Anybody familiar with Mundorf silver&oil caps

VH Audio recommends trying TFTF bypass with their OIMP caps, so you might be onto something with the Mundorf Silver/Oil. I have used .47uf Mundorf Silver/Gold as couplers in a phono stage & I like them a lot.

Pauly I think your right. Bypass caps in the signal path are a bad thing not a good thing. Material differences and multiple paths seem to result in more noise, often mistaken as more detail. Tom

I tried bypassing my big valued Mundorf Silver/Oils in my cdp with small valued Sonicap Platinums; the result was less than favorable. It produced a brighter,less natural sound than just Mundorfs by themselves.

The more system resolution you have, the more you hear bypass caps smearing the sound due to their different speeds.

Instead you want to get the best cap you can to give it your best shot; frankly if I were you I would get a set of V-Cap Teflons to do the job instead. They are as smooth as the Mundorfs but actually more neutral and certainly less electrical leakage over time.

I think I'll go for the single Mundorf per side and see what it sounds like. Should be significantly better than the current polypropylenes.

Ralph, I am on the same page as you regarding TFTF V-Caps. However, for the sizes I require, they are just too expensive for my application.

Regards
Paul

Hi Pauly

You should really enjoy the Mundorf Silver/Oil. Very musical cap and Ralph is right - avoid bypassing if you can.

Haven't tried the VCap in anything yet though I plan to soon. I'll be trying some Dueland VSF caps too. Ralph, do you have any experience with the Dueland caps? Your impressions?

Cheers!
Robert
RSAD

Hi Robert, Not seen the Duelands yet.

Ralph....if it's useful for you you:

http://www.duelundaudio.com/DIY/VSF/index.htm

They're promoted specifically for Loudspeakers so I'm not sure how useful that is for you.

Cheers!

Robert
RSAD

I have experience with the Duelund, V-cap, Mundorf and Sonicap in cross-over applications. I have tried using Mundorf and and V-cap in by-pass configuration for output caps on my preamp.

V-cap and Duelund are massive caps, and generally will not match the space constraints of an existing circuit. If you have a lot of extra space, or can otherwise accommodate them the V-cap is excellent (after about 600 hours!) The Duelund are further limited by their 100 volt design.

The Mundorf Silver in oil and Sonicap will generally be a much easier swap, and both are excellent caps. You will have no need to by-pass these cap, but I have found they make for an excellent by-pass caps .22uF or smaller for a large existing cap. This might be an option to explore.

Robert, I found the Duelund to be the most musical of the four. The V-cap is a great cap, and if you prefer an "audiophile" analytical sound, the V-cap may be more to your liking. I am not saying the V-cap is not natural or sounds electrical or non-musical, no not at all. They are a great cap, but I found over a few thousand hours of listening, and then swapping the Duelund/ V-Cap the Duelund was much more real and richly musical. I personally feel the Duelund is the best capacitor made, and I was very impressed with the people and dedication to the hobby; "very much like you and your passion for music."

The Mundorf Silver in oil is the best value, and if it lags behind the top two, it is not by much. The Mundorf gold in oil was a great disappointment. It tends to lack the bass definition and low end extension. This cap should only be considered as a .01uF by-pass cap in a system needing toning down on the top end, and in a system that will not suffer by losing a bit of bass.

The Sonicap might be considered the best high voltage cap of the group, but in a low voltage cross over the Duelund was my choice. I did not try the Sonicap in a high voltage location, but a friend has and it is very musical. Unfortunately I have not compared it with the Mundorf in a high voltage application so I can not add anything but my best guess. If I were looking into a high voltage application, I would look at the Sonicap and the Mundorf Silver in oil as the top brands. My guess is the Sonicap will be a bit more refined and a bit smoother, and a lot more expensive:-)

Please understand these comments are all relative, and the differences are very small. All four (or five with the gold) are amazing capacitors. The differences are in level of fine detail and/or musicality. In other words, musicality.

jd
Jade Audio, LLC

jd,

For what it's worth, Mundorf and several users I've spoken to regard the Silver/Gold as more neutral than the Silver/Oil cap(or put another way, it is less exaggerated in the bass region.) Also, the Silver/Gold is not an oil cap, and is rated to a higher temperature that the Silver/Oil. This may be important in a hot chassis.

Hi Jade.

Thank You for the detailed overview. Kind of you!

Interesting your experiences mirror my suspicions between the V-Cap and Dueland VSF. I'm anxious to form my own impressions.

Being that both caps are foil types (which I generally prefer over metalized types), I'll definitely condition them on our 'dharma for about 168 hours before I make any serious comparisons. I did this with the Mundorf caps and that settled them very nicely - certainly beyond what the music system could do by itself. Nice tip for anyone investigating the different sonic character of different caps. As you mentioned Jade, some caps take a (long) while to settle and that can get kind of discouraging and if they're being settled in using a music system, I wonder if they ever fully settle in.

Cheers!
Robert
RSAD

Hi Robert, it looks like we could not use the Duelands as the voltages are far too low.

I stand by my earlier comment about bypassing: bypassing any coupling cap with another will result in smearing and there is no way to get around this. The rather in depth comments about the V-Cap, Dueland and Mundorfs earlier refers to bypassing and does cause me to wonder how to take the comments in the face of the known/repeatable effects of bypass smearing.

BTW, we liked the top line Mundorf a little better than the V-Cap in some areas, but leakage issues kept us away from it. The question did arise whether it was slightly more romantic or not, as everything seemed a little more 'beautiful' with the Mundorfs (even things that were not supposed to be so beautiful). The V-Caps did not do this, but they did reveal other subtle differences we didn't hear with the Mundorfs. My personal opinion is based entirely on the use of circuits that we regard as the world's most transparent, lacking transformers altogether and using a fair amount of direct-coupling at both the output of the preamp and the output of the amps, both of which are all-tube.

So you will have to regard my comments in that light- that I regard a transformer in the way as presenting a synergistic effect with a coupling cap that may skew the findings!

My comments here are not intended to offend, but to give you a better idea of how we came to where we did.

We also believe audio should be fun and entertaining... and DIY is clearly one of those areas.

Hi Ralph.

...it looks like we could not use the Duelands as the voltages are far too low.

I suspect that's why they specifically recommended the VSF for loudspeaker applications - the lower voltage rating of 100v along with their physical parameters doesn't appear to make them practical a lot of electronics. I would be a little concerned too about the materials stability in the harsher heat environments of a lot of electronics.

Cheers!
Robert
RSAD

J.D.,
I'm curious if you tried a V-cap or Mundorf by themselves( un-bypassed ) in the outputs of your preamp. Also, what is the output impedance of your preamp and what value of cap is in your pre outputs?

I replaced the output coupling caps in my Altmann DAC twice..and now have the .82uf Mundorf silver and oils in place. Rolls off the low end into the 50kohm input of my preamp at 3.9 hz. Everything in everyway became more musical and more detailed. All is more attached to each other and more phase coherent. This is the latest of the mods I have or have had another perform on the Altmann Dac and the battery and capacitor bank now attached. Some Mundorf silver and oils are going to find their way into my Caravelle's as part of the upgrades I am now performing on these speakers. Tom

Hello I have used the Mundorf SIlver oils,the SIlver gold
and now MUndorfs SIlver oil Gold which is very good detail
with nice image depth and very good top end although spotlighted on top a bit still. I have been experimenting and the Duelund Copper vsf capacitor is very sililar in price than the Mundorf-SOG the Duelunds are now all 200v
Myself as a Audio dealer am working with the designerJohn on the Breakthrough NSR Sonic Research D-3 loudspeaker and have been tweaking the standard model with the Very good Auri caps-vishay resistors ,and the optional Reference special edition Xover with Duelund resistors and caps ,or Mundorf depending on other associated equipment and the Superb Solen Hepa Litz inductors.You will find no $5k loudspeaker with this parts quality with point to point construction that sounds anywhere near this good.If you hear it and have the resources you will buy it! Watch for upcoming reviews in positive feeback online .

If one spends enough time experimenting with bypassing coupling caps. It is possible to find a synegistic match-up that does not cause detrimental time/phase smearing. In addition, no capacitor is perfectly transparent. Non bypassed capacitors can smear up the signal all on their own.

pjl2122, I see the new Mundorf SOG is quite bumped up in price & is now pretty close to V-Cap TFTF. Can you elaborate on your opinion of SOG relative to other Mundorf & other caps you might have compared it to?

yes the Mundorf Sog is a combination of the silver oil
which is detailed and smooth and the ultra detailed silver gold ,which thins out the mids Vg for the top end though .
Still a little spot lighted up top some people like drivers and equipment like this . The Duelund products we are using in the reference xover in the NSR Loudspeaker transform the Xover into a naturalness beyond reproach.it takes a very good loudspeaker and puts it into 2x the price class teritory.
Please remember the Duelund product the vsf line is over $500 for 4 caps alone and are completely hand made with NO plastics used this is why they are so natural ,no teflon,or poly, natural papers,mineral oil cocoon silk and high purety Copper foil , under high pressures for 8 days , now that is dedication this is why they are the RR of caps and their Silver and round caps are even better !

To anyone doubting what I say go to the link below Tony is one of the most experienced guys out there on Capacitors and he helped me get started several years ago in the effects of changing caps and resistors please see.
http://www.humblehomemadehifi.com/Cap.html

Paul, I can not comment on that particular cap, since I have not used it, but with double and triple bypasses in general one can really change the sonic quality of the piece. I would experiment a bit before setting on a specific value.

As long as you have the case open to do the cap work, why not add a few Vishay s104s or VSRs in the cart loading stage, and in the shunt resistor slots on the phono pre output stage?
Both will make the stage quieter, and improve the resolution.

best

JOhn

Hi folks

The thread is a little old and I do not own that phono stage anymore.

I ended up using Dynamicaps and bypassed them with 0.022uF V-Cap TFTFs. To my ear the bypassing did improve sound and did not smear the representation in any way. If anything, things were more detailed and more focused, but seemed to have a gentler nature. Dynamicaps can sometimes be a little zippy.

Thanks for the responses.

Regards
Paul

To all out there on Bypassing caps these Vishay 1837
bypass caps are very clean and the tolerences are better than your main caps 1% or better .I use the .1uf for all the larger caps over 1.5uf anything smaller than that it would change the cutoff some on the capacitor. "Test of the 1837 capacitor"
http://capacitor-tester.blogspot.com/2009/05/vishay-mkp1837-aka-ero-mkp1830-001uf.html

For signal coupling caps, I find the silver-gold oil to be harmonically more complete than the silver oil. They are both a little bright, compared to a copper wire, and some other caps, but sound superior to almost all audiophile signal caps.
I would try the V-cap bypass on a larger oil filled, but not on another dry type film cap.