Good Coupling and Decoupling Capacitors

[fmak]

What's your experience on 1 to 100 uF electrolytic coupling capacitors - BG, Nihicon, Philips ? Assume space dopes not allow for film types.

OSCONs are excellent for digital circuit decoupling. What's your experience of their sound when used in analogue circuit decoupling?

[jh6you]

I have no experience, but I have heard in this forum that Black Gates are the best. Buy BG and you would get the best quality or, if not the best, the quality at least never worse than the others.

I hope this info will help.

[khush]

I have used oscons in analogue circuits and found them to be an improvement on cheap electro's, better clarity at HF particularly. I used them as replacements in an old mid price nad amp and aiwa Cd player so not really a test of their ultimate qualities.
In the recent EWorld articles they had higher distortion than other types.
Personally I prefer elna silmics which have a more distinct signature, some may find them dull. They are getting harder to get in UK, audiocom have dropped them. I bought a load from here a few years ago at very reasonable prices.
www.geocities/audiograde/

regards
Khush

[MIKET]

www.geocities/audiograde/ This thread is dead

[khush]

Sorry link should be
http://www.geocities.com/audiograde/
Khush

[Peter Daniel]

I'm using 4.7 BG N as coupling caps and they can compete with MIT, Hovlands, Siemens MKV. A bit of exageration in top and and a bit of lacking in bass clarity, but overall, not bad at all. Less resolutuion when comparing to MIT RTX (which I still prefer).

I also compared Nichicon Gold (33u) and BG N (4.7u) as decoupling in OPA627 output stage, and Nichicon provided much softer and laid back sonics comparing to BG. I'm not sure if it was because of the value difference or the caps type.

[rmgvs]

Maybe I have a non-standard suggestion. Breaking the taboos.

I am very satisfied with and really surprised by some cheap Philips electrolytic cap's. I used 10 mF 63 V (blue types) several times when building prototypes of very classy amps. The sound was very good: a little bit of colouration in the low-mids, but very crisp sound. On one pcb I soldered 5 different coupling cap's from WIMA MKS, ERO MKP etc to this Philips caps (just for the experiment, I could switch between caps by re-/de-soldering a few points). I dare not tell which one I am using most of the time!

Also good results with Sprague types, also very cheap.

Must be that production techniques have been dramatically bettered during the last decades. In the seventies I remember to have heard big differences in quality between good film caps and electrolytics in the signal path.

The only thing that betters the cheap Philipses are paper-in-oil Jensen or Audio Note types (when price and space is not the issue).

Well: nobody will believe me anyway.

I never tried BG's. If somebody sends me a couple I will try it alongside the Philipses and other types I installed!

Rudy

[sam9]

If we are talking about DC blocking caps, I avoid the issue where possible by using metal-film or poly. Up to 10uF the size is reasonable.

If you are taking about providing a path to get HF out of the power rails, I use ceramic because of the greater bandwidth and because I doin't care what it does to a "signal" (noise, hum, etc) I just want to get rid of.

This leaves me with few if any instances where where an aluminum electrolytic is in the signal path.

[analog_sa]

The only thing that betters the cheap Philipses are paper-in-oil Jensen or Audio Note types ).

Well: nobody will believe me anyway.

I never tried BG's

Do you notice the contradiction in your words? And why would anyone send you anything? You reckon guys here are into sending free samples? Or would just jump at the opportunity to finally have their BGs profressionally compared to blue Philips?

[jean-paul]

I am very satisfied with and really surprised by some cheap Philips electrolytic cap's. I used 10 mF 63 V (blue types) several times when building prototypes of very classy amps.

You are right in some way about the blue BC caps. BTW they're not called Philips anymore for about three years now IIRC so you'll know when you buy Philips branded ones that they're old. Choose BC when they have them.

What matters is what series you buy ( they're all blue !! ). The 037 and its somewhat Long Life brother 038 are very good. Series 135 is not good sounding although LL, Low ESR, 105 degrees etc. Certainly avoid series 097, they have the shortest lifetime of them all. The series name is printed on them.

Nevertheless there are better brands/types out there. Panasonic FC, Elna RJH, BG NX-HiQ etc. They are only just a bit more expensive. OSCON is king for digital gear. Price/quality ratio of BC is very high and they almost never fail practically.