OK.. am in with that............. but if you had your coils sitting on the truck outside and hard wired them to the house as not to loose any resistance....
I would say... maybe thats over kill... but a good design always wins.....
I would say... maybe thats over kill... but a good design always wins.....
These aint pretty either but for $11 they sure sound great.
And they take current like no one's business - multi HP, AC compressor motors running 24/7.
I like these for power supplies, but for signal it's hard to beat various Russian surplus military PIO and Teflon caps that one can buy on ebay for next to nothing. And they come in hermetically sealed metal cans.
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IMO, nothing beats the unique sound of genuine Verhunzen capacitors.
These caps are rolled in pure, virgin beeswax and use a revolutionary ferric oxide dielectric that is stabilized to the lowest quantum level. Not cheap (starting at $150) but - worth every penny.
I'll have to admit they are a bit ugly.
http://tinyurl.com/2mlbkj
😀
ZAP
These caps are rolled in pure, virgin beeswax and use a revolutionary ferric oxide dielectric that is stabilized to the lowest quantum level. Not cheap (starting at $150) but - worth every penny.
I'll have to admit they are a bit ugly.
http://tinyurl.com/2mlbkj
😀
ZAP
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These are plastic in oil (sloshes around, and even says flammable on can), can is hermetically sealed.
Just because they are for power apps, doesn't mean the don't work well for audio.
Does paper in oil sound better than plastic in oil?
Erik and I were doing some measurements of thin aluminium foils and solid silver and brass plates too, with nearby coils as it goes, but we did find that thicker metal had more effect on induced currents. And high conductance also mattered.
This was a surprise to me. So I am much more open to the idea that thicker foils in capacitors might be a good thing at some measureable level. As it goes I use industrial grade 4.7Uf/ 630V power capacitors, because I have loads. I have some much smaller 250V Solens.
FWIW, a lot of cheap film types have a layer of aluminium so thinly electro-deposited that it is transparent. The downside of high value boutique capacitors is that they are huge, of course.
But, TBH if it's only 3.3uF or 4.7uF, they (630V) are going to be reasonably small. Like these, which are 3.3uF IIRC.
About £5.
Steve, speaking of which, look at what I found! 🙂 Some one apparently has done a little research into this very idea. I found him last night as I was passing out.
Measured Differences Between Capacitors for Audio Applications
It's all above my head, even when I'm sober (rarely) so let me know what you think!
Best,
Erik
ok.. that took some time to get that all sink in and I think most of it just bumped my head and dissipated into the air leaving me as stupid as I was before reading all that..
the only thought I am left with is, buy what you can afford and be happy or you could go to school for 10 or 12 years and figure out why the 500.00 dollar cap sounds better..
and then your best friend likes the 10 dollar one best.?? go figure... Its all about a point of view.
the only thought I am left with is, buy what you can afford and be happy or you could go to school for 10 or 12 years and figure out why the 500.00 dollar cap sounds better..
and then your best friend likes the 10 dollar one best.?? go figure... Its all about a point of view.
Have you seen this one about cap measurements? Over 12,000 thread views and 4,000 downloads of the .pdf file I wrote some time ago and is now dated because of the additions made to the list.
Capacitor voltage rating vs performance - The Kitchen - The Classic Speaker Pages Discussion Forums
Capacitor voltage rating vs performance - The Kitchen - The Classic Speaker Pages Discussion Forums
Thanks for the link. The caps are rated by humans listening. The only way to do that without price bias is blind testing. Were the caps compared via blind testing? If not, the results are unreliable as we tend to hope and think that high price high end fancy components sound better.
Sean Olive made a blind test setup at Harman and he had his testers pick sound quality from visual non blind testing and same speakers blind. The results were what you expect. The visual test had the expensive speakers sounding best. The blind test had the least expensive ones beating or tied with the most expensive.
Same subjects for both tests - just different protocol.
This blind test lab is now the basis for all of Harman's product listening evaluations. They don't use visual non blind anymore.
Holding a $4k gold encrusted Duelund in my hand I would imagine that having an impact on my perceived sound quality.
Obviously, a lot depends on the system's efficiency, where in the circuit it is, how far away you're from it and how loud you play it along with all the variables of the rest of the signal chain, but as shown in the link I posted, the pioneers of electrical and audio engineering got it right the first time and except for the type of fluid used due to environmental issues still measures the best and is still relatively cheap, so unless plastic is really much smaller and/or cheaper, why 'mess with success' and just buy the best unless its size keeps it from being an option instead of agonizing over something that is too much of a variable overall due to how we all perceive sound ~the same, yet not so much between individuals?
GM
Agreed. No surprises here.
Just wish the cap-o-philes would understand better.
Anecdotal opinions vs real science.....DUH?
Oh, I do, I do! I post a picture of my 10uF's for reference. 🙂 These are all 10uF caps, by the way.
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mr are huge and worth more than they cost.
simply wonderfull
ESA is the best compromise less cost but excellent results
I don't call this "better" because "better" in my understanding implies measurably superior performance. I prefer saying that PIO, to my ears, in the midrange, sounds more musically pleasing. And I listen to almost exclusively acoustical music. BTW, in my latest project, for the tweeter, I'm using 3x.47mf to the total of 1.5mf (well, almost, but let's not be anal about these things) Russian Teflon caps to my complete satisfaction. That is, until I get the bug again, as in this cap looks interesting, let's try it out.
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If your oscilloscope is buying, then measurably better makes sense to me.
I have two guiding principles I go by.
1 - Everything that we hear should be measurable, but we don't measure everything that we hear. If science starts with observation, then discounting all observations leads to being unable to progress.
2 - Science without experimentation is no longer science, it's history. Meaning saying we learned everything 30 years ago is another stumbling block.
Now, that doesn't mean any audio capacitor is worth more than $10. What it does mean is that I wish I knew more about what I was hearing because psychosomatic effects don't explain it all.
I look forward to the day 100% of what I hear is available in a GUI that I can hook up to my speakers and dial it in on demand, instead of paying big bucks for coloring the sound with boutique parts (love that word, "boutique"!) and cables. To do that, we need more investigations, not more claims that all knowledge has been gathered.
Best,
Erik
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Ain't that the truth. PIOs tended to win out whenever I tried some comparisons, albeit only on the high[er] efficiency systems, the main problem I found then being that any gains can get rapidly offset by termination losses etc. in the chain. Film & foil seemed a decent alternative -whether it's lower ESR, sheer mass lending a hand (esp. the tin-foil types) or something else -pass.
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