Jantzen Vs Mundorf Vs Solen Vs others

[bowdown]

Hi i was wandering if i could get peoples opinions about Jantzen Inductors and Caps. I am currently building some 2.5 way towers and i am leaning towards the Jantzen stuff. Any type of info would be grat as i am well and truely confused about all the different brands out there.

Regards

Bowdown

[Salas]

Mundorf supreme are the best, not the more expensive silver oil, gold oil. Thats my recommendation.

[Pano]

I like the Jantzens. At least as a coupling cap in an amp. After a lot of A/B/X testing, the Jantzen were my favorite "bargin" caps. Nice and smooth.

Have not used them much in crossovers, but when I have, I liked them. You could do a lot worse. Solens are an old favorite, too.

[bowdown]

Thanx for the replies guys. If anyone else has any comments to add please do so.

Cheers

Bowdown

[bambadoo]

Love the mundorf supreme silver or silver/gold. Silver in speakers, and silver/gold in electronics.
Did not care much about the ordinary mundorf supreme.
The supreme silver and silver/gold needs at least 500 h break in time

[Willitwork]

When I started building DIY speakers I used Solen caps for a simple reason: most of my dream ultra high-end speakers used them in their own crossovers so I thought they were high quality, and they certainly are. Another factor was availability, Solens can be found at most DIY supplier.

However, Solen leads are brittle when heated which makes them newbie-unfriendly so I switched to a sturdie make (can't remember the brand but they were all yellow with etched value scribblings) until I had gained enough soldering and design experience to be able to handle Solen caps with confidence. It's the kind of caps that you better solder only once you have determined that the value you are using will be the definitive one. I also use Solen air-core inductors most of the time even though their design is not always the most practical to work with. I especially appreciate Solen low-DCR Hepta-Litz coils that allow the use of high mH values without having to resort to cored inductors. Pricey but worth it for me.

As for fancier caps I only use them in minimalist first-order Xover designs where one can actually hear a single component, I don't think it's worth spending top dollar for expensive caps that will be relegated to obscure parallel phase correction and impedance comp circuits where any decent capacitor will do just as good a job.

[elviukai]

Originally posted by salas
Mundorf supreme are the best, not the more expensive silver oil, gold oil. Thats my recommendation.

hm.. strange foundations. I myself found mundorf silver oil absolutely diferent sounding than mundorf supreme. more analogue and without any harshness. supreme was somewhat transparent and clearler and even more dynamic. gold oil is not worth money thought. its nearly silver oil. I must say that in speakers passive xover with tweeters soft dome is used there is no need to use silver oil. just you will not hear any significant change, and even more- probbaly supreme will sound better than silver oil. but with hard dome tweeters results with supreme silver oil and gold is amazing. after few weeks burn in supreme sound like "harsh electrolitic digital cap" which screams "look how good I sound!" and silver oil sounds like my dac changed to my analog turnable.

[Salas]

I must say that in speakers passive xover with tweeters soft dome is used there is no need to use silver oil. just you will not hear any significant change, and even more- probbaly supreme will sound better than silver oil.

Exactly, I have tested it with cloth tweeters.

[elviukai]

I thought so. I tried many sofdomes from 20 to 800eur/pair and they do not reveal any major changes in sound when replacing caps/cables/sources. thats is not bad or good. just soft dome tweeters do not require expensive components.it would be waste of money. IMHO

[Gooch]

Hi

We did some test with different caps and found that we really liked the mundorf silver oil. Very transparent and open sound stage we then later bypass them with the silver and gold but ended up taking them out sound better without then. I never used the Jantzen but might have to give them a try.

Dave