Hi Sakis!
Thanks for an honest approach. By the way, it was not my approach (thanks for the compliment!) but that of basic electronics. The same science that, if wrong, would have resulted in a total mess from your amplifier ... never mind every other electronic device you will ever use. Here one thinks of your tv, cell phone, internet ..... But not to prolong.
Well, this has in fact been done - with no detectable differences! (And please let us not degrade this argument by the weary old "then they must have been deaf" routine. Not saying you do, only once one starts making things personal and taking them personal .... There is a wealth of research on human hearing, its psychology et al on the internet. They explain and experimentally verify it far better than I can ever do.) Also mind, nobody spoke of sub-standard components.
You repeat the term "signal path" - I have apparently not succeeded in making it clear that there is no 'signal path' - only signal circuits.
I do not want to expand this into an argument; I am not here to win arguments - I in fact simply asked a question. But again by simple mathematical analysis - we do listen to simple AC signals - in fact pure sine waves. Just a huge host of them at any moment. Any audible signal, however involved (mind I say audible, thus up to the very low frequency limit of nominally 20kHz) was shown by a mathematician named Fourier to be capable fo being broken up into so many elements of specific frequencies and amplitudes. This is the way e.g. electronic instruments are designed.
Yet again, no desire to elicit argument (not with Christmas time approaching anyway!) Just trying to show that one cannot respect electronic principles at one moment and discard them a moment later when things "seem" to - er - seem that way.
Regards!
Thanks for an honest approach. By the way, it was not my approach (thanks for the compliment!) but that of basic electronics. The same science that, if wrong, would have resulted in a total mess from your amplifier ... never mind every other electronic device you will ever use. Here one thinks of your tv, cell phone, internet ..... But not to prolong.
Well, this has in fact been done - with no detectable differences! (And please let us not degrade this argument by the weary old "then they must have been deaf" routine. Not saying you do, only once one starts making things personal and taking them personal .... There is a wealth of research on human hearing, its psychology et al on the internet. They explain and experimentally verify it far better than I can ever do.) Also mind, nobody spoke of sub-standard components.
You repeat the term "signal path" - I have apparently not succeeded in making it clear that there is no 'signal path' - only signal circuits.
I do not want to expand this into an argument; I am not here to win arguments - I in fact simply asked a question. But again by simple mathematical analysis - we do listen to simple AC signals - in fact pure sine waves. Just a huge host of them at any moment. Any audible signal, however involved (mind I say audible, thus up to the very low frequency limit of nominally 20kHz) was shown by a mathematician named Fourier to be capable fo being broken up into so many elements of specific frequencies and amplitudes. This is the way e.g. electronic instruments are designed.
Yet again, no desire to elicit argument (not with Christmas time approaching anyway!) Just trying to show that one cannot respect electronic principles at one moment and discard them a moment later when things "seem" to - er - seem that way.
Regards!
Who said it can't be done? The double blind test should be rather easy to pass. Just no one is interested in doing it and publishing the results, which nobody would read anyway.
I didn't say it couldn't be done.
There is too much at stake for anyone with profile in High end HiFi to be a part of such experiment. Some of us have actually tried it, and been baffeled of what our findings were. As long as we knew what was going on, wa all heard every little detail around the phenomenum around tweaking with caps.
But as soon as we performed a double blind test, we missed seriously on what we so clearly heard just minutes earlier.
But I guess Yoe mean that You would easily pass theese tests?
Why didn't guys like Per Abrahamsen, Olle Misch and Erling Neby pass a test like this when confronted with a double blindtest on speaker cables some years ago?
They all "heard" significant differences in all "open" tests, but failed major as soon as the test went double blind.
Just something to think about.
After all, the most of us want the true HiFi sound, don't we?
There is a big difference between cables and capacitors. I don't see how results from cable testing gives us any conclusions about coupling capacitors.
Anyway, I'm just a hobbyist like most here, and have nothing at stake. If I set up the double blind test with quality sound equipment and a certain selection of music, I should be able to get better than 10/12 in the test which gives a 95% confidence in the result.
Question is, if I spend 50 hours doing this thing, as a mere unknown hobbyist in the audio world, who would even take my results seriously? What would be the point?
Years ago, I set up a double blind test on myself and many others showing that harmonic distortion at 3.0% is inaudible for both 2nd order and 3rd order. Yet people here still assume that 0.1% distortion in an amplifier is too high. My results simply carried no weight.
Apparently not! The catch being in quite an inconsistency found by Cyril Bateman in the same type of capacitor even of the same make.
But perhaps you are inquiring about polyester per se. The answer must then be: Yes - despite the wisdom by some that polyester should be avoided because of dielectric absorption, smearing and whatever else.
Again, as said before, one cannot just take one factor without considering the application. Yes, in many tests polyester capacitors are shown as inferior to e.g. polypropylene and other dielectric materials. But to what degree - what does that mean in practical terms?
Most of the often rumoured and only sometimes tested shortcomings may apply to filters only, where there is a signal voltage across the capacitor. In coupling capacitors as said before, the component is (or should be at least) a comparative short at signal frequencies. Bateman found figures of some 20dB worse than e.g. good ceramics. But those were already some -100dB, and with an applied test ac of 3V across the capacitor if I recall. Summarising, e.g. a 100nF coupling capacitor feeding a 30V signal to a next-stage resistor of 1Meg (typical tube coupling), will drop only 30mV at 500 Hz. That is 100x less than the Bateman test voltage, giving a 100* audible effect. This is orders of magnitude below audibility, etc. etc.
Thus it doesn't matter. One is of course free to put in expensive components; I have done so for appearance sake! Only let us not expect audible value for money.
As Tandbergeren asked: Why do folks swear by audible differences when they know what they are listening to, only to loose that ability during blind tests minutes afterwards.
Again I would encourage consulting the internet regarding capacitor tests, in particular the epic series done by Cyril Bateman a decade ago. Going through all listed there will take a few hours, but will be informative and avoid barbed dialogue often based on unsupported or poorly supported testimony.
Geocities site is down, but....
There is: Capacitor Sound
And Capacitor Characteristics
And more sources: http://www.proaudiodesignforum.com/forum/php/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=153
Freax (did I spell that correctly - careful now 
),
That's it. The Elliot is shorter to read and nicely sums up everything.
Luke,
As seen in the mentioned articles, you can certainly use them. Just mind about the physical size as Rod Elliot said; if used at a low signal point they may pick up noise.
),That's it. The Elliot is shorter to read and nicely sums up everything.
Luke,
As seen in the mentioned articles, you can certainly use them. Just mind about the physical size as Rod Elliot said; if used at a low signal point they may pick up noise.
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