Time to get into serious business now: Let do some surgery. The object: Asus Xonar Essence One audio board.

I’m gonna make it quick. The ordinary Nichicon is no where good for my taste (it could be for me only, yours could be different). So I pick several candidates as listed here.

To be honest, the process is not that easy. It was easy to remove the capacitor, but to plug the new one, definitely it will need some time due to the small hole (this board is very stingy with the hole size).

All components here are soldered in WBT solder and Cardas Rosin Flux.

Mostly Cerafine in the power supply bypass section, as I want more analog sound usually best with Elna ‘Red ROA’ Cerafine.

Some additional Vishay MKP on the feedback section of the final buffer stage. Giant Cerafine are all around.

We can also find Rubycon ZA and Os-Con SP here. I bought this ZA probably 5-6 years ago. Hard to find later these days…

Ah the other favorite, Silmic II. It has different character with Cerafine, but they are fine when combined together (I hope so).

The original ‘IDE hard drive like’ wires also have been removed. Change to 0.5 mm UP-OCC wire with Teflon insulated.

Not an easy job to assembly 12 wires in such small place. But it’s a matter of time and hard work anyway.

The original ‘IDE hard drive like’ signal wire. I don’t really think I can live with it. Your weakness is the weakest part of you…

The original cable uses 12 pins socket. Convenient as you can remove the cable, but I don’t really see any point where you need to remove this cable anyway. So, I think I have made a right decision with permanently terminated UP-OCC wires here.

A friend seems like wants to join me on this soldering process… 😉