John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part II

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True for electrolytics. Is this true for other caps?

Yes, in his latest article in Vol 9 he only tested non-polar, non-electrolytic caps. Distortion varied with bias voltage.

Another thought: conduction of AC trough a capacitor is only possible by moving charge from one plate to the other and vice versa. So in that sense, it's dielectric absorption that makes a working capacitor possible in the first place, no?

Jan
 
No references anywhere on that. In fact no mechanism I can think of for that oft repeated "silence between notes" too close to memory and echos for me frankly. You see how this DA thing got carried away.
Trailing bursts of noise falsely fill/intrude the silences.
In experimentation I have been able to profoundly subjectively change pink noise reproduction.....and no FR filtering involved.
BQP's do this also, but also add a 'signature'.
Some types of film caps and electrolytics add distortions....spectrally shaped noises according to the dielectric type may be part of the equation.

Dan.
 
Something I might try. Two polyester caps in series, with DC bias through high value resistor to the mid point. Does it sound good?

Well, it is doing - nothing. Two 3.3uF polyester caps biased from 15Vdc via 10 Meg resistor to the center point ==> absolutely no change in distortion. Looks like another audio myth, or CB has checked some mediocre capacitors.
 
What else does a cap do apart from charge and discharge? You are suggesting a frequency-related nonlinearity, but surely sample-and-hold circuits (where DA can be a problem) sometimes work at quite high speeds and quite high resolution? Any nonlinearity in DA would be seen there first.

Some evidence that DA causes nonlinearity would be nice, or even just that DA is reasonably well correlated with nonlinearity. So far, we have none of the former (just some 'smoking gun' allegations) and perhaps the contrary to the latter?

PS I'm not Doug.

Well, in that case, are you this Derek? The initials line up nicely. Google Afbeeldingen resultaat voor http://a.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=/i/headshots/nba/players/full/246.png&w=350&h=254

From the example of the polar Elco, it seems to follow that indeed asymmetric DA can cause distortion. It makes it likely that when this asymmetry comes into play, there is distortion. As mentioned before, from the bare fact that there is relatively high DA, you cannot conclude that there will be distortion, see COG/NPO. So this is the evidence I see and the interpretation I give to it.

Would make a nice thesis to look at the absortion/release behaviour of other dielectrics and correlate it with cap distortion.

It is not so much a frequency-related nonlinearity, but rather a field strength related nonlinearity I am suggesting.
 
If the coupling cap value is high enough to get almost zero voltage across the cap, you will not see the effect. I measured at -3dB and -1dB points. Enlarging the cap to 47uF, the effect disappeared.

This very neatly explains my wondering why H/k for example insits on using 47u and even 100u coupling caps on their amps' inputs. It always seemed rather a lot to me, but at last I now know why.

Thank you, Pavel.
 
Another thought: conduction of AC trough a capacitor is only possible by moving charge from one plate to the other and vice versa. So in that sense, it's dielectric absorption that makes a working capacitor possible in the first place, no?

Jan

Are you still in joking mode? If there were a charge moving from one plate to the other, the cap would leaking and kaput. Except for electrolytics, where some leakage always occurs.

Air has no dielectric absorption, but thankfully, I had radio in my youth.

aircap1a_1_.jpg
 
Esperado said:
I mean, some took the poor linear model to define the physical phenomena and want an other acronym for what is not modeled that we are seeing in the measurements?
But I thought it is said to be a good linear model? Presumably it not only accords with measurements (I mean measurements, not speculation) but also physical models of dielectric polarisation relaxation - which I would expect to show exponential decay and hence can be modelled by essentially a low pass filter.

jan.didden said:
DA is modeled with multiple Rs and Cs and that model cannot lead to or explain nonlinearity.

But we don't know whether this model is all there is to DA, do we? It explains charge/recover cycles, but that's all it does because that's all we ask of it (the model).
DA is modelled with a CR ladder because it has been found that this accurately models DA.

So it appears that there might be a basis for a causal link between DA and nonlinearity.
More likely that DA provides a context for even-order (i.e. asymmetric) nonlinearity to be seen, by providing a temporary dielectric bias and hence creating asymmetry. If adding a bias voltage to a cap causes 2nd to appear where previously there was only 3rd does this means that the bias caused the nonlinearity or merely that it moved the working point to a different position on the dielectric nonlinearity curve?

scott wurcer said:
In fact no mechanism I can think of for that oft repeated "silence between notes" too close to memory and echos for me frankly.
Is this just another example of people looking at a time domain waveform after a signal has been passed through a filter, seeing a change and then frightening themselves and shouting "Distortion!"?

SY said:
True for electrolytics. Is this true for other caps?
If a cap has a nonlinear dielectric then in most cases the response will be symmetric about zero electric field. Hence a symmetric cap with a symmetric dielectric can only produce symmetric distortion i.e. odd order. To get even order distortion you need to add some asymmetry e.g. add a bias voltage. If this is higher in value than typical AC signals (e.g. a coupling cap) then a little 3rd becomes rather more 2nd.

If the cap construction is already asymmetric (e.g. polar electrolytic) then a bias voltage could make things better or worse.

PMA said:
Well, it is doing - nothing. Two 3.3uF polyester caps biased from 15Vdc via 10 Meg resistor to the center point ==> absolutely no change in distortion.
You have symmetry, so only odd order distortion can occur.
 
It's a standard term. You can read the definition in just about any electronics text. For measurement methods, refer to MIL- C 19778.
Yes. We remarked an strange DC behavior in cap's charge and discharge, and put a name on it: DA. Its an evil of the dielectric. Right ?
Now, in AC, we remark a Harmonic distortion.
Is this distortion increase in the same ratio than DA in caps ?
 
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Are you still in joking mode? If there were a charge moving from one plate to the other, the cap would leaking and kaput. Except for electrolytics, where some leakage always occurs.

Air has no dielectric absorption, but thankfully, I had radio in my youth.

View attachment 480197

What's so special about air? Just one of an infinite series of possible dielectrics. And it's breathable, I give you that. ;-)

Jan
 
Esperado said:
Is this distortion increase in the same ratio than DA in caps ?
I think it has been established that this is not the case. DA and distortion are poorly correlated.

Not for the total behavior of all dielectrics, because it does not show distortions.
It only claims to model DA, so the fact that it does not model distortion is unsurprising. If DA had been found to have a nonlinear element in it then the CR ladder model could be extended to cover this too, but there is no evidence that this is needed.

Some dielectrics have DA. Some dielectrics are nonlinear. It is not surprising that some dielectrics have both features. What is surprising is that some people still seem to blame DA for nonlinearity when there is no evidence for this.
 
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