How to remove EU volume limit from Sony personal CD players D-NE300, D-NE270, D-NE500, D-NE510, D-NE700, D-NE710, D-NE800, D-NE900, D-NE10, D-CJ501, D-NF400, D-NF600
After hunting eBay for a while I finally found an interesting personal CD player with onboard CDText display: an Aiwa XP-ZV616: Testing it out and downloading the user manual revealed a couple of surprises: It's a clone of the Sony D-NE300 - I already knew it was a Sony-era product but hoped it was based on one of the higher-end models The headphone output is heavily restricted - This is a European model originally sold here in the UK I'd already bought a Sony D-NE1 (hate the lack of decent equaliser) and I'd forgotten it also suffered from the EU power output limit (to prevent hearing damage). The Aiwa user manual confirms a feeble 1.5 mW output on European models compared to 5 mW everywhere else. This means that in a noisy commuting environment or when driving high-impedance headphones (like my Sennheiser HD580s) it struggles to deliver a decent volume. Searching online I found the D-NE300 service manual to see if there was some hidden service menu where t