To me they look suspiciously like an Audio Note Cap but in a different wrapper.
I have tried the Audio Notes Copper in Oil. The experience with them will NEVER allow me to buy an "Audio" grade cap again. They were simply awful. They totally smothered the sound.
Remember this is just my opinion. To have them alter the sound so much to my ears there is definitely something going on inside those things and whatever it is I don't like it.
Voxxonline if your have not tried an off the shelf MKP Cap you owe it to yourself to try some. That's my best advise.
I have tried the Audio Notes Copper in Oil. The experience with them will NEVER allow me to buy an "Audio" grade cap again. They were simply awful. They totally smothered the sound.
Remember this is just my opinion. To have them alter the sound so much to my ears there is definitely something going on inside those things and whatever it is I don't like it.
Voxxonline if your have not tried an off the shelf MKP Cap you owe it to yourself to try some. That's my best advise.
Hi - don't know if it's already been mentioned in the thread but here's a comparison of many capacitors including the Duelund types:
Humble Homemade Hifi
Best regards,
Jesper
Humble Homemade Hifi
Best regards,
Jesper
I've tried about fifty capacitors on signal level. Jensens are not as good as the Duelund Alexander, or the stock BAT capacitors. I know one difference is the lead wires. Jensen uses silver lead wires, which I believe degrades the sound. I've tried quite a few lead wires, and silver or silver plated never sound as good as copper. The Duelund Alexanders are also two or three times larger in size than the Jensens. To make a long story short, the Duelund Alexanders are in the top seven, out of the fifty I have listened to. Be aware that the best sounding capacitors for signal, are not the best for speakers.
Another one is "Orgy of Capacitors". They did tests on speakers, signal, and power supplies. Interesting results!
Humblehomemadehifi tested on speakers only, but have many types, even ones of the same brand. All good info!
I used Alexanders .22uf as coupling caps in my SFC-1 PP from Sonic Frontiers. The best thing I have done with that amp and the system last year. I find these caps are exceptional for the price. There are others that are cheaper but I am not sure they will be better. The tonal balance is wonderful: Soundstage improved, transients were clearer within a space, warm or rather darker background. Nothing lost in the sound spectrum and the amp is lively. The caps are a good investment.
Top end is refined with no edgy character, excellent realism and 'immediacy' on well-recorded instruments and voices. If you are patient you can source them for slightly less.
I am super happy.
Top end is refined with no edgy character, excellent realism and 'immediacy' on well-recorded instruments and voices. If you are patient you can source them for slightly less.
I am super happy.
Those were hardly tests, and would be far better regarded as "euphoric subjective impressions of casual listening". I have noticed over the past few years that far fewer people are willing to perform a true test using balanced method, which would place the results far from the scope of potential biases or the affects of outside factors. Lesser still, if the practice or scientific methods in testing. When I was in middle school, we were introduced to scientific method, but it seems like people have completely forgotten the importance of results that can be compared to each other on an equal basis. Testers should be applying sine and beat signals and varied dynamic waveforms, like audio, and try testing the components in a manner that also works to reflect the parameters & conditions that the component will really operate in. There is honestly no point in testing a winter snow tire in the summer. I simply have yet to see this done, but subjectivists or empiricists in regards to audio component evaluation.
A few years back, I was reviewing a wire comparison that was completed as a PhD thesis paper by an MIT student. His conclusion was that all wire performed similarly with audio signals. The faults in his analysis were evident right from the beginning, as he was not testing the wire under the conditions presented by a real-world audio system- a source and load impedance that would correspond to real gear. One particular case of interest for me, would have been to drive the wire with a moderately high output impedance, similar to that of the tube preamp with very little parasitic output capacitance, and a capacitive Jfet load of common nominal impedance. The student never even tested the wires with a dynamic signal, just steady tones. I thought that was rather peculiar, as measuring and comparing a dynamic signal via an audio analyzer is not trivial at all, unless they are using one that is thirty years old. The noise differences found in the wire's insulation varied a maximum magnitude of 15 decibels, and this was included in the thesis. Interestingly, nothing was made of it and it was left unmentioned.
It's the unfounded claims, improper testing procedures, omissions uninformed individuals and their net generalizations like that gave science and subjectivity bad names, thus setting the pendulum of choice into motion. This later created the objective skeptics vs anti-science groups in audio that we see today. There were many wire comparisons and oddly, not a single date, location or individual has been accounted for. Another one was Roger Russel, former employee of McIntosh Labs, USA. Aka: Blue Meters. His site is old an outdated, where he makes claims that all wires have equal dielectric properties, and we know today - as we knew then - that this just isn't the case. Sadly, the facts are swept under the rug and the high school text-book objectivists believe these kinds of claims without investigating it themselves, completely ignorant to the advances and parameters that we know today. You can see here, that both groups, the subjectivists and objectivists, base their opinion on nothing more than, well, opinion. No real testing comes from either.
That brings about an interesting memory, as I encountered an electronic technician who stated that the human ear could not detect distortion that was 45 decibels below a primary signal. This claim is very common, even the owner of Harbeth has stated that bothering to lower distortion below -45dB is bad engineering, to which I strongly disagree. The first interesting question I would ask is: How's ears were being tested? It has been shown that people of varying provenance and ethnic origins actually hear differently. This is true in terms of threshold, sensitivity curve, and frequency response. My second question would be: What were the environment conditions of the test? Speakers, headphones, earphones, or some other form of stimulus? My experience is that some people can hear various or specific distortions as much as 65 decibels below a primary signal, be that tones, beats, or dynamic waveforms such as music. No one hears it all equally, just different. My hearing response rises 5 decibels in a shelving-like manner from 500Hz to 1kHz, and another 6 decibels from 4 to 8 kHz from the accepted norm. My hearing threshold is 0 decibels attenuation in the 2kHz region, and -5 decibels above 4kHz according to my ENT. Going negative means that you are very sensitive, and this region is mostly populated by younger children and teenagers, which is sensitive due to a thin basilar membrane. Some people's hearing drops as much as 8 decibels above 11kHz, and others have a hearing threshold of 30dB attenuation, which is insensitive. My mother can hear quite well for her age in the high frequency regions, but she can't hear midrange very well. Sometimes it's nerves, others it's the mass of the moving parts, or the shape, but everyone has slightly to sometimes largely different hearing parameters. So, how does one go about claiming that all people cannot detect distortion 45 decibels below the primary stimulus signal? They cannot, and any such claims are the outcome of obstinate viewpoints.
I recall one gentleman who bounced around from site to site telling great tales of the wonders to be heard from his $20 eBay Vifa tweeters. His "test" method - and I cringe when people call subjective impression such a thing - was faulted, as it involved him playing completely different music and him walking around the room and listening at random points. Word such as bloom, aire, richness, texture and essence were very common in his writing. That is not a test, but people take his word for what he writes as though it was the infallible truth and run out to buy this stuff. Not a smidgeon of real science to support the claims. Bloom and aire really are a peak in response, either modes, spurious noise, build up of the primary stimulus or initial, depending on the design. They could be the result of improper soldering modifying the impedance of that portion of the circuit, altering the turnover or passband frequency. Texture, richness and essence could be oscillation, and I have seen a fair share of that in Chinese tube amplifiers. I encountered another who make posts like this, too, and I met him in person and heard his systems. They sounded horrid, but to him, the brand name Wima, Orange Drops, pretty colored carbon composition resistors and other parts convinced him that nothing else could compare. Meanwhile, he like many others was using the lowest cost eBay-sourced semiconductors or the claimed new old stock untested tubes in his buffers. I find it discernibly suspect that people can put serious money into fashion parts and will choose to use the cheapest unsatisfactory parts, circuit design and layout where it really counts. The other problem was that he didn't have very much experience in better designed gear. He was a chronic parts changer that kept the brand owners in their upscale condos.
Years ago, I myself bought into the audiophile boutique banter. I later came to learn that a source speaker, preamp, power supply, power amplifier and everything else was more than the raw sum of its parts. Obviously, higher precision and quality made parts do work better and this can - in a properly designed and layed out circuit - translate into better sound quality, but you have to make sure that those parts are better, and not a step backwards. Many of these highly priced components have lousy tolerances and are smaller capacitors with molded epoxy surrounding them. The carbon composition resistors are noisy, and chances are, the point of your design was to progress beyond past noisy ones. If it takes glossy ads and pretty colored re-branded parts to allow a design to sound good to an individual, there is a serious problem. Their diatribe may be nothing more than bias, because they haven't heard any better circuit designs.
To those who do use good parts in proper design that can be backed by good performance, that makes all the difference.
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Koiky wrote: "To those who do use good parts in proper design that can be backed by good performance, that makes all the difference." I will only add...To make sure that parts are better and not just a bit different, on has to use their ears.
Modern recording engineers are try to give the audience the feeling for how instruments really sound, but what they think the hearer will enjoy hearing. This is also true of tastes for gear.
Modern recording engineers are try to give the audience the feeling for how instruments really sound, but what they think the hearer will enjoy hearing. This is also true of tastes for gear.
By the way, you noticed that the lowest cost of their wares gave me what I needed for my pp amp. I must say that Chris Johnston at Parts Connection had suggested Jupiter Bees Wax Caps ,but he had a sale going on. I went against the Mundorf Zns, because I understood them to be not cool but perhaps tending so.
Be very careful with placement of Jupiter caps they MELT..I know they have improved the design however keep them away from heat and not direct onto tube sockets..ie tag strip with a wire connection to the socket.
Also be aware that heat builds up in chassis..a close cap is the Robert Hovland supercap..it stands up better to heat as well..YMMV
Strange I think they sound better after a while..
Regards
M. Gregg
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Jupiters shouldn't be used as interstage coupling capacitors since they also leak: current, not bee's wax (though they can do that too) and a few uA through a 1.0M resistor can upset Q-points at the very least, and can red plate driven stages at worse.
Jupiter capacitors are made with the very latest 19th century technology. There's a reason why so much research went into the development of better dielectrics for capacitors. These are pure audio snake oil, and priced accordingly. You can get way better capacitors for way less.
I have no use for them.
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