In another article on this site I describe a procedure how to modify the output stage of the PS1 in order to achieve improvements in the sonic quality of the PS1. The procedure described requires some skills in electronics and practical soldering. For those of you who want to increase the performance of the PS1 without even having to open the case, the present article shows a simple but effective solution. The increase in sonic qualitiy is less than in the case of a full replacement of the output stage, but there still is a clearly audible improvement. This solution is fully reversible, can be done without disassembly, and a direct comparison to the original output can be made.

The trick is to use the AV Multi out of the PS1. This is the generic connector on the right side of the rear plate, seen from the back. It sounds weird to use this connector instead of the RCA output, as this was considered one of the major advantages of the SCPH100x over the later models, but the reason is clear if you look at the output circuits for the two stages. Simply spoken, while the RCA output stage feeds the signal through an additional opamp, the AV Multi out does not. For more details have a look here.

The AV Multi out has numerous pins but those responsible for audio output are just the four leftmost ones seen from the back of the PS1.

1=L gnd, 2=L+, 3=R gnd, 4= R+

Not much to say about the rest. Connect those pins to some adapter. You can build it by very simple means. Only make sure that the leads are well guided so that you dont cause a short. On the other side, connect the leads to RCA jacks and you are done.

The pictures show my very primitive solution on the basis of some plastic part I took from the junk. I fed the wires through holes in the plastic such that they stay in place. The wires are laquer isolated, and the isolation was removed by grinding paper at the contact positions. I have put another piece of junk plastic under the wires to bend them a little bit downwards to achieve better contact.

This last two images show the adapter inserted into the AV Multi out (before I added the black tape). It does not look very good but it works and the sound is considerably better than from the RCA out. If you happen to find a source for an AV Multi out plug please let me know.