OK. But do they sound ANY better or is it just hype?In audio, as with so many things in life, one has to allow for the law of diminishing returns, so I believe I can say with certainty they would not sound 6 to 10 times better.
They are undoubtedly good, well made capacitors used mainly in guitar tone controls I believe. It's probably due to their ruggedness reliability and consistency that they are chosen in this role. Regards sounding better, I have no idea what that means, particularly when you consider their primary function.
Having watched the capacitor sound debate since the late eighties there's now one or two things I'm certain about.
One is that construction quality matters for film caps. Specifically, how well the "plates" of the capacitor are restrained.
Any movement or flex will result in microphonics and modulation of capacitance value. This is particularly problematic when you have charge induced movement.
As ScottJoplin notes: consider their primary function. Are they in the signal path? How large is the AC swing? Will they be subject to vibration?
Depends whose definition of better you go by, as well as the type of amp. For British style amps, mustard caps are preferred for their warmth.
Sent from my phone. Please excuse any typpos.
Back in the days when CDs and CD players hadn't yet been invented (or were too expensive for ordinary people), I designed and built a few cassette decks.
The audio signal from a cassette playback head is about the smallest audio signal you will ever encounter in home audio, the only competition being moving-coil phono cartridges. Typically, you get a maximum of around 1 mV AC RMS from a cassette playback head, meaning the typical signal is around 100 uV (micro volts) or so, most of the time.
That, in turn, means that any input capacitors between tape head and playback preamplifier are dealing with extremely small signals, and any piezoelectric tendencies of the capacitors are most likely to be revealed in this application.
I did find that some disc ceramic capacitors made an audible "thump!" through the speakers if I flicked them with a fingertip, or tapped them with a small screwdriver. The ceramic dielectric material was weakly piezoelectric, enough to generate some tens of microvolts of noise if the capacitor was tapped.
I never heard any audible signal from any other type of capacitor used in that location.
The reality is that even the worst capacitors on the market are much nearer to mathematical perfection than even the best loudspeakers on the market. So nearly perfect, that they have no flaws detectable by the human ear. So you can swap capacitors all you like, and never hear any audible improvement.
Most beliefs in magic capacitor "mojo" go back to some famous vintage brand or piece of equipment that happened to use that particular type of capacitor decades ago. People then make the simplistic assumption that the use of those particular caps was what made the equipment so good.
This is rather like assuming that a tiger is very strong because it eats raw meat. Therefore, if I eat raw meat, I will have the strength of a tiger, too...
Capacitors are nearly perfect. Loudspeakers, though, are still very far from perfect. If one is looking for a place to improve the quality of one's audio chain, loudspeakers are where the biggest problems are, by far, and that's the one place where it's still possible to make very audible improvements.
-Gnobuddy
The audio signal from a cassette playback head is about the smallest audio signal you will ever encounter in home audio, the only competition being moving-coil phono cartridges. Typically, you get a maximum of around 1 mV AC RMS from a cassette playback head, meaning the typical signal is around 100 uV (micro volts) or so, most of the time.
That, in turn, means that any input capacitors between tape head and playback preamplifier are dealing with extremely small signals, and any piezoelectric tendencies of the capacitors are most likely to be revealed in this application.
I did find that some disc ceramic capacitors made an audible "thump!" through the speakers if I flicked them with a fingertip, or tapped them with a small screwdriver. The ceramic dielectric material was weakly piezoelectric, enough to generate some tens of microvolts of noise if the capacitor was tapped.
I never heard any audible signal from any other type of capacitor used in that location.
The reality is that even the worst capacitors on the market are much nearer to mathematical perfection than even the best loudspeakers on the market. So nearly perfect, that they have no flaws detectable by the human ear. So you can swap capacitors all you like, and never hear any audible improvement.
Most beliefs in magic capacitor "mojo" go back to some famous vintage brand or piece of equipment that happened to use that particular type of capacitor decades ago. People then make the simplistic assumption that the use of those particular caps was what made the equipment so good.
This is rather like assuming that a tiger is very strong because it eats raw meat. Therefore, if I eat raw meat, I will have the strength of a tiger, too...
Capacitors are nearly perfect. Loudspeakers, though, are still very far from perfect. If one is looking for a place to improve the quality of one's audio chain, loudspeakers are where the biggest problems are, by far, and that's the one place where it's still possible to make very audible improvements.
-Gnobuddy
How are they being used? In an amp as a coupling cap? In a guitar's tone control circuit? What value and voltage?
It's been a while since I bought any but I don't recall them being particularly expensive vs other "non-audiophool" caps. Where are you buying them?
Here's a link to one supplier:
https://www.tubesandmore.com/products/capacitors?filters=Brand%3DOrange%20Drop
If they're 6 to 10 times the cost of a Wima they must be giving the Wimas away!
Back when electronics was all about high voltages, heat, point to point wiring - and television sets had 25 tubes and weighed 100 pounds caps like the Orange Drops ruled. The comparatively woosy construction of typical Panasonic or even Wima caps would never have held up in the typical product lifecycle - which was a lot longer back then. Do they sound any better or even different? Probably not. The end caps won't come off if the amp gets dropped either - even in a point to point chassis. Is that kind of ruggedness needed these days in audio equipment? Probably not. But there will still be people who want them in their gear, and equipment for which typical consumer audio (even audiophile) grade caps won't cut it.
People often hear things that don't actually exist (auditory illusions, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzo45hWXRWU ).
In the same way, people often see things that don't actually exist (optical illusions, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IWk5NkxQF8 ).
This is unavoidable, and it applies to all of us. Our human brains and sensory systems are fallible, and easily fooled.
The only protection we have against our own easily-confused brains and senses is to use the scientific method: perform carefully controlled experiments designed to test your hypothesis, and trust measurements made with proper measurement equipment. Don't trust your easily-fooled senses.
In this case, if there is a difference between one capacitor type and another, it should show up as either a change in frequency response, or a change in harmonic distortion. The frequency response differences, if any, need to be different by at least one decibel in order to be audible. The harmonic distortion differences, if any, need to be different by at least one percent in order to be audible.
And if you try that experiment, making sure to use identical value capacitors (say within 1%) of different types, you'll find than you cannot measure any differences that matter.
You can also do a double-blind listening test, where neither the person conducting the experiment, nor the listener, knows which capacitor he/she is hearing. If you conduct enough trials, you can collect statistically significant data. And, once again, you will find that people cannot hear the difference between identical-value capacitors of different types.
-Gnobuddy
Hello,
Maybe this test will help:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92G-jw4TqS4
And one more... this time including ceramic caps:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1vXoLXIejY
Maybe this test will help:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92G-jw4TqS4
And one more... this time including ceramic caps:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1vXoLXIejY
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Look at the capacitors - they are +/- 10% tolerance. That means there may be up to 20% difference in capacitance between any two of those caps!
That in turn means the bandwidth of the low-pass filter created by those caps will vary by up to 20% from one cap to the other. This is a big enough change that it might be audible - and it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the type of dielectric in the capacitor, only its value (how many pF).
In fact, one of those caps (0.033 uF) has a nominal value that is 50% bigger than the other caps (0.022 uF). That is a pretty big change - the bandwidth will be reduced by 33% when this capacitor is switched in. (Put another way, the capacitor is 3/2 times as big, so the filter bandwidth will be 2/3 as big.)
In the case of the 0.033 uf cap, the sound will almost certainly be duller, and once again, this will tell you nothing about "fish oil" as an electrolytic - it will only tell you that using a 50% bigger capacitor reduces the bandwidth of an RC filter, which is hardly a new discovery!
As a guitarist myself, I can tell you there is another major problem with the approach used in the video. Simply by changing my guitar pick angle and picking location, I can produce far more variation in the sound of my guitar than you hear on this video. Nobody can possibly pick with perfect robotic consistency to within 1%, so are the tonal variations we're hearing caused by the capacitors, or the inevitable small variations in picking? There's no way to tell.
So, this may seem like the right way to test for differences in capacitor sound, but in fact, it isn't. At a minimum, you have to use an accurate capacitance meter and make sure all caps have equal values within, say, 1% (you can parallel smaller caps of the same type as needed to get the right value). And you have to use a pre-recorded guitar sample, so that picking variations are removed from the picture.
This still wouldn't be a good way to test for subtle differences in capacitor sound, because human hearing is easily fooled (watch the video I linked to).
There's really no mystery to all this. Electronics as an engineering field is over a hundred years old. Very smart people, far smarter than you and I, figured out the properties of capacitors starting in the 19th century. At this point in time, capacitors are very well understood, and have no magical, mystical properties. They are pretty simple devices, actually.
Ultimately, there is no rational cure for faith-based opinions - so if someone has faith that orange drops sound better, she/he is likely to continue to hold that belief in the face of all logical evidence to the contrary. That, unfortunately, is the human condition, and our tendency to cling to misguided beliefs no matter what, is the source of a lot of the human misery on this planet.
-Gnobuddy
As said before, Sprague's Orange Drop line of PP capacitors are quite good and reliable caps. But, compared to WIMA's MKP lines of PP capacitors, they are of quite inferior construction, as their outer insulation is done just by dipping them into insulating varnish, while all recent WIMA capacitors come perfectly potted and thus sealed in small plastic cans.
If someone calls more for an Orange Drop than for a WIMA MKP4 or even a MKP10 of the same capacitance and voltage, he most probably tries to sell you snake oil.
Due to their longer leads, point-to-point wiring is more convenient with Orange Drops, though, as WIMA capacitors clearly are dedicated to TTH PCB mounting.
Best regards!
If someone calls more for an Orange Drop than for a WIMA MKP4 or even a MKP10 of the same capacitance and voltage, he most probably tries to sell you snake oil.
Due to their longer leads, point-to-point wiring is more convenient with Orange Drops, though, as WIMA capacitors clearly are dedicated to TTH PCB mounting.
Best regards!
Used as coupling and tone control caps in a pedal steel guitar amplifier; 0.01 to 0.33uF, 100v.
You are correct--Antique DOES have better prices on orange drops than Mouser! Curiously, the "better" 716P (copper leads) are LESS expensive than the 715Ps at Mouser.
But the WIMAs are still about 5x less expensive--a 0.1uF PP orange drop is $1.65 at Antique; a WIMA is $0.30 at Mouser.
There are also quite a difference between different "orange drops"--some are polyester, some are polypropylene, some have copper leads. The term "orange drop" is copyrighted by Cornell-Dublier. Hmmm......
As I said, it's all application dependent. Like most components, capacitors have non-ideal behaviours. These vary significantly across capacitor types.
Two examples of different sorts of measurable flaws and an analysis of a third
Bob Pease What's all this soakage stuff (1998)
John Curl & Walt Jung A real time test for capacitor quality (1985)
Menno van der Veen; & Hans R.E. van Maanen Non-linear distortions in capacitors (2008)
Whether they matter in your application is another thing.
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