This is a very internesting subject...But I'am afraid there's no magic formula.. I have found that bigger is not by all means better. Long time ago i had some special caps made, I have for my loudspeaker had a 200 uF copper plated aluminium/polypropylene T-line cap manufactured (terminals at the center of the winding). these were and are the best i have ever heard for my speakers. Now for fun I asked if they could do something similar for an elco for a Power amp, so I had some rather big ones made 27mF also with the terminals in the middle of the winding. (idea was to reduce inductance by the shorter current and charge distances. All's well apart from the fact that thy are beat in all musical terms by 6.8mF Rubycons.
Nico... I do believe in the distributed capacitance to avoid rail from becoming uneven for each of the output devices..And I have this currently playing of a SSA variation that I did with Sonya.
Still have to get the understanding of the size thing... I do believe size matters
Nico... I do believe in the distributed capacitance to avoid rail from becoming uneven for each of the output devices..And I have this currently playing of a SSA variation that I did with Sonya.
Still have to get the understanding of the size thing... I do believe size matters
Hi Hugh,
Would you say that my methodology provides consistent guaranteed results and satisfaction
I've never found it necessary to use High Speed rectifiers. Standard 50A bridges sound just as good to me.
A good amplifier design will have a good PSRR so you are only really striving for a low impedance supply. This is being borne out by those that have got away with relatively low reservior cap values.
Also one 10000uF cap can be VERY different to another. You CAN buy cheapie 10000uF caps but you can also buy VERY expensive ones.
As I said earlier. A bank of reasonable quality low ESR caps will probably be the best of all worlds. If you buy one of the cheapuie E-Bay capacitor boards that take multiples of smaller caps you can play away and listen to the results without having to sell the wife.
Here is one example http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/6-10000uF...485?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4aa48f1d55
There are many boards in many different configurations.
A good amplifier design will have a good PSRR so you are only really striving for a low impedance supply. This is being borne out by those that have got away with relatively low reservior cap values.
Also one 10000uF cap can be VERY different to another. You CAN buy cheapie 10000uF caps but you can also buy VERY expensive ones.
As I said earlier. A bank of reasonable quality low ESR caps will probably be the best of all worlds. If you buy one of the cheapuie E-Bay capacitor boards that take multiples of smaller caps you can play away and listen to the results without having to sell the wife.
Here is one example http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/6-10000uF...485?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4aa48f1d55
There are many boards in many different configurations.
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My point from the outset, mains related ripple is one issue that manifests itself as hum, signal related ripple masks low intensity detail without knowing it. It does not show up measuring the amplifier output or using FFT, it is only detectable by ear if you know what a good amp sounds like.
This afternoon I fooled with two extremes, 80 000uF per rail capacitors versus a single 4700 uF per rail. Now here is were I get shot down. Bass is better with the big caps but on the other hand the small cap allows me to hear so much more music.
Do not for a moment think I am now converted, this is fooling around for a few hours using my normal listening amp. It was easy to swap between the caps as wires are bolt on.
All my caps are from Krummer in Germany (I don't think anyone has heard of these)
Katie&Dad here is a low budget cap.
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Hugh are you sure that it is subjective? Everything we hear, feel see or smell is not subjective. There is nothing nice about smelling a fart.
The power supply may just be the reason why different amps sound different and it may be less subjective or not subjective at all. That is what I would like to establish here, is there an optimal value, and if there is it should be definable and calculable, there can be no black magic, this is science like any other science.
The power supply may just be the reason why different amps sound different and it may be less subjective or not subjective at all. That is what I would like to establish here, is there an optimal value, and if there is it should be definable and calculable, there can be no black magic, this is science like any other science.
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this was exactly the same outcome i had wit my test of 4x27mF vs a single 6.8mF cap...The smaller cap was by far more musically right.. In separated therms the bigger cap boasted more edges in the base..but not more coherence. Could be that we need some kind of singularity in the signal path...could be that Hugh's separation is the way to go.. like in one BIG bank followed by a smaller RC cell close to the output, this way the musics modulation could be handled by one cap/bank...Or the two different modulations can be handled by separate capacitor banks.
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I did try to publish an article on this 6 years ago, but it was not approved, guess the time is now
Why not Harrison it takes persistence to establish a radical idea.I did try to publish an article on this 6 years ago, but it was not approved, guess the time is now
I believe i speak what everyone's thinking right now: what the ****!!??
funny example choice. The smell of a fart is one of the most subjective smells i can think of right now. your farts smell ok to you but horrible to others. farts of others smell horrible to you.
there is quite a bit of subjectivity in music/sound. What sounds pleasant to your is related to what you have been listening to during your life. What sounds interesting to you, musically, though, is a just right (to you) combination of familiarity and surprise. It has to be familiar enough to be reckognizable yet different enough to be interesting.
Dear Nico,
You did inspire to investigate the actual harmonic distortion profile further, apart from any relation to power supplies as I did mention earlier my amp exhibits mostly odd harmonics due to the input stage. I could remember a post here on DIY and a website detailing some JFET input stages and their distortion profiles. So far I can conclude that there are ways to influence the profile while not being statistical simulation flukes. It's interesting, I may post up something for discussion soon
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I believe you're heading down a dead-end with this - my understanding is that you need to take into account a lot factors in the power supply design, the choice of caps is just one of them. To link sound to cap value means holding constant these other factors. And then the rule of thumb becomes narrow in application. I don't see anybody making use of it but the exploration of this topic does make sense in terms of extending the science.
Since music enjoyment is subjective by definition (+1 to comments from tsiros too), it seems a prudent option is to use the empirically derived advice from the 'collective' experience available to us.
And we may have different goals in what we want to achieve in terms of sound, for different types of music in our listening environments. This may translate to having different requirements for how we implement our power supplies too.
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NO that is a FAKE cap. If you are really that strapped for cash you will get no-where.
I've never heard of Krummer. Germany is generally renowned for good engineering so I can't see any reason why not to try them.
The caps I used were NOS from America. Dubilier - they have proved to be excellent value for money.
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thats a good reason to buy them matched and tested
from someone you trust ofcourse.
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