Frank,
please teach me some serios engineering. I know there are situations of voltage or current peaks, etc special properties are needed that could be fullfilled better with other caps than MKS. But in the preamp i have not this conditions. I simple need an electristatical very small field that changes with the signal a bit. nearly no current and nearly no voltage, less than 1% of what the cap is speced for. Please tell me , in engineering terms, not religios vodoobullshit, so i could learn something. Sorry, i´m no EE and thus this is not part of what i learned at school or university. From an engineerinmg POV any kind of ion reaction cap must be worse than any real electrostatic cap.
please teach me some serios engineering. I know there are situations of voltage or current peaks, etc special properties are needed that could be fullfilled better with other caps than MKS. But in the preamp i have not this conditions. I simple need an electristatical very small field that changes with the signal a bit. nearly no current and nearly no voltage, less than 1% of what the cap is speced for. Please tell me , in engineering terms, not religios vodoobullshit, so i could learn something. Sorry, i´m no EE and thus this is not part of what i learned at school or university. From an engineerinmg POV any kind of ion reaction cap must be worse than any real electrostatic cap.
Hi,
When I'm not giving gratuitious advice I'm said to be very expensive...
Honestly, Till, what sets the polyester cap apart from the other filmcaps is the dielectric absorbtion which, regardless of any other factor, is the poorest of all common filmcaps.
It's not clear to me from your description what the cap is doing in your preamp but the reasoning that: "it's overspecced for what it needs to do there" is not a good arguement when it comes to coupling (?)caps.
Other than that, if you want to search the forum I'm sure you'll find more than a dozen threads about caps and their influence on audio....some of them may contain a sprinkle of voodoo so be warned.
Cheers,
When I'm not giving gratuitious advice I'm said to be very expensive...
Honestly, Till, what sets the polyester cap apart from the other filmcaps is the dielectric absorbtion which, regardless of any other factor, is the poorest of all common filmcaps.
It's not clear to me from your description what the cap is doing in your preamp but the reasoning that: "it's overspecced for what it needs to do there" is not a good arguement when it comes to coupling (?)caps.
Other than that, if you want to search the forum I'm sure you'll find more than a dozen threads about caps and their influence on audio....some of them may contain a sprinkle of voodoo so be warned.
Cheers,
i read a lot of them, and i found mainly voodoo of the kind like skinning caps etc....
What i did not find was scientific statements or measurements or what we would call in this country engineering. I know this may be seen different at other locations were people need to freeze their photos when listening to music, whats quiet uncommon here.
Who worries about that little absorption could never ever use any transformer because of hysteresis of the core i guess? And electrolytics must be a big no no in that case?
The MKS4 100 10uF do couple the signal out of the preamp http://www.passdiy.com/pdf/balzenpre.pdf in my case.
Is there any chance the effect of this absorbtion could be measured? what setup would be needed for this?
Hi,
Certainly.
Here's just one example:
THE SOUND OF CAPACITORS....
There are also charts available on the net on DA factors of various insulators that are commonly used in electronics.
Cheers,
Certainly.
Here's just one example:
THE SOUND OF CAPACITORS....
There are also charts available on the net on DA factors of various insulators that are commonly used in electronics.
Cheers,
Thanks for the link,
This mainly tells us ceramics and electrolytics are crap, paper/oil and and film caps are much better. The differences between diffrent films compared to the crap kinds are only marginal. So much for capacitor sound and black gates are better?
As i said before, i hear the differnce if door of listening room is open or closed. I did not hear diffrence between caps or resitors until now. I probably will better open the door, whats for free, instead of wasting money with 100times more expensive caps than needed.
This mainly tells us ceramics and electrolytics are crap, paper/oil and and film caps are much better. The differences between diffrent films compared to the crap kinds are only marginal. So much for capacitor sound and black gates are better?
As i said before, i hear the differnce if door of listening room is open or closed. I did not hear diffrence between caps or resitors until now. I probably will better open the door, whats for free, instead of wasting money with 100times more expensive caps than needed.
In the end of the day most of whats discussed here about improvements, is marginal improvements. One could claim that if adequately many small improvements are made, it would be audiable.....but you have to be pretty far off target to make an audiable improvement with just one factor, counting out active devices.
Ive made a whole lot of tests lately of anything from caps to speaker cables. 99.9% of the cases Ive been unable to detect any difference in a blind test.
There are naturally some general guidelines that has to be followed to succeed, but besides that....its very limited what you gain from "improvements" besides empty pockets.
In some cases though you can gain reliability by choosing better quality components. For instance power supply caps must be of reasonable quality to make it in the long run. Another "upgrade" I find nice is to use teflon insulated wire, it gives me quite long time to switch off the amp if something goes wrong without melting, I like the safety of that. Also a trafo must be of reasonable quality, else it causes all kinds of problems.
A good example of the result of this approach is a friend of mine's Zen V1. Its built according to the above philosophy, and as far as im concerned, its as close to perfect as you can get.
Magura
Ive made a whole lot of tests lately of anything from caps to speaker cables. 99.9% of the cases Ive been unable to detect any difference in a blind test.
There are naturally some general guidelines that has to be followed to succeed, but besides that....its very limited what you gain from "improvements" besides empty pockets.
In some cases though you can gain reliability by choosing better quality components. For instance power supply caps must be of reasonable quality to make it in the long run. Another "upgrade" I find nice is to use teflon insulated wire, it gives me quite long time to switch off the amp if something goes wrong without melting, I like the safety of that. Also a trafo must be of reasonable quality, else it causes all kinds of problems.
A good example of the result of this approach is a friend of mine's Zen V1. Its built according to the above philosophy, and as far as im concerned, its as close to perfect as you can get.
Magura
Hi,
Actually, more often than not quite the contrary is true.
There is of course the law of diminishing returns.
OTOH, when the basics are sound it can be surpising how much can be had for little money.
As for blind tests, well I'm not too sure about their validity for audio purposes....I sometimes look as much to sound as I listen to it, no kidding.
Cheers,
Actually, more often than not quite the contrary is true.
There is of course the law of diminishing returns.
OTOH, when the basics are sound it can be surpising how much can be had for little money.
As for blind tests, well I'm not too sure about their validity for audio purposes....I sometimes look as much to sound as I listen to it, no kidding.
Cheers,
fdegrove said:Hi,
There is of course the law of diminishing returns.
OTOH, when the basics are sound it can be surpising how much can be had for little money.
As for blind tests, well I'm not too sure about their validity for audio purposes....I sometimes look as much to sound as I listen to it, no kidding.
Cheers,
Its the law of diminishing returns im on about, as im quite sure most of whats built here is quite high end (sound vise).
What do you mean with looking to sound?
Magura
Magura said:In the end of the day most of whats discussed here about improvements, is marginal improvements. One could claim that if adequately many small improvements are made, it would be audiable.....but you have to be pretty far off target to make an audiable improvement with just one factor, counting out active devices.
Ive made a whole lot of tests lately of anything from caps to speaker cables. 99.9% of the cases Ive been unable to detect any difference in a blind test.
There are naturally some general guidelines that has to be followed to succeed, but besides that....its very limited what you gain from "improvements" besides empty pockets.
In some cases though you can gain reliability by choosing better quality components. For instance power supply caps must be of reasonable quality to make it in the long run. Another "upgrade" I find nice is to use teflon insulated wire, it gives me quite long time to switch off the amp if something goes wrong without melting, I like the safety of that. Also a trafo must be of reasonable quality, else it causes all kinds of problems.
A good example of the result of this approach is a friend of mine's Zen V1. Its built according to the above philosophy, and as far as im concerned, its as close to perfect as you can get.
Magura
Someday you will learn that everything matters. Every component ,every connector, and every wire.
I don't know why the Soundfield Optimizers work but they do.
fdegrove said:
For tube gear that could be true, I honestly havnt got a clue about tubes, but for SS its most definitely not the case. Most of the Pass constructions people build here are simple copies of what NP have made, I guess there is a limit how bad that can turn out. As for gainclones....if people cant build such reasonably well, there is sure absolutely no point in any upgrades, what so ever.
If people dont hit the ceiling of diminishing returns pretty much right away, in most cases upgrades of any sort would be in vain.
So I guess in most cases one excludes the other.
Magura
tom1356 said:
Anybody I know of have their stereo's in their livingrooms.
Will you in sober condition claim that you can hear a Shakti or a capacitor, when the entire room is full of stuff like cupboards with plenty of different stuff inside to rattle and resonate away, tables and chairs all over the place, windows in all kinds of places, and old wooden floor (thats the kind of floor most houses are made with around here) thats singing and resonating, plus all the other stuff people tend to acumulate in a livingroom ????
....a wooden stick of a fraction of the size of anything else in the room is visible, but surely not audiable.
Magura
Hi,
Well, I'm absolutely certain that at least 70% of those copies use different components, different pieces of wire, solder etc.
Therefore it is only normal that they'll all sound a little different but not necessarily bad.
Do you think that if we'd build a gainclone with the values specified as per the design, they'd sound the same?
What if I tell you that in the right system I can make Peter Daniel's gainclone sound completely different just by tightening or untightening a few screws that have nothing to do whatsoever with the electronics proper but are used to hold the case together?
Cheers,
Well, I'm absolutely certain that at least 70% of those copies use different components, different pieces of wire, solder etc.
Therefore it is only normal that they'll all sound a little different but not necessarily bad.
Do you think that if we'd build a gainclone with the values specified as per the design, they'd sound the same?
What if I tell you that in the right system I can make Peter Daniel's gainclone sound completely different just by tightening or untightening a few screws that have nothing to do whatsoever with the electronics proper but are used to hold the case together?
Cheers,
Just to illustrate what kind of madness ive seen lately, take a look at this. Note the "diffractors"(I guess thats what he called them) each standing on a chair...dont miss the plate of rockwool behind one speaker....and finally dont miss that the chairs the "diffractors" are parked on are about the same size as the "diffractors"....oh and pease note the old rattleing single layer windows in the background.
Magura
EDIT: Please not his jacket is also a quite big object in the room....but he decided against moving the coathanger.
Magura
EDIT: Please not his jacket is also a quite big object in the room....but he decided against moving the coathanger.
Attachments
fdegrove said:Hi,
What if I tell you that in the right system I can make Peter Daniel's gainclone sound completely different just by tightening or untightening a few screws that have nothing to do whatsoever with the electronics proper but are used to hold the case together?
Cheers,
Im sure youre right about that. Its a simple matter of dampening and whats related to such.
Its not really snake oil nor news to me.
If you look inside the better end of Yamaha amps, youll find that the finns of the heatsinks are dampened by a rubber strip.
Magura
EDIT:
Im 100% sure that you can make a diagram of the resonance frequenzy of the case and the respective effects it has on the sound..
Magura said:
Anybody I know of have their stereo's in their livingrooms.
Will you in sober condition claim that you can hear a Shakti or a capacitor, when the entire room is full of stuff like cupboards with plenty of different stuff inside to rattle and resonate away, tables and chairs all over the place, windows in all kinds of places, and old wooden floor (thats the kind of floor most houses are made with around here) thats singing and resonating, plus all the other stuff people tend to acumulate in a livingroom ????
....a wooden stick of a fraction of the size of anything else in the room is visible, but surely not audiable.
Magura
I live in a very small condo on the ocean. My livingroom also contains a diningroom set and a cupbord full of dishes. The only thing missing from your list is the wood floor (mine is concrete as are the walls).
I replaced very good paper in oil coupling capacitors in my mono block amps with Mundorf silver in oil caps and just like with the Soundfield Optimizers there was a big improvement.
Face it you are just blowing smoke and you have no idea what you are talking about. Go out and get a decent system and a decent education in what it takes to reproduce sound. It will enlighten you.
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.