Bypass capacitor questions


I have built new crossovers for my Thiels using mostly Clarity CSA caps. On the coax board, the two feeds and subfeed are bypassed with Multicap RTX (~1%). I am super happy with the SQ improvement. Well-recorded music sounds fantastic, just sublime. Really hard to fault, especially at this price point. Excellent transients with resolution and transparency for days; adding the RTX added a bit to the transients and resolution. But poorly recorded music is now more evident than ever and can sound relatively "cool", even thin, most notably on vocals. I’m wondering if a double bypass or different bypass cap might add a bit more flesh or hint of warmth. The Jupiter copper foil at 0.01 uF caught my interest but I’ve read reports that this small of capacitance can be inaudible, as well as reports that it can make a big difference (eg, humblehomemadehifi review of Dueland bypass).

Two questions:

a) do you think a different bypass or double bypass would result in the sound I seek?
b) if yes, more likely to get a good result with Jupiter double bypass at 0.01 uF or, say, Audyn True Copper Max at ~1%.

Budget: something more affordable than Duelands!


beetlemania

Showing 6 responses by beetlemania

Sorry, I'll try again.
Nearly all of my caps are Clarity CSAs.This includes two caps directly in the coax feed and one subfeed.
These three caps - and no others - include RTX bypass.
I compared, in mono, with and without the RTX to discern their impact on SQ. Then added RTX to both channels.
I would not suggest multiple different types of bypass caps being used at the same time.
Interesting. Thanks for the comment.
Bypassing in crossovers makes the sound phasey and not quite right.
That was *not* my experience. I heard sharper transients and a tad more resolution with the RTX.

The first change I made was replacing the sandcasts with Mills MRAs. That was a really nice improvement in SQ for short money. So much so that I'm curious to try a Path Audio resistor in a key position.

Thanks for the responses everyone. I think I will stand pat for now. I mean, I'm *very* happy with the sound I'm hearing. Easily the best ever in my room. Just with the downside of TMI on poorly recorded music, a problem Michael Fremer and others have complained about with some speakers. But, honest reproduction of the recording is a "problem" I'm happy to have.
willing to bet $ you will pull it out eventually esp if you listen to classical music
Interesting. From my listening notes in mono, a couple of concerto selections were among those where I most greatly preferred the sound of the RTX bypasses (there were a few songs in other genres where I was hard pressed to identify any differences). The RTX channel sounded richer and fuller than the channel sans bypasses. Yet another example of no "one size fits all".