Well now there's a situation where the effects are clearly measureable.
Put a polarized cap in backwards and it will likely explode.
Put a film cap in "backwards" (outer foil in wrong direction) and you will get more noise passed on in the circuit.
Both are measureable, the first with your eyes and ears, and the second with a scope or spectrum analyzer.
Am I the only person in the world who finds this waste of bandwidth intensely annoying? Do I really need to know that someone is contacting me using a Blackberry/iPad/whatever? Is is intended to warn me that as the person may be on a bus or in the shower that their usual standards of grammar and spelling may be temporarily suspended? Please, 'smartphone users of the world', switch this stuff off or lobby your suppliers to disable it.Tapatalk 2 said:
Sent from my old Dell Inspiron 6400 running XP (SP2 I think) and Firefox (I don't know and don't care which version)
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When I was on the opposite end of the age scale (a child), I was convinced one could make a magnet out of anything - glass, wood, plastic, celery - anything. All that was necessary was to create a vacuum inside a sealed chunk of the stuff. Made perfect sense to a 6 year old. 
Sometime later I was amazed at experiencing the magic of rubbing a screwdriver across a magnet and actually being able pick up thumbtacks with the screwdriver -WOW!. In High School, Mr. Hemstra taught me a little (he tried for more, but I had my mind on band practice) about molecular structure, magnetic fields and electricity. I have NO formal advanced scientific training (though my father was a metallurgist for Dow when they were trying to make pots and pans from magnesium - still have a skillet) but I do understand heat, cold, electricity, alloys, shape, size ...... all can and do influence every substance known to man.
So what....
Well, that's enough for me to be convinced every component - not just caps - can and will be effected by both heat and electricity. From this thread I'm attracted to the comments related to the "phases" of cap performance over time. Along with my ability to communicate with the "Little Blue People" who visit on occasion, I spent real money on a break-in CD that when used, produces a real or imagined - your choice - change in what I hear.
What I now believe is that CD and/or any other "break-in" procedure primarily shortens the time required to push a component into it's first stable "phase" of operation. In other words, if something is going to change in circuit, just do it a little faster. Some "sweetening" of audio equipment over longer periods has been reported by millions, but if one chooses to use any process to hasten that first "settling" of the quarks, (again - real or imagined - your choice) I don't see the harm. Some on this thread reject "burn-in" but promote "cap forming". I suspect those are two ways of describing that same initial "settling" caused by in-circuit dynamics.
It's very interesting to see how many times this topic pops up all over the forum. It always seems to end in something like "different strokes for different folks". I too am anxious for someone with the proper neuron composition to develop a device to expose "The Private Lives Of Capacitors"
So that's my two cents - real value to be determined by current exchange rate, 
Sometime later I was amazed at experiencing the magic of rubbing a screwdriver across a magnet and actually being able pick up thumbtacks with the screwdriver -WOW!. In High School, Mr. Hemstra taught me a little (he tried for more, but I had my mind on band practice) about molecular structure, magnetic fields and electricity. I have NO formal advanced scientific training (though my father was a metallurgist for Dow when they were trying to make pots and pans from magnesium - still have a skillet) but I do understand heat, cold, electricity, alloys, shape, size ...... all can and do influence every substance known to man.
So what....
Well, that's enough for me to be convinced every component - not just caps - can and will be effected by both heat and electricity. From this thread I'm attracted to the comments related to the "phases" of cap performance over time. Along with my ability to communicate with the "Little Blue People" who visit on occasion, I spent real money on a break-in CD that when used, produces a real or imagined - your choice - change in what I hear.
What I now believe is that CD and/or any other "break-in" procedure primarily shortens the time required to push a component into it's first stable "phase" of operation. In other words, if something is going to change in circuit, just do it a little faster. Some "sweetening" of audio equipment over longer periods has been reported by millions, but if one chooses to use any process to hasten that first "settling" of the quarks, (again - real or imagined - your choice) I don't see the harm. Some on this thread reject "burn-in" but promote "cap forming". I suspect those are two ways of describing that same initial "settling" caused by in-circuit dynamics.
It's very interesting to see how many times this topic pops up all over the forum. It always seems to end in something like "different strokes for different folks". I too am anxious for someone with the proper neuron composition to develop a device to expose "The Private Lives Of Capacitors"
So that's my two cents - real value to be determined by current exchange rate,
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I'm sorry if I ruffled your feathers. But I happen to be one of these weird fact based individuals who believe in the scientific process. I approach circuit design from an engineering point of view rather than taking the faith based approach used by some. If you're curious about my background, you can find my resume/CV on my website.
You can't possibly be serious. We are talking about circuit changes that may/may not result in a change in the subjective perception of the sound quality. How are we to test this fairly without applying a double-blind test?
I agree that a single-blind test introduces bias as you point out. That's why scientists came up with the double-blind test. In a double-blind test, the person administering the test does not know what is tested, hence, cannot influence the test subjects. Of course the test subjects are "blind" as well. Furthermore, there should be no visual changes in the setup as this affects the perception of sound quality as well (yes, really!) This is why companies who take this seriously (B&O springs to mind) have the test subjects and the device under test separated by a sonically transparent curtain. You can see Floyd Toole's acoustics book for an example of how this is done for speaker tests.
~Tom
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