The UKW are not that bad. They are just a little bit colored and a little soft. However, I just recently have figured out that you may want this in some equipment. If the circuit are very much solid state op amps type stages without any Class A analog, then the KW may work better. The UVR might be a little too harsh.
However, I stand by my opinion that UKA is just a bad capacitor. I would rather use the UVZ 105 degree cap instead.
OK, so I replaced 4 capacitors C361 C362 (and C161 C162 on other channel) to UKA capacitors.
You can see the scheme here in first post:
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/nad-c326bee-idle-currents-problem.371840/#post-6847605
Currently I hear no difference in sound on my base system, need to hear them with better speakers.
ainami, do you expect to hear some differences (based on location of these capacitors in the circuit) ?
Maybe design is good enough and does not depend on quality of these capacitors?
You can see the scheme here in first post:
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/nad-c326bee-idle-currents-problem.371840/#post-6847605
Currently I hear no difference in sound on my base system, need to hear them with better speakers.
ainami, do you expect to hear some differences (based on location of these capacitors in the circuit) ?
Maybe design is good enough and does not depend on quality of these capacitors?
@xykapec - I had to drill down into your schematic a bit. These are what I would call general compensation caps in other parts of the circuit. In my experience, these compensation caps do not usually have a big impact on the sound, but I have not done extensive testing on this. I generally use FG caps for these types of positions.
In my experience, the biggest impact is when you use electrolytic caps directly on a DC power supply line. But other positions can have a subtle influence as well.
In my experience, the biggest impact is when you use electrolytic caps directly on a DC power supply line. But other positions can have a subtle influence as well.
Do you really expect all these so called experts in caps sound to tell you the right thing to do? A good engineer will make use of the worst caps on the market with good results while a bad one can't figure out what to do with the best ones...In the last 15 years i think i heard the most absurd things about any capacitor on the market.Unless they are defective having too much leakage or just too poor due to time spent on the shelf or used for several decades , most electrolitic capacitors will find their place in any analog audio circuit. I have a batch of about 100 bipolar 100uf/16v nichicon muse made in 1990 that spent litteraly 20 years on the shelf before i bought them and i still use them in circuits where they perform briiantly right from their first minute.The most important quality a capacitor can have is how much can it spend unused withought loosing its properties and the best of them can preserve their properties for at least 3...5 decades withought beig used! Well many of us died long before that...
Let me give you a very cheap advice: buy the cheapest capacitors from a reputed seller that won't sell you fake or defective capacitors right out of your first batch of 10 capacitors and use them in your circuits.Improve your circuits until you get the best results, then replace them with well known audiophile capacitors and then draw your conclusions.It's the best practice any proffessional would do.Lowest leakage capacitors are the solid electrolitics ones and i have some made in 1970 working until today as they were new, but they are used only in coupling or decouping circuits where dc potential is important, nowhere else.Usually solid electrolitic caps are also low esr...it's their side effect...if it puts your circuit in danger of becoming unstable put it in series with a dmsl resistor or inductance and make it usable.Don't trust anyone telling tantalum caps are bad for coupling or decoupling audio cause i can show you circuits making real time fft in x-ray or mri equipmet that costs milions of dollars and people can litterally die if the results of these high tech medical equipment are wrong! Ask a real proffessionsl in the medical equipment field and they will tell you everything about capacitors .If they work at a few megaherts, believe me, they'll be just fine in the audio range.Whe you see best akm dacs on usual audiophile soundcards you might see thrm surrounded by usual audiophile cspacitors.When you see them on 5000 dollars sound and video cards for tv audio graphic stations they're surrounded only by tantalum and oscon solid caps ...That tells a lot about all the marketing BS...
Thank you for your input 🙂 I agree with you on many points you mentioned here.
Just wanted to clarify the situation I am in.
I don't develop any new circuits and I am not even an amateur in electronics (when it comes to work with hands).
I own an electrical engineer degree (from 20 years ago though), so I can read and understand some schematics, etc.
All I do now is trying to solve problems in my audio gear (as a hobby) by replacing tired components.
Now, about source of my "absurd things about any capacitor".
Previously I had experience with replacing capacitors in crossover of speakers.
And I heard that different capacitors (from cheap 1-2$ to relatively expensive of 14$) have great impact on sound.
This difference really blew my mind.
To make sure I am not mistaken (placebo, etc), I let my wife listen to speakers with different capacitors inside and tell me her impressions.
And input from her was very very similar to mine.
If you want I can give you exact setups (speakers model and capacitors I tried).
Old designs use electrolytic capacitors with relatively high ESR (besides many other properties).
So, when I come and try to replace such capacitor with modern electrolytic capacitor I fail to get good sound because new capacitor has really low ESR.
Placing some resistor in series with modern electrolytic capacitor is not helping much and I still have bad sound.
Replacing works good only when I put very similar (by esr or type) capacitor.
And this is because the original capacitor ESR was taken into account in original design.
So, when replacing/designing one needs to understand which kind of capacitor must be used and why.
And I am not there currently (not sure if I will ever be).
That's why I think that opinions of people like ainami have value.
If you test old equipment you have no ideea what esr the old capcitors had decades ago...if the esr of those caps was taken into consideration( i kinda doubt that for 30...50 years old equipment) then it's a great possibility that 30 years ago you'd have a very different experience listening to the off the shelf audio equipment...
I have a follow up to the two comments I made above. First, I would like to retract both comments. The problems I had with the KW cap were actually caused by using a Nichicon UPM capacitor in several other areas that interact with this analog circuit (including a helper cap in a shunt/zenner regulator circuit). The UPM caps have excellent ripple current, but they are very slow responding. This caused a slowdown in all areas, including digital signal feeds, which had a cascading effect on the rest of the analog circuits.
The KW cap is a very good cap in all areas. Other caps may work better for digital power supplies, but KW is excellent for all positions in analog circuits. The best cap for DC power line filter on analog is still going to be KZ. The best cap for main power supply is still Cornell 380LX (snap-in only) with KW as a second place.
The VR caps are actually very harsh and don't sound good at all. I have discontinued using them.
Apologies for stealing thread.
I'm just doing recap on my NAD 3400.
And haven't red so much about which cap to use where, so I went for nichicon audio caps from digikey.
Ukw and ufg series. And just replace all caps with this new ones all over.
Can't be that wrong I'll guess. Some of the old caps measured way out of spec.
To off the low rail filter caps , I changed from 10 "to 15000uf. Might give it more pwr reserve...?
Haven't finished yet, but hope it will sound somehow better or different in a better way...
Tnx
I'm just doing recap on my NAD 3400.
And haven't red so much about which cap to use where, so I went for nichicon audio caps from digikey.
Ukw and ufg series. And just replace all caps with this new ones all over.
Can't be that wrong I'll guess. Some of the old caps measured way out of spec.
To off the low rail filter caps , I changed from 10 "to 15000uf. Might give it more pwr reserve...?
Haven't finished yet, but hope it will sound somehow better or different in a better way...
Tnx