The sound of Tantalum?

[Pbassred]

I've been serching here and googleing without success.

What do tants actually sound like compared to (say) polyester? The active electronics in my active bass guitar used them like decoupling caps between the magnetic pickups and FETs, and between peizo pickups and JFETs, but nowhere else.

[anatech]

Hi Pbassred,
In my experience, they sound like bad electrolytic caps. Film caps blow them away.

-Chris

[Pbassred]

I know they were used in Classic Neve Mixers in the 80s. Old ones that were replaced with Electrolytics resulted in a degraded sound.

So what is it? Do they sound (too) sharp. creamy. Or what? Does it tend to compress because of its non linearity?

[jcx]

I beleive what you mean is that lower distortion Al electro caps give "a degraded sound effect"

tantalum caps distort more than Al electros, higher V rating and nonpolar construction give lower measured distortion with Al electros

[anatech]

Hi jcx,
I would have to agree with you on that. Completely.

-Chris

[Pbassred]

Well the right bad can be good.

[Peter Daniel]

I once tried to replace blue tantalums used for coupling in Accuphase T-101 with BG N caps. While I liked BGs in some circuits, in T-101 the change in sound was so much degrading that I quicly installed tantalums back.

[anatech]

Hi Peter,
Ever try some good normal electrolytics? Anything in the 3u3 range and down I tend to use film caps for. I've found that bypassing th elarge 220 ~ 470 uF caps with a 1 uF film helps a lot. Using a 50V electrolytic (or higher - like 63V) is better as well. You can actually measure the dissipation going down as the voltage rating goes up. They typically go up in steps.

-Chris

[Peter Daniel]

Yes, sometime regular elektrolytics can sound better than some exotic caps. You can read about my observations here: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showt...455#post915455

As you can see, for any place in a circuit, there is a specific cap that matches there best.

[lohk]

Interestingly Tantal Elcaps rise so much controvery still: Most engineers and DIYers rate them too low to be even mentioned, others juse them with great success.
Even in the new NAIM preamps and their flagship CD Player the sound is coupled via several (!) tantal caps (the classical blue, whatever brand). Needless to say, that these items sound very good. I have used tantals in most of my preamps since long.

Tantals - as all polar electrolytics - have to have a polarisation voltage to work properly, but then - and only then - can outperform film caps. These are mostly better in bias free settings.

But sometimes - like other elcaps - they get "old" and electically slightly "leaky" , and have to be replaced. I have yet found no trick or recipy to select them for good sound and long life, charges of the same brand are so different.