shouldn't cause too much damage, and worst case scenario if it sounds like crap,  you can always swap it back. 
 

Thanks for that very detailed answer. I guess the main answer to your "why would you want to" is boredom. I like to play around ( matter of speaking ) to hear the impacts good or bad or just I retesting. The click topic seems to get more airtime these days as a critically important source to upgrade or be aware for ( I guess similar to alignment of drivers cones on a speaker...) that you will get a difference or even a nice improvement. 

opamps, I'm just bored and want to hear the differences others state they hear. I like the dream aka thought I could lean more towards a tube amp warmth by changing a couple opamps... 

i played with power cables speaker cables and arrived at my happy place. So what's next 😂