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Speaker wire.....is speaker wire as long as it is a heavy enough gauge for the current requirements......mine comes from the auto sound department at Walmart.
My speaker wire was commercial/industrial stranded 12 or 14 ga wire left over from commercial sound installs. I will admit to trying the "Monster Brand" when I was younger. I saw no advantage to the Monster type only a loss in the pocket book.
Interconnect cables....
I've always kept mine short. Tried some high dollar units while I worked at the shop and heard no advantages only the increased proffit margins for the boss. The $300 interconnect cable sounded no better than the $5 Radio Shack or commercially available $3.00 did.
Speaker wire.....is speaker wire as long as it is a heavy enough gauge for the current requirements......mine comes from the auto sound department at Walmart.
My speaker wire was commercial/industrial stranded 12 or 14 ga wire left over from commercial sound installs. I will admit to trying the "Monster Brand" when I was younger. I saw no advantage to the Monster type only a loss in the pocket book.
Interconnect cables....
I've always kept mine short. Tried some high dollar units while I worked at the shop and heard no advantages only the increased proffit margins for the boss. The $300 interconnect cable sounded no better than the $5 Radio Shack or commercially available $3.00 did.
George, I read several references stating that it is better to attach the lead of a film cap connected to the outer foil to low impedance node such as quoted below. I have not yet come across any noticeable difference. Do you have any note on the matter?
indra₁;5554018 said:
Mmmm… I've also never found a difference. I even installed a small DPDT switch on one amp that would select one of 2 caps, one normal, one reversed. Seriously: no difference ABX testing. At all. Nonpolarized cap "polarity" seems to be high snake oil.
Just saying,
GoatGuy
Read the reasoning.... [ This way, the inner side will be protected ( shielded ) from picking up noise....] If the cap is in a position near a source of noise radiation producing noise, then it's better to have the low impedance side connected to the outer foil side so the cap can best shunt it to the filtering if the noise is induced in the cap. But, what is the frequency of the noise? Audio band or RF band? What if it's RF band? ...can't be heard anyway. What if it's audio band? Does that mean the cap shunts good music signal to ground filtering along with the noise? The noise picked up by the cap would have to be pretty strong to be radiated into a cap. What noise does an amp produce that would create a problem?
I totally agree with you on most of the text except for the coupling capacitors.
there is a big (very big) difference between MKT / MKP and ceramics,
but much less between one MKT / MKP and another MKT / MKP.
after, again, everyone does and think what he wants
scott LK38, used disk ceramic caps to couple the 7591 finals...
stromberg carlson 7408 pp amp also used ceramic caps, sounds fabulous to my ears, why do you think is that?
There is some reasoning behind this, and it does make some good engineering sense, which is why the caps of old had the outer foil marked.
In many circuits it won't matter, but lets say the cap in question is one of the small time constant caps in a phono stage with one end grounded and the other end connected to the grid of the second stage tube. For a worse case scenario, lets say that it is placed near the heater wiring. The cap value is too small to be a perfect bypass capacitor at all audio frequencies, so it acts as variable impedance shunt over the audio range. In this case you would definitely want the outer foil grounded since it could pick up some hum from the nearby heater winding, which would be taken directly to ground. If the cap were reversed, the picked up hum would be taken to the grid of a low level audio stage, and the impedance to ground provided by the small value cap could be quite high at 60 Hz, so any hum picked up on the outer foil of the cap would not be completely shunted to ground, but applied to the grid of the tube.
Granted this is a worse case scenario, but it is a possible condition, and that's why most caps are marked. It won't make an audible difference in high level stages, or when the cap value is large enough to be a perfect bypass at all audio frequencies, but no cap is perfect, so it makes sense to orient them as described whenever possible, but certainly in a phono stage, or in the input stages of a high gain guitar amp.
I had an old Stromberg Carlson integrated amp and it was full of ceramic caps, yet sounded pretty good. The phono stage was a bit noisy, but otherwise I liked the amp, but sold it because I ddidn't use it. It is POSSIBLE to make a good amp with crap components. My old 300Beast was a prime example, which sits in a corner awaiting the time to figure out exactly this amp sounded so nice and defied all attempts to upgrade it with better parts.
I spent about a year working with some major ceramics vendors developing and testing non piezoelectric ceramic caps for cell phones when the cell phone boom in the late 90's sucked up the worlds supply of tantalum. Some of the newer ceramics are good caps, but the capacitance VS voltage and temperature characteristics are still very nonlinear and all over the place.
These products were designed and manufactured well before the emergence of what is today known as "high end" audio. As a teenager I too had ceramic capacitors in my first amplifier. A Grommes "Little Jewel" LJ6. I thought it sounded great as a mono PP 6V6 setup. They sounded fabulous because they were much better then garden variety equipment like the table radios or phonographs we grew up with. If you do not have a better mental audio reference, then they will sound great to your ears.
Also then most capacitors for music were considered all the same. I thought that for years and built all my electronics with plain old paper in oil style capacitors by Sprague, Mallory and similar makes. Then I read this article in Audio Magazine and it changed my way of thinking. It took a while and a lot of listening but I have become convinced that different capacitors have a unique sound quality. I think mainly due to the dielectric used. It's a long article but well worth the read. I don't mean to be rude, but if anyone's still a nay-sayer after this, then you're probably beyond help.
@ Tony
it can be very good with ceramics, but as long as you do not try something else like metal film for example, you can not know if it's better or not (and it does not say it will work better). I lived this type of experience years ago with a Marantz 1040 that I had completely recapitulated and at the time of the test, I could not find any more the sound of that little thing that I loved so much. So I made a back machine to find that it was the capacitor or the pair of capacitors that gave me that sound and I ended up putting 1/4 of the old capacitors in
it can be very good with ceramics, but as long as you do not try something else like metal film for example, you can not know if it's better or not (and it does not say it will work better). I lived this type of experience years ago with a Marantz 1040 that I had completely recapitulated and at the time of the test, I could not find any more the sound of that little thing that I loved so much. So I made a back machine to find that it was the capacitor or the pair of capacitors that gave me that sound and I ended up putting 1/4 of the old capacitors in
Some information by Steve Bench :
- The Sound of Capacitors - Capacitor Linearity
- The Sound of Capacitors - Capacitor Linearity **Expanded**
- The Sound of Capacitors - Electrolytics
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I want to see proof on one specific piece of equipment that someone claims they can hear a difference from changing the caps. There are claims of coupling caps making a difference so lets see the before and after tests on a thread about caps and not rectifiers. Lets use a known amplifier as a basis for a test.
Sure, you can start a new thread, no problem. I am guessing that you feel ill equipped for proper measurement. Here in this thread, I think George is equipped better than most of us. You could ask him nicely to contribute since he is able to note a difference due to coupling cap on a guitar amp.
This is good advice, even though in many cases it will make no difference. Unlike some tweeks (e.g. bypassing every cap in sight) this one does no harm even when it turns out to be unnecessary.indra1 said:
No. It can have an effect if the ratio of cap value to stray capacitance (and possibly source impedance to load impedance) is such that the outer of the cap can pick up some interference (or local feedback) but the cap itself cannot reduce this via its reactance to low impedance node. If this condition is not met then you will hear no difference. Given typical coupling cap values you mostly won't hear a difference, but the effect is real.GoatGuy said:
We can't hear RF. The fact that radio receivers exist is proof that we can hear the effects of RF on circuitry, including circuits not intended to be radio receivers.20to20 said:
If one end of the cap is grounded then it will probably form part of a filter, which presumably is intended to be there e.g. RIAA network. Filters are not magic devices for sending 'noise' to 'ground', while leaving the music untouched.
Yes, I am ill equipped to make some quality measurements. Yes, I am interested to see a audio signal being used and the results which in my mind would go further to prove or disprove the measurements in your listed examples.
Yes, I kind of understand what you mean.
Most of the time I simply press on with my exploration without worrying for unavailable proper proof on my subjects of interest. I build, listen, measure with tools available and have fun while doing so. I would not set aside any budget on matters I find unable to notice or of not enough significance. Fortunately, many experienced members here helped me whenever I encounter puzzling brickwall.
So, have fun, explore your interest, ask specific question you have problem with. A proper scientific proof however, especially that involving human perception, may be complicated, time consuming and require a budget that most of us find unwilling to spend.
So, what would one measure for?
Loaded DC voltage output doesn't seem conclusive to me.
A tube tester would not have sorted out the distortion difference between the 6106 and 6087 in my example. The 6087 tested fine for emission. Still does. I'm still using it.
But all this talk has made me decide to retire it this fall, when I put big ( more heat generated ) tubes back in the amp ....
Win W5JAG
Loaded DC voltage output doesn't seem conclusive to me.
A tube tester would not have sorted out the distortion difference between the 6106 and 6087 in my example. The 6087 tested fine for emission. Still does. I'm still using it.
But all this talk has made me decide to retire it this fall, when I put big ( more heat generated ) tubes back in the amp ....
Win W5JAG
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