As transformer winding insulation? It's always fun comparing impressions to see if patterns can be teased out. The reason I ask is, at least in the form of denuded Russian Teflon caps, mine is somewhat the opposite. In coupling positions they sound (from memory) a bit dark and very resolving, to a point. Instead of noisy at very low levels the caps almost act like a gate. The aural impression is reverb and ambience fade to a point and then just 'turn off'.
So many euphemisms, so little desire to antagonize the moderators. =D
No, not as transformer insulation. Teflon film is not particularly robust. With a metalizer added or wound with an evenly distributed copper foil it is apparently fine. Also good for fine wire hand wound toroids. Not the situation we find with coil wires and no reason to use it, with Nomex paper around.
That sudden drop off is typical of a lot of the film plastics when used in signal transformers. I am not willing to say I know why either, since their dielectric constants are all over the place. Mylar is another one that looses low level information as is Kapton. I have never had sheet nylon to work with, just the pulped threads smashed into paper, which does not loose this info, so I cannot speak about it.
I know many many snakes I think should be rendered for their oil....
Bud
That sudden drop off is typical of a lot of the film plastics when used in signal transformers. I am not willing to say I know why either, since their dielectric constants are all over the place. Mylar is another one that looses low level information as is Kapton. I have never had sheet nylon to work with, just the pulped threads smashed into paper, which does not loose this info, so I cannot speak about it.
I know many many snakes I think should be rendered for their oil....
Bud
Bas,
You've certainly started a poll that should get some "passionate" discussion going. I do know that caps sound different, but haven't had a whole lot of opportunity to compare exotica so decline to voice an opinion.
dave
You've certainly started a poll that should get some "passionate" discussion going. I do know that caps sound different, but haven't had a whole lot of opportunity to compare exotica so decline to voice an opinion.
dave
Tell you all what, if *I* carry it, I'll pay some magazine guru to say it's the best and anyone who doesn't use it is a bolshevik weenie 😀
I'm leaning toward "Paper in Cat Pee" capacitors, since it's green for the environment and there's a never ending supply.
Oh, I chose "Dumb Poll" 😀
I'm leaning toward "Paper in Cat Pee" capacitors, since it's green for the environment and there's a never ending supply.
Oh, I chose "Dumb Poll" 😀
Geek,
How bout snake skin and that wee? We can use the snake oil to rub on the air molecules to make them more coherent. Probably won't be able to process it fast enough to keep up with the supply side economics involved though....and, we can leave the trees to their carbon sequestration activities, so green weeners all round.
Bud
How bout snake skin and that wee? We can use the snake oil to rub on the air molecules to make them more coherent. Probably won't be able to process it fast enough to keep up with the supply side economics involved though....and, we can leave the trees to their carbon sequestration activities, so green weeners all round.
Bud
Hi Bud,
Oh good! A "Special Edition" version of the c4t-P caps 😀
Mercedes payments have to be made 😉
Cheers!
Oh good! A "Special Edition" version of the c4t-P caps 😀
Mercedes payments have to be made 😉
Cheers!
Cat Pee is a strong electrolyte, so these caps will be a good discussion material for a completely new thread. 🙂
Like many of us tweakers I once set on making my own capacitors. For lack of high quality cat fluid I tried liquid paper. It contains large amounts of an inferior substance, titanium dioxide, which sports a humble dielectric constant of only 100. Having a bunch of old and ugly electrolytic caps, I figured I could cut them out and use their aluminum foils. Which I then proceeded to paint with Papermate liquid paper, allowed to dry, rolled nicely together, and measured to roughly .33uF. Had I had cat pee, I can only dream of the caps I could have enjoyed in my phono stage.
Disclaimer: no cats or snakes were harmed in any of my experiments.
Disclaimer: no cats or snakes were harmed in any of my experiments.
Okay, fun's over, now we argue.
I will unequivocally state that given a transformer with low enough voltages, to match the dielectric withstand of "natrual" materials, ie a DAC to world buffer transformer, that the use of "natural" dielectrics would sound noticeably different from the same transformer made with typical film plastics. I will go on to state that the sound would be more complete, but with less "colorful" dynamic emphasis.
Depending upon the plastic film, I would expect an information floor cut off, an incomplete signal tranform. The only man made film plastic material that I think will perform at the micro dynamic levels of paper, cotton and silk, is polyethylene. The only man made material that I think will outperform the natural materials, is a particular type of Nomex. Though, common garden variety 410 will come very close to matching these "natural" materials, in audible sonic characteristics. All three of the man made materials that will meet or exceed the natural materials for information, will exhibit more colorful musical emphasis. Which may not sound natural, depending upon the rest of the signal chain, which will have dielectric materials that do strip off these micro dynamic signal elements, unless there is a proper poured ground plane involved, or a substitute.....
Bud
I will unequivocally state that given a transformer with low enough voltages, to match the dielectric withstand of "natrual" materials, ie a DAC to world buffer transformer, that the use of "natural" dielectrics would sound noticeably different from the same transformer made with typical film plastics. I will go on to state that the sound would be more complete, but with less "colorful" dynamic emphasis.
Depending upon the plastic film, I would expect an information floor cut off, an incomplete signal tranform. The only man made film plastic material that I think will perform at the micro dynamic levels of paper, cotton and silk, is polyethylene. The only man made material that I think will outperform the natural materials, is a particular type of Nomex. Though, common garden variety 410 will come very close to matching these "natural" materials, in audible sonic characteristics. All three of the man made materials that will meet or exceed the natural materials for information, will exhibit more colorful musical emphasis. Which may not sound natural, depending upon the rest of the signal chain, which will have dielectric materials that do strip off these micro dynamic signal elements, unless there is a proper poured ground plane involved, or a substitute.....
Bud
The above argument sounds like "there are man-made dielectrics that are better than natural ones and there are many more there aren't" in short. That's as precise as Nostradamus, but being entirely correct hence leaving no room for argument.
Non-jokes aside, I believe cat-pee would make good material as grass consumes soil, cow consumes grass, cat consumes cow, and cat-pee is a by-product of cat and would hence have gone through a greater amount of natural refinement than, say, vegans.
P.S. I respect the above's technical knowledge in electronics though.
Non-jokes aside, I believe cat-pee would make good material as grass consumes soil, cow consumes grass, cat consumes cow, and cat-pee is a by-product of cat and would hence have gone through a greater amount of natural refinement than, say, vegans.
P.S. I respect the above's technical knowledge in electronics though.
Can anyone say why Teflon caps are sooooo very expensive compared to, say, PIO caps? I do realize that the demand is smaller but that will never change unless the price comes down. I also realize that teflon is more difficult to use, but surely not to the extent that justifies the price differential?😕
I find this hilarous as teflon capacitors are the best in every mesurable aspect and are also very expensive and pointless for audio frequancy stuff where an exact capacitance value isn't needed.
Anything labeled audiophile is for sure over-priced.😎
Russian Teflons are relatively cheap, but unfortunately not available in large values.
Likely the reject rate is greater than 75%.
Do take note that a 4.7 mfd cap is bigger than a CD. There is a ton of teflon in that green can and considering how poor the mechanical integrity is the % of junk produced probably goes up exponentially with size.
The point I was wandering around is that low dielectric constant materials, ones that retain low level signal information during the E Field event, have physical drawbacks when used in our favorite electrical components. Most of these physical weaknesses are fatal to their use. Plus, you need a ton of the stuff to get to meaningful capacitance values.
If you would like to get some of that information back, go here and read about this madness, then you won't need to have any respect for my technical knowledge.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=1213239#post1213239
Bud
Teflon is fundamentally an expensive material, MUCH more so than most other dielectrics. For example, polypropylene raw resin is roughly 75 cents per pound, electronic grade PTFE is about $10 per pound. It's also much pricier to extrude, needing very high temperatures and extruders/dies made out of special materials. It's soft and irreversibly stretchable, so it's much more difficult and time-consuming to get a tight winding.
The high price is justified by the expense of production. Whether or not it's relevant to audio use (as opposed to timing circuits) is arguable.
The high price is justified by the expense of production. Whether or not it's relevant to audio use (as opposed to timing circuits) is arguable.
In an attempt to understand the use of exotic materials in audio, I tried a similar experiment. I don't have access to that "cat stuff" either, but I do have access to "SVF" (guess what that is), which I assume is similar.
I used a beaker of SVF and a pair of graphite pencil leads as the test cell. To simulate an analog setup, the rest of the test setup consisted of an iPod (I don't have any good analog sources) driving a simple MOSFET SE-A amplifier (IRF Z44N MOSFET, 8R2 pullup resistor, 10k precision bias potentiometer with 100k bias resistor, 10uF motor run capacitor input coupling, 78000uF large electrolytic output coupling, and a fully charged UPS battery for power) and a 6" 8 ohm two way bookshelf speaker. For the control, the test cell was not used at all and the speaker was directly connected to the output. Then the test cell was connected in series with the speaker. The effect noted was a reduction of volume dependent on the depth of the graphite electrodes in the SVF. The sound appeared to have became a bit "purer" but that effect was mostly obscured by the change in volume. So, it is an analog volume control for those who dislike digital potentiometers. No sliding contacts to add noise, just two graphite-SVF interfaces. Notably absent was smug but that is to be expected since a SE-A is not a hybrid. (Smug is supposed to be something emitted by hybrid digital audio amplifiers, not to be confused with the fictional "smug" emitted by hybrid cars.)
Then I replaced the SE-A with a borrowed TI hybrid digital. The results were similar to the SE-A results above, except one additional thing was noted - smug was present as expected with the control, but the SVF cell very effectively removed the smug! How that happens is quite expected after realizing that the source of the SVF is extremely beautiful and therefore pure, meaning that the SVF itself is pure as well. As a result, the smug gets purified and since smug is a hybrid quality, it becomes canceled. Since I like smug, I wasn't exactly pleased by that effect, but others who have disliked hybrids might be able to enjoy its advantages thanks to SVF.
To further investigate the strange effect, the SVF in the test cell was replaced with a sodium chloride solution. It reduced the volume just like the SVF did but it did not remove any smug. Adding SVF to the solution reduced the smug, but not as effectively as SVF alone. The conclusion is that while SVF is theorized to be made of mostly water and sodium chloride, something else is responsible for reducing smug. It is likely a psychological effect since digitizing the signal after the test cell fails to detect any significant difference between SVF and sodium chloride solution.
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