Another recommendation for the V-Cap Odams! I recently replaced Mundorf silver/oil caps with Odams in my Bottlehead Mainline headphone amp. The improvement in SQ was way beyond my expectation. I also replaced Wima MKP coupling caps in my Schiit Saga preamp with Odams. Another big improvement! You can't go wrong with these. They are affordable and quite small compared with other premium caps at their values.
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So what is your definition of "boutique"? And where is that line drawn? Like with coupling caps, is that anything that costs over $1.75? Is $12 a "boutique" part? How about filtering caps? Is an electrolytic cap over what a $0.75 made in china part a "boutique" part? Same with output transformers, are Electra Print, Lundahl and Hashimoto transformers "boutique" and everyone should just use a Hammond?
The reason I ask is I have been blasted for using a $12 part in one of my amps as being "boutique" and just had to laugh after seeing these same people praising $1200 interconnects.
Looks like you buy them from the manufacturer: https://www.v-cap.com/odam-capacitors.php
Don't look at the prices though. 😉
jeff
I believe it is proven beyond doubt that capacitors affect sound and cause coloration. The choice of particular capacitor is not only subjective, but it depends on many other aspects of reproduction chain. It is like choice of barbeque sauce, alongside with other ingredients, to satisfy your taste. For this reason, recommendations from others may be of questionable value for me because it is my source, my amplifier, my speakers, and, ultimately, my ears that really matter.
Because capacitors cause colorations, the best course of action is to avoid them, whenever possible.
Because capacitors cause colorations, the best course of action is to avoid them, whenever possible.
Is it? How and by whom?
What has been proven by Cyril Bateman and others is that capacitors distort, but as long as you avoid the very worst types (class 2 ceramic and tantalum), the distortion of AC coupling capacitors is usually negligible compared to other distortion sources. You can use polypropylene, polystyrene or class 1 ceramic capacitors if you want to be absolutely certain that capacitor distortion is negligible.
Walter Jung and Richard Marsh have shown that dielectric absorption affects the step response of an RC high-pass filter (an AC coupling capacitor and load resistor form a high-pass filter with a subsonic cut-off frequency), but the difference in step response between a high-pass with a very non-ideal capacitor and an ideal capacitor is much smaller than the difference between an ideal high-pass and none at all.
Fortunately, capacitors with very low distortion usually also have very low dielectric absorption.
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Unfortunately, this goes on all across the internet..... endlessly.
The mysterious capacitor debate.
It keeps the children occupied.
Harmonic distortion in capacitors isn't a problem, non- harmonic distortion is. Capacitor acts like electrostatic speaker and condenser microphone at the same time: it vibrates in response to AC signal, and picks up its own vibration. It can be demonstrated in a simple experiment: connect capacitor to amplifier output, cup it against your ear, play music and listen to capacitor distortion directly.
Andy - did you have personal experience of transformer coloration? What was the amplifier and coupling transformer?
If you set up a psychological experiment where group A was in one room and group B was in another, and group B were asked to listen to a number of different capacitors and mark Y/N whether they could tell a difference between them, then you would imagine group B results would show a mixture of Y and N. If you then asked group A to guess the exact results of group B without ever having access to the listening room you would come to the conclusion this was an experiment in paranormal communication.
By countless people during the last 50 years who tried different capacitors in different circuits and experienced changes in tone attributable to capacitors. Dismissing this vast body of experience would be nihilistic.
Mechanical ringing at multiple frequencies, excitation of multiple resonances, emphasis or attenuation at certain frequencies.
I did "singing" tests with all different kinds of capacitors. Most types sing, some more, some less, some disgustingly, some more benign. The two types that didn't sing were silver mica and paper in oil.
One way is exciting local resonance by a signal of close frequency. Or it could be any single frequency exciting multiple resonances. Like speaker watewaterfall.
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