Audio Logic DAC cap rolling... replace 5.0 value with 4.7 ?

Erik: My preamp is a Thor TA-1000. Input impedance is 250kohm. The DAC is transformer coupled and these are the only sizeable caps so I imagine they are the signal caps... not sure if that is the same as "ouput" caps? My ignorance...

Why wouldn't the designer have used two smaller caps if that is a better approach? I try to be careful about second guessing genius designers. Unless one big cap would have been substantially cheaper. Thus DAC retaiked for $4500 15 yeas ago so I imagine he wasn't cutting too many corners... although musicaps aren't the best caps, so maybe one big cap was a cost consideration.

OH, one bit of advice I will give you, you'll be a little better off if you can split your caps.  That is, instead of using a single 5 uF use a pair of 2.4uF. It gets you closer to your ideal (4.8uF) but cuts inductance and ESR (equivalent series resistance) in half.

Probably won't help with Mundorf Supreme caps as they use this internally.

Best,
E

If these are output caps, no, either value will be nearly equivalent so long as you are going into a relatively high impedance preamp.

The bigger the cap, the lower the -3 dB of the output will be, but 2 uF is probably enough, 4 way overkill and 5 much more above that! :)

So, point is, going down a little from 5 to 4.7 should be fine, again, if it is the output DC blocking cap.