when to use high grade caps

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Kevin,

ever had a piece of ptfe or polypropylene foil/sheet between your fingers ?

(A country hick can tell, doesn't need to know what tensile strength and Young's modulus looks like. PP about 4 times as high as PTFE, afair. Though I'd sleeve my Doc Johnson in PTFE any day)
 
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Jacco,
Modulus of elasticity, oh my.

But Teflon just sounds so cool and cost more so it must be better right. And if you put nitromethane in your car it will run much better than gasoline, right before it explodes. People just want to equate cost with performance not matter the fact. I would go to a company such as Yishay or ACC and look at the documentation.
 
Any recommended RIAA caps? I know there are some good NOS polystyrene, but they are imossible to find in the values need, which are 47nF and 15nF.

Relcap RTE and they have a sale at PCX on films at the moment, let me know if you are ordering, I wouldnt mind a couple of things from there if you can ship with the other stuff coming my way. but youde have to parallel some to get those values. actually that might be too impractical, even though it would still result in a small and tightly matched composite part.

difficult values those, too small for some types, too large for others. otherwise the multicap RTX are pretty nice polystyrene film/tin foil and not too pricey, they come in those values and PCX will match them for you to 1% for a reasonable fee, only $1 each extra
 
Relcap RTE and they have a sale at PCX on films at the moment, let me know if you are ordering, I wouldnt mind a couple of things from there if you can ship with the other stuff coming my way. but youde have to parallel some to get those values. actually that might be too impractical, even though it would still result in a small and tightly matched composite part.

difficult values those, too small for some types, too large for others. otherwise the multicap RTX are pretty nice polystyrene film/tin foil and not too pricey, they come in those values and PCX will match them for you to 1% for a reasonable fee, only $1 each extra

The multicap RTX is marketed as a bypass cap for power supplies would you use that for ac coupling, say at the output of the D1?

It is amazing to me that as a site (DIYA) where have thousands of circuits designed to eliminate capacitors in the signal path, yet then we say they all sound the same:usd:


I think the differences in capacitors show up in small values in ac coupling between stages or as the last cap in the ac loop of a power supply.

If anyone has looked at measured distortion characteristics of capacitors I don't see how we can say they all sound the same. There certainly are bad(non-linear) capacitors for audio signals. Of course that doesn't mean all boutique caps are good!

I've had a couple occasions where a measured and heard significant differences between capacitors.

The first was a unique hybrid design where the valve gain stage was ac coupled to a specialized variation of the diamond buffer that gave it a very high (3Mohm) input impedance this was so that the tube was essentially unloaded and distortion below -90dB. We all know headphones can be very revealing (no speaker crossover with transducers right next to the ear.) I compared a fairly budget polypropylene, a Russian PIO, and a copper foil in oil(off brand) in the coupling position between the two stages. The differences were not subtle at all. The poly was very clear and superior to the russian pio and the budget copper foil in oil was superior to both. The amp was sort of a micro-scope into how the coupling cap sounded. I've avoided the Russian Ky40's ever since.

Another instance is my spud SET headphone amp where there is only a single cap significantly in the entire AC signal loop: the 1uf of the Salas Shunt Reg. Here I found a real improvement in sonics by replacing this 1uf metalized pp with a Russian KC75||Russian Teflon.

I can see with solid state+speakers there is almost always a significant amount of signal passing through electrolytics, it is unavoidable. Combine that with caps in the speaker xover, room effects etc and I can see how the choice of caps ican seem not so important.

But with simple tube or simple class A SS + headphones I do find that the capacitors in the AC signal loop play a significant part of the sound.

Another thing that matters is the voltage a coupling cap is blocking. I swear a 100V VitQ blocking 95VDC sounds better than a 1000V Teflon blocking 1VDC there is something to the DC bias on a capacitors plates.

As far as boutique capacitors just having a different wrapper than industrial's, of course this happens with plastic capacitors. But unless you are buying 1000's you have to pay the middleman, this is just business. There are a few plastic capacitors at digikey I could name that are the same as boutique caps costing 10x as much but not many. Most have to be bought by the thousands to avoid the boutique markup.

As Qsup said when there are very few other caps in the signal loop then it can make sense to pay for boutique caps, but to me that means an oil cap.

One thing I am 100% sure of, one of the worst capacitors invented is the opamp DC servo, the most non-linear capacitor ever invented yet we love to throw one on a circuit and call it DC-coupled.

Another thing I am sure of the best cap or means to avoid caps in a SS design are LiFePO4 batteries!

When it comes to capacitors all audio fanatics myself included are a bit looney😱
 
Regal,
I will give you that the place where you are most likely to see and hear a difference is going to be with electrolytic capacitors. Here you will have the most variation in construction and electrical values, probably something where you could measure many differences between caps. Seeing how the power supply is so important to the final sound of any amplifier perhaps this is the area to select carefully any electrolytic. all the parameters will be coupled to the output devices and this is one area I wouldn't argue with careful selection.
 
More heresy. Siemen sikorels caused noticeable change in psu of RIAA over Nichicon KG and i was expecting nothing. Just using them cause i had them. I dont think anyone here will argue that caps dont change/distort the sound. In my opinion it should not be viewed as a negative thing, but an opportunity to shape the sound under certain conditions. It can be irritating in the sense that it takes time and is not figurable at the onset of a design, but at the same time, it can be a sort of ace in the hole.
 
impossible to find in the values needed

But have you tried hard enough, some candy colors are not in the front window display, and not as clearly visible.
(as are other dark consumables, e.g. liquorice root "drop")
 

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the philips polystyrenes were good too, but yeah these are difficult values anywhere other than ebay and I dont always trust ebay... tolerances are unlikely to be very good either so you would need to buy more than you need and match
 
youre in luck buzz, the ebay has a single 15nf auction and a single 47nf (these appear to be 2 caps twisted together in parallel, not small) both the same unnamed type by the looks of it, but look decent quality. both require you to buy 6-10 pieces, but you probably need that. i've been there before but never followed through, good that youve recommended that seller Jacco

oh hang on umut1001, is he a member here too?
 
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I bought some large silica gel bags and storage containers for my sensitive parts and projects last year too after the massive flooding we had here in QLD. its turned out to be very handy.

(hope you don't expect me to silver platter exact value components)
nope, certainly not; these arent even for me, its for RIAA so exact values may be important to buzz.

I only mentioned it because i've found trouble getting those type of middling values before and having that confirmed when even places that have extensive ranges like this have only 1 each (and the 47nf there is only 2 lots left, so you better grab that buzz) but dozens of other values; was interesting thats all.

that ebay shop always put me off because every item is described as 'super high end this' 'super high end that' so good to have you put a good word in
 
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Yep.

Btw, I use a silica-gel "humidor" for electric welding electrodes, as storage for part of my foil caps.

(hope you don't expect me to silver platter exact value components)

Why not. Bet you got couple thousand in a box somewhere. I considered paralleling, but that gets even more complicated. I have heard the tolerances are great, so that is not so much a worry. I would prefer to come in low and parallel. Oh well Rel RT, it is.
 
Old news.

I consider myself a coffee tin collector, drink a lot of espresso.
Most are in the original factory plastic bag, the tough variety.

(every worthwhile foil cap, resistors, clad boards, rectifiers, JFETs, power Vertical Junction FETs, Lateral MOSFETs, connectors, chassis, heatsinks, transformers, coils, and every kind of exotic/esoteric mounting item. Just the KS parts amount to 15k total)
 

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