I was posting that to show sometimes there's no need for satire, reality does the job for you.
I'm pretty sure putting electrolytics in wood will do nothing except lower their ability to keep cool and shorten their life.
I just looked at the 'wood' caps. Truly beyond satire!
I was shocked to see ordinary PVA being used to attach the wooden end cap. Surely homemade fish glue, boiled in a pot for 32.5 hours, would be much better? And what species of bee was used to make the wax? Details matter, for high-end audio.
Anyway, it all looks a messy and error-prone process so it is very kind of the chap whose website it is to offer to do it for other people for a mere $50.
I was shocked to see ordinary PVA being used to attach the wooden end cap. Surely homemade fish glue, boiled in a pot for 32.5 hours, would be much better? And what species of bee was used to make the wax? Details matter, for high-end audio.
Anyway, it all looks a messy and error-prone process so it is very kind of the chap whose website it is to offer to do it for other people for a mere $50.
haha, now youre just having a laugh, well I guess we all have to play a character... your turn to be the music hating, cotton eared meter reader.
Buzz, trust me you dont know who you are dealing with. Marc is a music lover like all of us and I think you would be surprised at his system/s, he just wont stand for handwaving and works implementing technology where reliably modeling and implementing hitech, high performance parts that operate at the very frequencies and low levels that many audiophile claims may actually have an effect at. clocking where vibration may cause error/death, RF that may degrade performance very significantly, jitter that can throw out a measurement very meaningfully, clock speeds that turn everything into an antenna etc. etc.
call a spade a spade; if you like arts and crafts, why not combine it with audio by making little capacitor suits, just dont call it engineering, or pretend it supplants it.
I did (do) actually think more of you mate, that tired old method of suggesting a persons audio system has any bearing at all on whether fiction becomes fact; is below you. By that metric Mr Mike Mazzola has nothing to add to the world of semiconductors for audio
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Don't doubt you and not saying anything negative about Marce in any way. Music is personal. People are different. What you may say is the best amp from an engineering standpoint is not necessarily goign to be the most popular or most well liked. Perhaps folks do like distortion and wooden caps. Telling them it doesn't make sense on paper doesn't change that choice and doesn't necessarily make them wrong, at least from an opinion standpoint. If i were trying to procure a component for a space shuttle, I would want the best engineering I could find. I have not found the same correlation in audio, but I am young and learning. gotta give me some credit. At least I am willing to use SMD and probably will be from now on. Just trying to figure out how I am going to solder the little boogers to a glow plug😀
Sure, I think you mistake what many of the negative comments here are about. the problem starts when psuedo scientific reasons are offered, or technical advances claimed with nothing but stories to back them up. nobody can argue with preference, but that isnt what is claimed usually, because it goes against the elite notion of an upgrade you can put a name to and its harder to charge more money for something that performs worse. As a result often magical claims or new elements or never before studied effects are made about things that often degrade performance, or at best leave no evidence of improved performance.
the elevation of circuit designer (often replicator/modifier) to artisan is another thing...
the science and technology of audio frequencies and their measurement/reproduction (especially in the box) is actually pretty well understood, the interaction with the psyche and real spaces; not as much.
I do give you credit buzz, thats why your comment surprised me, trust me you do not want to be aligned with the last person to make these comments to marce...
the elevation of circuit designer (often replicator/modifier) to artisan is another thing...
the science and technology of audio frequencies and their measurement/reproduction (especially in the box) is actually pretty well understood, the interaction with the psyche and real spaces; not as much.
I do give you credit buzz, thats why your comment surprised me, trust me you do not want to be aligned with the last person to make these comments to marce...
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Have to agree with you on this one. I am currently playing with SMD RIAA that has output cap. PLying with different caps in this position is very interesting and I must admit has gone along quite well with what many reviewers say about the sound of a cap. That being said, I am slowly working towards teflon and will be looking into changin output further to minimize caps needed. Why, I dont know. It sounds wonderful as it is.
all good man, yep RIAA is for sure a playground for cap variations, just make sure you are comparing like for like, rather than hearing tighter tolerance as an improvement, teflon RIAA sounds like a money sink 😉 you'll be rolling your own next so you can control the tolerance. check out thin film SMD, I reckon they'de make for nice RIAA caps. pity the more useful values are mostly wirebond/bare die. but theres always those 0402 size ones I showed you in the DK order, they only go up to 10nf though.
you know I like copper/teflon, I like the sound but it also appeals to me on a real technical level, so who knows whats going on there, now if only something more than a few pf was available in teflon SMD (I used little CDE SMD teflon in a can RF caps for my AJX input board; tight tolerance 4.7pf teflon in place of the 5pf ceramic)
you know I like copper/teflon, I like the sound but it also appeals to me on a real technical level, so who knows whats going on there, now if only something more than a few pf was available in teflon SMD (I used little CDE SMD teflon in a can RF caps for my AJX input board; tight tolerance 4.7pf teflon in place of the 5pf ceramic)
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I know. I was looking for SMD for the actual RIAA caps, but went with Auricap XO. Also have RTX and RT. SIO is on the output right now and sound clean, with slight embellishment of mids and highs, giving a sort of bass soft sound, but that is poor description, cause bass isnt soft, just seem attenuated. Cruddy old Russian PIO bypassed with teflon is next. I love SMD. Makes me feel so next century.
pity about those CDE SMD teflons, only about a fiver each, but max out at 4.7pf after that they are mica
or the machines will chose their own caps 😉
hehe you mean this century? I get the feeling micromachines will program the circuits like FPGA do now, but on an atomic level; next century
or the machines will chose their own caps 😉
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Hewlett Packard started in a garage. The folk at Stanford tell me they did ok . While the guy in his garage building Hi-Fi fails to produce first principles changing research. They do at times produce entertaining equipment
which is the salient endeavor . The validity of the research in not in the cause of change ( in a positive way) but in it repeatability . Science provides a defined method approach a problem and solve it .
Hewlet and Packard may have started their business in their garage but they sure weren't garage mechanics! Both of them were schooled in electronics and that makes a big difference to someone who is playing with changing capacitors and only listening for a difference but never measuring the actual capacitor to see what its own particular electrical values are and what it was they took out to be substituted. This subject just goes in circles the people who want to know and understand what just happened and those who just want to state a subjective change based in random acts of selection.
It always seems to end in assumptions with both sides insulting each other.
As a random, non blind test, I will happily buy caps that are suggested for my RIAA stage. I will measure them to the best of my abilities, put them into the circuit and give a listen. I am open to whatever. Very simple values needed. .047uF .015uF .1uF THe rest of the board will be using Vishay TNPW, found in this document, https://dcc.ligo.org/public/0002/T0900200/001/current_noise.pdf, so that we can at least eliminate the resistors as a major source of distortion. The fets are 2sk369 or dual 2sk170's. It is folded cascode first stage with passive RIAA and then common source second stage, feeding either SE buffer or symmetrical, to reduce cap size. Anyone who wants to come along and listen, are welcome.
As a random, non blind test, I will happily buy caps that are suggested for my RIAA stage. I will measure them to the best of my abilities, put them into the circuit and give a listen. I am open to whatever. Very simple values needed. .047uF .015uF .1uF THe rest of the board will be using Vishay TNPW, found in this document, https://dcc.ligo.org/public/0002/T0900200/001/current_noise.pdf, so that we can at least eliminate the resistors as a major source of distortion. The fets are 2sk369 or dual 2sk170's. It is folded cascode first stage with passive RIAA and then common source second stage, feeding either SE buffer or symmetrical, to reduce cap size. Anyone who wants to come along and listen, are welcome.
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buzzforb,
What you are doing does not sound like a random selection. You actually have a methodology to your changes and if you are measuring to your best abilities it is not a blind selection either. I don't know how with a single circuit to test you could ever do a blind test, where could blind fit into that? Blind would be having multiple caps of all different values, all the same size with no marking and just randomly inserting them into the circuit and listening until you were happy! Then when you were happy you could remove that single value device and measure it and see what you had. I only have trouble when someone changes a capacitor without checking the value to see what it really is and saying because it is made by a particular manufacturer it sounds better, not that it sounds different because the value was changed, but just because it cost more and was made by so and so.
What you are doing does not sound like a random selection. You actually have a methodology to your changes and if you are measuring to your best abilities it is not a blind selection either. I don't know how with a single circuit to test you could ever do a blind test, where could blind fit into that? Blind would be having multiple caps of all different values, all the same size with no marking and just randomly inserting them into the circuit and listening until you were happy! Then when you were happy you could remove that single value device and measure it and see what you had. I only have trouble when someone changes a capacitor without checking the value to see what it really is and saying because it is made by a particular manufacturer it sounds better, not that it sounds different because the value was changed, but just because it cost more and was made by so and so.
I know what you mean, but not having heard the more expensive caps, i dont have an opinion. Probably will not have one as i cant see spending the greenies.
I would be very interested in some real repeatable test on caps. Say a number of polyprops from different manufactures same value same voltage rating with a set of standard tests df, da inductance first straight them snake oil covers followed by a listening test . To see if there is a real measurable difference or the placebo effect is the major effect in motion ? I contend to produce the described differences in the sound of caps there must be a measurable difference to produce the change in sound . We have ether not gotten to the proper test as of yet. This is an area worth exploring. Or what methodology would you suggest to explore this subject in a repeatable and verifiable way ?
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Triodethom,
That would be what is needed to really answer this question. If you measured and confirmed the capacitors had the same electrical values and were of the same construction then you could do a simple frequency response test with the rest of the entire system staying intact and only changing a cap. Now this means comparing film with film and film and foil with the same and on through all types. It would be interesting to substitute lets say a capacitor that had the same value that had radial leads with one that had axial leads and see if that made a difference if the electrical values matched. As I have said to many time before I think that what is happening in the majority of cases is that the values are not the same when people are changing caps and that this is why they sound different, not because of a quality issue so much.
That would be what is needed to really answer this question. If you measured and confirmed the capacitors had the same electrical values and were of the same construction then you could do a simple frequency response test with the rest of the entire system staying intact and only changing a cap. Now this means comparing film with film and film and foil with the same and on through all types. It would be interesting to substitute lets say a capacitor that had the same value that had radial leads with one that had axial leads and see if that made a difference if the electrical values matched. As I have said to many time before I think that what is happening in the majority of cases is that the values are not the same when people are changing caps and that this is why they sound different, not because of a quality issue so much.
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