I was wondering if anybody new of someplace where they have a "tutorial" on modding the Pioneer Elite CLD-97 so I can play the multichannel audio on my disks? Thanks.

As a side note,.. I don't know if anybody on this forum does these upgrades. If so, send me a private message with approximate cost. Thanks.

Hey -

Don't know how technically-oriented you are, but after a bit of Googling (most links were dead) I found this.

- Mark

Very cool. I still would be a little hesitant to go and do this myself without all the parts and instructions specifically for the CLD-97. I wouldn't want to brick my unit by accident. I'll keep searching for more material as well.

Here's another. And here which has photos of installed mods, including the CLD-97.

I'm with you about bricking the unit, though. I just picked up a backup CLD-97 on eBay, and I will probably ship it to Kurtis for the mod - but the more I'm reading though, the less I think it's absolutely essential. Since it's just my backup, I may forgo the expense for now. Or, try and educate myself to give it shot. I got pretty lucky on the player price I think, maybe if I think I'm up to it at some point I'll risk it. Or maybe not!

To bad that "precisionlaserdisc" site is no longer in existence. Sounds like they had a good and easy mod kit. The other one is not English so it's difficult to tell what they offer....

If I had a backup CLD-97 I would be more apt to go for it but i'm scared that i'm going to mess up my one player!

What would be really cool is is we could reverse enginner the demodulation circuitry and put that in the LD players.

I concur! Not much chance of that though...

It's been done. I think it was MSB that did an internal demod kit. There's a specific IC used in all demodulators which you need, & you'd probably have to buy 100 of them.

I would like to know what IC that was. Even knowing what it was with a weekend reading over the datasheets we might be able to come up with a modern replacement.

I'm surprised this unit didn't have this on board. I know it probably predates it but it was my understanding that the 97 was one of the most saught after units available.

I'm still holding out for a D925 at a decent price, though my 1750 is just fine for now.

Ok, so I'm taking the plung and upgrading my CLD-97 with an AC3 mod. I found one place that sells the mods:http://www.benedictus.de/bde/index-bde.htm

They are located in Germany so I emailed them last week asking for price and some other details. They responded to my email in just a few hours (price is 60 EUR w/ shipping to US). Ok great, so I email them back for them to send me a paypal invoice so I can buy it. Well, no response. That was 5 days ago. I emailed them again to ask whether they got my first request,... no response. I don't know if anybody has dealt with this place before, but I'm kind of stuck as they are the only ones that sell the mod?

I have a SONY SDP-E800 Dolby Digital Decoder, AC-3 RF Demodulator + DIGITAL SWITCHER, but it's useless until I get the mod installed.


I'll keep this thread updated.

Tell me the exact name of the mod, then I can check if it is available on their german online-shop page
which is located here: http://www.benedictus-shop.de/shop/
Where you probably don't need to wait for manual invoices, but just put stuff in the basket and then check out.

This item might be interesting to some ppl:
[url]http://www.benedictus-shop.de/shop/csc_article_details.php?nPos=0&saArticle[ID]=33&VID=JurdCJUPBVcrQUNi[/url]
But not cheap!

Also it says: "You can pay by check or wire transfer."
They might not like Paypal :O

If you go to:http://www.benedictus.de/bde/index-bde.htm
Then click on "Dolby Digital (AC-3) RF Output" on the left column it brings you to the mod. What I don't get is that they sent a response to my initial email in a few hours including price. Then when I ask to actually buy it, they don't respond?

As for the demodulator, I saw that. But for 250 EUR that's crazy (you can find ones on ebay for much less). This is why I hate buying stuff from Europe, they charge way more than here in the US, plus they have that crazy high VAT taxes on everything. Here in New Hampshire we don't even have a sales tax. The demodulator passes the signal directly into dolbly digital so the decoder doesn't matter. Basically the cheapest demodulator and the most expensive ones should put out the exact same digital signal.

There is 19% vat in .de, but that is (usually) already included in the prices you see.
It does not get added on top later.

I presume they did not answer because you said "Paypal"

Included in the price or not, that 19% is a pretty big markup. But I already knew that was included... I was just commenting on it.

As for paypal. Ok, so they would take a 3% cut, big deal, so do credit cards. Or they could just say, "we don't take paypal". But why not answer? It's kind of disappointing as it looks like they are a high end audio shop and these places are supposed to have great customer support compared to the big name places. I'll try emailing them again this week. I'm really stuck because they are the only ones offering the upgrade so it's not like I can go to a competitor.

Update: So apparently the guy had the manuals for the upgrade on a hard drive that failed. He emailed me that he was able to recover the information. He asked for my address so hopefully it will happen....

Update #2: So after nearly 2 wks of emailing, they found the manuals and I sent them the 60 EUR. I should get the mod kit in about a week.

Done with the mod. You can find a link to the Step by Step instruction guide I made in this thread:

http://forum.lddb.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1110