Genesis 2 Crystal Clear Audio Mod On Stripboard

Well, I have finally got back to working on my Genesis 2 mods and am currently adding Tiido's Chrystal Clear Audio mod. While this mod is nothing new, I thought I would post it here anyway since I have made a stripboard layout that I will share if any of you feel like building one yourself like this. The mod is not yet finished and verified to be working, but I went over it with the schematics a couple times, and I believe everything is in order. Here is what my layout looks like.

Pretty nice. I wonder if RetroGamer over Sega16 still sells those ( He used to sell SMD CCAM boards). Havent seen him chime in in a while.
Please post pictures of the finished project once you are done!

MaxWar wrote:

Pretty nice. I wonder if RetroGamer over Sega16 still sells those ( He used to sell SMD CCAM boards). Havent seen him chime in in a while.
Please post pictures of the finished project once you are done!

I just bought one a couple weeks ago from http://www.retrotimegames.com/ccam.html

Great mod to work with.  I remember building it on protoboard years ago before there was a purchasable version and it actually worked once I realized the transistor legs were flipped and fixed that. See if you can spot which parts let you adjust the low pass filtering.

I personally like my CCAM with minimal Low Pass :p
Cool to see RetroGamer is still selling those. I did not even know he had a webpage!
Have no seen him on Sega-16 for a while.

MaxWar wrote:

I personally like my CCAM with minimal Low Pass :p
Cool to see RetroGamer is still selling those. I did not even know he had a webpage!
Have no seen him on Sega-16 for a while.  

I agree, I heavily lowered the low pass filtering on my retrogamer board.  Even the original protoboard one I built I think I completely removed the filtering and then forgot I had. I remember wondering why my retrogamer board sounded muffled when I wired it up.

I'm still very much a beginner with this stuff, but from how I think I understand the low pass filter works, it should just be the 10k resistors R13 for left, and R19 for right that would adjust the low pass filter.

Why would I want to adjust the low-pass filter anyway? From what I heard, it sounded fine where it is.

Alley_Cat_Jack wrote:

I'm still very much a beginner with this stuff, but from how I think I understand the low pass filter works, it should just be the 10k resistors R13 for left, and R19 for right that would adjust the low pass filter.

Why would I want to adjust the low-pass filter anyway? From what I heard, it sounded fine where it is.

Just adjust the caps to gnd for low pass filter stuff.  Weakening the low pass filter basically adjusts how much treble you hear and removes audio muffle.  Unfortunately with older gaming stuff once you remove too much muffle you can hear distortion that's normally filtered out. The crystal clear audio mod doesn't have the filtering set to the maximum distortion free treble, it's set to what the genesis normally sounds like. Basically if you leave the lpf alone your system won't sound much different from a stock va3-6.x model 1.

Alley_Cat_Jack wrote:

I'm still very much a beginner with this stuff, but from how I think I understand the low pass filter works, it should just be the 10k resistors R13 for left, and R19 for right that would adjust the low pass filter.

Why would I want to adjust the low-pass filter anyway? From what I heard, it sounded fine where it is.

If you listened to Tiido's original recordings, the Low pass is very low and this is how I like the CCAM.
But the board sold by RetroGamer is much more muffled than that.

The low pass filters on your part list would be C3 and C4.
What they do is ground part of the signal. The part that is grounded is effectively removed from the output.
Very low capacitance caps will only transmit very high frequency signal. So if you put small caps to ground, it will chop off the treble.
As you up the capacitance the caps will also transmit progressively lower frequencies. Resulting in more low pass.

If you increase the Value of C3 and C4, it will sound more muffled. This is what retrogamer did.
Just keep it at 0.022 uf. Personally I would not go any lower as at this level some games are already emitting borderline ear-piercing audio.

Do you remember what the optimal caps would be?

Yeah, I think I will stick with the original plans. I can always fiddle with it later too if I want.

MaxWar wrote:

Alley_Cat_Jack wrote:

I'm still very much a beginner with this stuff, but from how I think I understand the low pass filter works, it should just be the 10k resistors R13 for left, and R19 for right that would adjust the low pass filter.

Why would I want to adjust the low-pass filter anyway? From what I heard, it sounded fine where it is.

If you listened to Tiido's original recordings, the Low pass is very low and this is how I like the CCAM.
But the board sold by RetroGamer is much more muffled than that.

The low pass filters on your part list would be C3 and C4.
What they do is ground part of the signal. The part that is grounded is effectively removed from the output.
Very low capacitance caps will only transmit very high frequency signal. So if you put small caps to ground, it will chop off the treble.
As you up the capacitance the caps will also transmit progressively lower frequencies. Resulting in more low pass.

If you increase the Value of C3 and C4, it will sound more muffled. This is what retrogamer did.
Just keep it at 0.022 uf. Personally I would not go any lower as at this level some games are already emitting borderline ear-piercing audio.

i dont like the way the retrogamer board sounds at all. my va6 destroys it. Ive been meaning to get back to this project and adjust the sound but just havent done it.

Sorry about the horrible picture quality. I only have this camera for now, but I will take some better pictures later if you like.

mvsfan wrote:

i dont like the way the retrogamer board sounds at all. my va6 destroys it. Ive been meaning to get back to this project and adjust the sound but just havent done it.

Huh, it's just swapping two caps out.  Tiido told me an easy manual way to adjust cap strength using stronger caps and resistors.

Drakon wrote:

mvsfan wrote:

i dont like the way the retrogamer board sounds at all. my va6 destroys it. Ive been meaning to get back to this project and adjust the sound but just havent done it.

Huh, it's just swapping two caps out.  Tiido told me an easy manual way to adjust cap strength using stronger caps and resistors.

yeah i know its easy but that project kinda got shelved. ive been working on other things.

I have the caps and the guitar style potentiometer im going to install on the back of it to tune the sound.

Alley_Cat_Jack wrote:

Sorry about the horrible picture quality. I only have this camera for now, but I will take some better pictures later if you like.

thats alright i had a s*** camera for years. finally got a good one about 6 months ago.

Here is a much better picture.

Also I fixed an error on the layout picture in the first post where resistor 20 was mislabeled as 100K Ohm rather than 100 Ohm.

Heck of a lot nicer looking than the first one I built.