Yeah, perfectly put. I also see only 2 capacitors worth of buying: The mentioned Mundorfs or Soviet K75 or K40.
BTW, radical denial of any sonic differences regarding caps is the "true" religion!!!
And statements like "audiophiles like overblown bass" is complete rubbish. The Mundorfs & Obbligato Coppers for example are rather fast and dry. If you want smeared transients, fat and slow sound than WIMA MKP , Siemens MKP, Vishay MKP are "perfect"....
Ok...ok... I did not meant only these two. But...this is my blind test with the leak st20. The mundorf elevates it to a whole different level. Now... My next upgrade will be the vcap tftf or deuland
My LED biased triode EL84 PP amp is using Jantzen Superior Z caps and I'm very pleased with the performance/price results.
I like copper foil caps rather than tin, like the RelCap PCU. A step above the Mundorf caps IMO.
The Mundorf ZN are much better than the Silver/Oil and Silver/Gold/Oil in my opinion. Film/foil cap almost always beats metallised film cap in my experience. The ZN's have better bass and midrange tone and more dynamics. In power amps ( high level signal ) would also give the nod to Jensen Copper PIO .
Partsexpress Dayton film & foil "bypass" caps are cheap and supposed to be good for tube coupling
I've had good results from Russian PIO caps (the green ones) and Audiophiler MKP (red ones). Purchased on ebay. I think the green Russian Military caps can take a while to burn in. I love building something or recapping an amp, cd player,...switch it on and instantly notice the improvement.
I have no technical education so for most posts...I am ignorant. I am learning gradually thanks to sites like this one and others. Thanks to all you people for sharing your knowledge and experience.
Cheers,
Nigel
I have no technical education so for most posts...I am ignorant. I am learning gradually thanks to sites like this one and others. Thanks to all you people for sharing your knowledge and experience.
Cheers,
Nigel
Folks,
Aren't we missing something here??
SY touched on it in his post #13, then it got suffocated again in the succeeding posts.
A coupling capacitor in any half-decent design should have negligible impedance (resistance) compared to the rest of the circuit. (OK, for pedantic guys .... its impedance will start to show at lowest frequency, but that aside for now). If one takes the quite ordinary case of a 47nF capacitor in series with a 470K grid resistor to common, the -3dB point will lie at 7,2 Hz. (That is where the capacitor impedance is equal to the resistor, but the capacitor signal voltage drop is only 30% because one adds the two in quadrature etc.)
At 20 Hz the capacitor signal drop is 6%
At 200 Hz the capacitor signal drop is 0,07%
At 1 KHz the capacitor signal drop is 0,003%
Now take most capacitors' "shortcomings", diminish them by the above percentages - and some still maintain their construction are crucial to the sound? They are in fact d.c. blockers; urban legends like di-electric absorbtion and smear effect need some rather stiff, if not impossible arguments to be anywhere near true.
(I obviously do not suggest using rubbish. As folks said so-called 'audio grade' and such terms are misleading and a waste of money. But I think there are other far more important aspects of amplifier design that merit attention than comparing one decent capacitor to another for coupling duties. Cap. specs say it all. I have always used polyester/polycarbonate and devoted my energy to other design aspects.)
Aren't we missing something here??
SY touched on it in his post #13, then it got suffocated again in the succeeding posts.
A coupling capacitor in any half-decent design should have negligible impedance (resistance) compared to the rest of the circuit. (OK, for pedantic guys .... its impedance will start to show at lowest frequency, but that aside for now). If one takes the quite ordinary case of a 47nF capacitor in series with a 470K grid resistor to common, the -3dB point will lie at 7,2 Hz. (That is where the capacitor impedance is equal to the resistor, but the capacitor signal voltage drop is only 30% because one adds the two in quadrature etc.)
At 20 Hz the capacitor signal drop is 6%
At 200 Hz the capacitor signal drop is 0,07%
At 1 KHz the capacitor signal drop is 0,003%
Now take most capacitors' "shortcomings", diminish them by the above percentages - and some still maintain their construction are crucial to the sound? They are in fact d.c. blockers; urban legends like di-electric absorbtion and smear effect need some rather stiff, if not impossible arguments to be anywhere near true.
(I obviously do not suggest using rubbish. As folks said so-called 'audio grade' and such terms are misleading and a waste of money. But I think there are other far more important aspects of amplifier design that merit attention than comparing one decent capacitor to another for coupling duties. Cap. specs say it all. I have always used polyester/polycarbonate and devoted my energy to other design aspects.)
Yes, only capacitors with a significant AC voltage across them can affect the sound. In a typical audio amp circuit that means the ones which set the LF and HF rolloffs, plus perhaps those providing frequency compensation for feedback loops.
You mean to say we've been lining up conmen's pockets for years in our persistent delusion, right? 😎
I think that specs and design theory are important. To me the final outcome ie: the sound of a change of capacitor type, value matters the most. If people choose to spend "X" amount on a particular brand, type, etc, then that is ok.
Ideally, I would love to do blind tests on capacitor types, brands, etc. At the moment this is not possible and I know that I am technically incompetent and I like learning by reading posts like this one. Thanks guys.
Cheers,
Nigel
Ideally, I would love to do blind tests on capacitor types, brands, etc. At the moment this is not possible and I know that I am technically incompetent and I like learning by reading posts like this one. Thanks guys.
Cheers,
Nigel
Complete b u l l s h i t, but I understand, you own the truth.
I bet you would like the idea of concentration camps for people hearing differences regarding caps. And burning all the Audiophile magazines and books like in the good old times....
BTW, pity that I do not own the truth but I will defend it.
I was not too happy with the Jantzen Superiors, they were lacking some warmth and rhythmically they were not that irresistible.
There are many ZN fans out there. Maybe it is time to check them out. Transient response is surely extremely good.
Often, yes. Sometimes there are indeed audible differences for coupling because of poor construction of "audiophile" caps, but that's distortion (regardless of whether or not someone may like the distortion).
The human ear can be fooled no doubt about that. But all the million dollar equipment can not replace the human ear. Period.
When thousands of different people all around the world hear the same attributes of a cap than one should take it seriously.
Oh yes, here we go again. Every time no matter what the discussion is you come up with "distortion".
"Maybe you like to hear distortion..."
"It is all about distortion...."
1. The amount of distortion is not that important, more important is the relation between K2, K3, K4, K5 etc.
2. All components distort.
3. Therefore a tube poweramp with 10% distortion can sound much cleaner than a transistor amp with 1% distortion.
4. After all the ear decides and not any meaningless theories.
5. You must love distortion like nothing else cause your tube circuit on your site is build around an ECC81. One of the worst sounding low signal tubes - it was not even designed as an audio tube....
6. If you put a transistor in your tube circuit (no matter where) it will sound more like a transistor amp.
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