I don't know what you guys invent.
But I claim the gainclone for me!
Don't recall it exactly, but I build them 1996 or earlier, at least one year before Elektor came out with their design. I build the differential gainclone in '97 on a rewired Elektor layout. Takes some time until now someone came with a similar, but more sophisticated (instrumentation gainclone) idea.
The gaincard was intruduced in 1999(?) and the clones came afterwards. When was this forum founded?
back to topic:
whether one can hear it or not, at a second glance the given explanations for the capacitor-sound still after 27 years are leaving questions
regards
Conrad Hoffman said:
Its no bait, its we found our man to test and explain us materials sound. Many of us have this 'notion' that our copper and silver wires sound distinct. Find copper tubes of same geometry and size as your silver ones, run 2 pieces in parallel, 3 cm apart, and connect your signal to one tube and its return to the other, from the output of your favorite source to your first line stage. Listen with headphones if you like, even better. Then do the same with the silver tubes. If you don't hear any difference, OK. To you are the same. If you hear something different, please investigate the case. We will be very happy to know by measurement, why we have this impression that the 2 materials have a sound of their own. Thanks for your interest in experimenting.
My point is that "emotion" and "impression" and "feeling" are not really a great reference since they change all the time. If you tell me that you can change a capacitor in a complete sound system, and hear a difference compared to the system you heard yesterday, maybe you're right and the part provide "emotional improvement" (even if it can't be measured), but maybe you are just imagining things or feeling more positive without real reasons . You should at least seriously consider that possibility.
I'm pretty sure that everyone had that feeling. Your system sound very good one day, and you are completely satisfied, and another day, the same system sounds not so great and you "feel" that something is not perfect, and you seek improvement. I do.
F
On the conductor material, I'm thinking we should start a new thread, as it's a bit off topic here. It will take me a day or two to run a test, due to the sad necessity of going to work to pay for this hobby. (for those who think this conductor thing is nuts, I fully expect to hear a difference, and explain it by way of known physics. Or not. It's important to test ones beliefs from time to time, and I've certainly been wrong on more than one occasion.)
I doubt my system has a different personality each day, but I certainly do. Audio memory is terrible, and opinions are affected by mood. I just replaced an old CD player (Kyocera DX-710) with a new one (I'm not rich- a Marantz CD5001). The technology is completely different- separate 16 bit Burr-Brown D/A converters and analog filtering, vs. the Cirrus CS4392 192khz 24 bit converters. That knowledge colored my evaluation, along with a bunch of other stupid emotional issues, and though I believe I hear differences between the units, it's taken me a while to convince myself of what's real, what's not, and I'm still not positive I'm right. Just knowing your biases isn't enough to suppress them.
The same thing holds with capacitors. Certainly an expensive Teflon dielectric must be better than anything else. Mylar (polyester) is common and cheap, so of course it can't sound good. Paper and oil is from the good old days, when everything sounded better- that must be the reason. It's organic- we're all familiar with paper and oil; how many really have a good feel about zirconium titanate? Silver micas are expensive and have tight tolerances- must be good. I personally like air capacitors make of Invar for near perfect thermal stability and near zero DF, but they just aren't practical for audio.
Hey, it's all BS. You put them on the meters and they reveal their soul in terms of value, dissipation factor, self resonance, linearity, etc. They interact with the rest of the circuitry just as the laws of physics say they will. There is no good or bad, just what is, and you design accordingly for the result you want. The mistake is to think there is some mysterious never-measured property that affects the sound. Capacitors are fully described by the parameters any good analog engineer should be familiar with. BTW, the search time on a non-existent parameter is... forever!
I doubt my system has a different personality each day, but I certainly do. Audio memory is terrible, and opinions are affected by mood. I just replaced an old CD player (Kyocera DX-710) with a new one (I'm not rich- a Marantz CD5001). The technology is completely different- separate 16 bit Burr-Brown D/A converters and analog filtering, vs. the Cirrus CS4392 192khz 24 bit converters. That knowledge colored my evaluation, along with a bunch of other stupid emotional issues, and though I believe I hear differences between the units, it's taken me a while to convince myself of what's real, what's not, and I'm still not positive I'm right. Just knowing your biases isn't enough to suppress them.
The same thing holds with capacitors. Certainly an expensive Teflon dielectric must be better than anything else. Mylar (polyester) is common and cheap, so of course it can't sound good. Paper and oil is from the good old days, when everything sounded better- that must be the reason. It's organic- we're all familiar with paper and oil; how many really have a good feel about zirconium titanate? Silver micas are expensive and have tight tolerances- must be good. I personally like air capacitors make of Invar for near perfect thermal stability and near zero DF, but they just aren't practical for audio.
Hey, it's all BS. You put them on the meters and they reveal their soul in terms of value, dissipation factor, self resonance, linearity, etc. They interact with the rest of the circuitry just as the laws of physics say they will. There is no good or bad, just what is, and you design accordingly for the result you want. The mistake is to think there is some mysterious never-measured property that affects the sound. Capacitors are fully described by the parameters any good analog engineer should be familiar with. BTW, the search time on a non-existent parameter is... forever!
Maybe it's more a matter of faith?
Don't forget that some online magazines reviewer gave pretty good comments about a small timex clock that you put on a shelf in the room to improve audio. I should not talk about this here since it stirred so much debate on the blogs, but i can't help myself.
My favorite part of the review was when the guy admit that although he is pretty sure that the clock do not change the signal in any way (of course), it makes him "feel" that his system sound better. Great for you! Now, what can you think when the same guy says that a capacitor is great. For me, this kind of person has completely zero credibility.
Now, I'm open minded, but i'm also sceptical. So to get back on tracks with the topic, I "feel" that most recommendations given on the forums about capacitors are given in good faith, and some of them can be good, but the great majority are simply worthless because the posters are not rigorous enough to challenge their own beliefs seriously and honestly.
Don't forget that some online magazines reviewer gave pretty good comments about a small timex clock that you put on a shelf in the room to improve audio. I should not talk about this here since it stirred so much debate on the blogs, but i can't help myself.
My favorite part of the review was when the guy admit that although he is pretty sure that the clock do not change the signal in any way (of course), it makes him "feel" that his system sound better. Great for you! Now, what can you think when the same guy says that a capacitor is great. For me, this kind of person has completely zero credibility.
Now, I'm open minded, but i'm also sceptical. So to get back on tracks with the topic, I "feel" that most recommendations given on the forums about capacitors are given in good faith, and some of them can be good, but the great majority are simply worthless because the posters are not rigorous enough to challenge their own beliefs seriously and honestly.
Conrad Hoffman said:
I chose conductor because its easy and does not contain costs of buying audiophile parts. Also its candidate to having less construction variables than capacitors, minute distortions, and predictably by engineering no sound of its own.
You can do something else. Specify a capacitor that you find measurably adequate by you for passing signal down to distortion levels and bandwidth, that you as an engineer can be sure are under detection threshold by ear.
Feed your signal and listen through it for 30mins with headphones. Then bypass it with a wire, listen for another 30 minutes, same level, same music in reverse order. And let us know if you have detected a different sound or not. It can be a super expensive cap, no limits of price construction or value in uF. Just whatever you find it covers you technically. Mind you that if you happen to listen to differences you have to measure, and explain to us why and how with hard data.
Regards
Salas.
gary f said:
Of course it's a matter of faith as long as you don't have first hand experience.
May i ask you a direct question? What types of capacitors have you listened to? In what positions? In what system?
As we don't like taking claims based on faith here, could you supply pictures of these capacitors?
No first hand experience? More fun debating out of principle?
I've tried those:
Solen metalized PP: In speaker crossover mainly
Solen tin foil: tube amp coupling
Auricaps: tube amp couplig
Various PP foil: Phono pre, amps, etc.
Clarity caps SA: speakers crossover
Multicaps metalized PP: speaker
RelCap Polystyrene: signal cap in preamp
Lots of electrolytics in speakers crossover
Lots of cheap mylar and other in spk crossover
Maybe more
I don't spend my life changing caps, but i've changed still changed a few over the years since i'm curious. I've never been convinced that these caps switcing made very significant changes. Never enough so I can say to myself that "now I know the truth".
F
Solen metalized PP: In speaker crossover mainly
Solen tin foil: tube amp coupling
Auricaps: tube amp couplig
Various PP foil: Phono pre, amps, etc.
Clarity caps SA: speakers crossover
Multicaps metalized PP: speaker
RelCap Polystyrene: signal cap in preamp
Lots of electrolytics in speakers crossover
Lots of cheap mylar and other in spk crossover
Maybe more
I don't spend my life changing caps, but i've changed still changed a few over the years since i'm curious. I've never been convinced that these caps switcing made very significant changes. Never enough so I can say to myself that "now I know the truth".
F
The Tice clock is an ancient story and isn't representative of anything but an extreme fringe. Over a 35 year interest in audio (!) I never saw one. For shear stupidity it's been surpassed too. I vaguely recall a string of articles by Enid Lumley in the Absolute Sound about removing all synthetics and extraneous metal, including dental fillings, from the listening environment. Don't forget Peter Belt's sticky-dot room treatments or, more recently, the adamant and persistent claims of one Audio Asylum member that only one model and value of power supply choke universally lifts veils from every amp regardless of power, topology or devices used. The field has whack-jobs, no question. So what? Are we all then sitting on cotton pillows, naked and toothless in dotted rooms, green pen in hand?
Gary, I noticed your cap list is almost exclusively polypropylene film. Have your tried others? For the tiny dollars entailed + an Ebay account you might find it worth the playtime. Also curious if 'significant' = none or 'not worth the bother'.
Gary, I noticed your cap list is almost exclusively polypropylene film. Have your tried others? For the tiny dollars entailed + an Ebay account you might find it worth the playtime. Also curious if 'significant' = none or 'not worth the bother'.
gary f said:
We are DIYers, we don't listen to reviewers but to other DIY people. Many are local friends that we know well. Before posting to forums we take many trials in live circuits fed with music from Bach to Punk, and assemble 'panels' of friends for reality checks. Before we say we liked a cap, it gets into phono stages, line stages, amps, speakers, in all possible circuit positions applicable, in more than 3 systems of different fellow DIYers, we listen alone & together each system and we decide after a month. Have you done that?
RDF, you are right that I have not tried many other exotic or various types of caps. But I'm pretty sure I will someday try other caps since i'm always open to trying stuff, if it's not too crazy expensive. I've tried polystyrene, and I could not say it's really better (or different) than PP. And you are right also that there is really crazy products and claims out there that are absolut fraud. That does not mean of course that everything is fraud.
I don't say that there is no difference at all between caps, but simply that from my point of view, most of what I read about caps is exagerated in some way or another and I feel that many people making statements about parts simply do not seems to be really honest about their own subjectivity.
When I say not significant, I mean that it's not clear for me that there was any changes. I could not pretend right now that any of these caps that I tried is really better than the other.
F
I don't say that there is no difference at all between caps, but simply that from my point of view, most of what I read about caps is exagerated in some way or another and I feel that many people making statements about parts simply do not seems to be really honest about their own subjectivity.
When I say not significant, I mean that it's not clear for me that there was any changes. I could not pretend right now that any of these caps that I tried is really better than the other.
F
Salas, who are you! Who is "we"
No I have certainly not done that kind of rigorous testing.
I would like to know what are your thoughts then. I'm listening and will be taking good notes. You evaluation method seems really too good to be true. You can tell me if you are exagerating a bit. I'm kidding.
Have you done many blind testing? What are your results?
F
No I have certainly not done that kind of rigorous testing.
I would like to know what are your thoughts then. I'm listening and will be taking good notes. You evaluation method seems really too good to be true. You can tell me if you are exagerating a bit. I'm kidding.
Have you done many blind testing? What are your results?
F
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