jfd11,
Who was it? Not much of a story without the name.
Who was it? Not much of a story without the name.
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For the interested: Picking Capacitors - Walter G. Jung and Richard Marsh (reliablecapacitors.com) No affiliation. |
Around 1978 or 79 I had a gentleman answer a for sale ad I had posted for an Audio Research preamp. He made an unusual request of me. He professed to be the owner of a company that was prototyping a preamp of his design. He asked if it would be possible to compare his prototype to my SP6. Who would turn that idea down? He arrived with his unit that was basically just his boards and electronics. A true early stage build. I didn't expect much. I was wrong. We spent a couple of hours using my system and comparing the two preamps to one another. I only remember that he was convinced his sounded more musical and that he was concerned that his choice of capacitors was in need of change. He explained to me what he was listening for concerning the caps. At the time I thought it was "out there" that he would be sitting in his lab and listening to various caps. He must have done something right because his company is still in business and still selling a highly regarded preamp. |
Richard Marsh published an article in Audio Magazine in 1980 that detailed the range of parasitic loss factors inherent in capacitors. Dialectric Absorption and Dissipation Factor in films, and Equivalent Series Resistance in electrolytics. He compared mylar, polystyrene and polypropylene and teflon films and found each had a distinct effect on how a circuit sounds. The race was truly on after that. Prior to this publication only Mark Levinson was featuring Wima caps, but soon everyone was going boutique. I think military, aerospace, and medical equipment advances created the market and audio was an accidental beneficiary at first. |
First off the capacitors of the past are not all around today. Think Black Gate capacitors which I feel were the best capacitors back then and today but they are no longer manufactured. Materials have not really changed but now manufacturers are using different materials then they did back in the day. Same goes with cables. Silver, copper, aluminum combinations, twisting, insultation, etc. Even the cheap Sprague capacitors lasted a long time. What is different is more of the wire used. Dueland makes hybrid copper and silver capacitors. Could not find that back in the day. So to me it is more of the types of materials being used and yes, some are made better than others - think V-Caps. They are a really good manufactured product. As referred to above with parts swappers - you can change the sound by installing larger power supply capacitors think Nichicon and Mundorf. Anyone of you can do this as there is generally two leads for solder wires onto - just make sure there is enough room for the larger caps. So what has changed to me is the materials used, etc. BUT some of these caps can elevate you systems sound considerably. V-Caps especially. For resistors - Audio Note now only offers non-magnetic resistors. A step up from their now discontinued resistors. Plus they also are now manufacturing a Silver resistor. Expensive but worth it. Happy Listening. |
@terry9 thanks for your thoughtful replies. Can you give an example of great air dielectric capacitor? @puffball08 - I used that database to pick new caps for one of my amps, very informative. Quite an undertaking… Obviously, better manufacturing in general will lift all boats, but clearly the audiophile niche is highly active and innovative to some degree beyond mere marketing. The premium audiophiles will pay has to explain the R&D that goes into VCaps or Mundorf or Duelund or whatever, and there must be legit technical advances happening, whether proprietary or otherwise. |
Here is a person who has done a lot of subjective testing with many different brands and types of capacitors. Might be worth reading before diving headlong into capacitor rolling. It saved me a lot of time and money. http://www.humblehomemadehifi.com/Cap.html |
Barjohn, that's the engineer's answer from 1980. The book that changed all that was Horowitz and Hill, 'The Art of Electronics', which had a table of capacitors and their actual characteristics. With real information about the physical effect known as 'Dielectric Absorption', or DA, applied to everyday electronic components, the stage was set for a genuine improvement in sound quality. There are a few topologies which sound good and don't much profit from better components, but the best ones can be much improved thereby. In my experience, anyway. Build yourself a breakout box in which you can change an important cap from one technology to another with the flick of a switch. Get a book on psychology experiments to learn how to do a single-blind experiment, and recruit your lady as a test subject. I think you'll get quite a surprise. |
WOW! Short Answer! "manufacturing process and technology, engineering !" Hmm, Why are micro processors, HDD's and now SDD's Smaller Nowadays?? or the iPhone has a zillion more processing power than the computer that took us to the Moon.. Hmm, the Capacitor question is a Great one, I'll do a tad more research on that.. |
The big difference is in manufacturing tolerances. Back in my early days in electronics (60s) 5% or even 10% tolerances in values were frequently used because it cost money to get to 1% tolerance or better. MilSpec parts often had to measure far more accurately than consumer electronics. The same was true for inductors and resistors. The simple truth is that a 50 microfarad capacitor that accurately measure as 50 mfd will sound the same as any other that accurately measures as 50mfd. Depending on the values of the other components in the circuit you cannot hear the difference, assuming they are all accurate to a given tolerance. Usually, the differences in rated voltage and tolerance are used for the purposes of obtaining longevity and reducing failures due to arcing which results in a short circuit. The other truth is that snake oil salesmen are far better psychologists than most university PHDs. They have been around a long time because they know their craft and it works. |
The best are still vacuum dielectric or air dielectric. They’ve been around forever, but they come in small values at high cost. I use these exclusively in my phono / pre. Film and foil are next best; styrene is pretty neutral, teflon a bit bright, polypropylene a bit dull. Some examples are ’very’ rather than ’a bit’. Metallized are constructed by depositing metal onto the dielectric. Quality appears to depend on the thickness of the metal and the junction of the metal to the wire leads. They can be almost as good as film and foil, or almost as bad as electrolytic. Mica and teflon are the best. Ceramics tend to be inferior to metallized, the quality seeming to depend on the dielectric constant of the ceramic, lower being better. I don’t have strong opinions on paper in oil, but I really don’t like leaks, so I avoid them. Good luck! YMMV |
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Capacitors have improved in certain ways due to designers looking and wanting a different type of sound than previous versions. The change in sound is due to using different materials and construction. I can say that the early capacitors due not sound bad at all if given time to re form in an old component. You have to give some time before you judge an old capacitor especially in an amplifier or speaker because most of the time they are not bad at all they just need time to play and re form. If you do change the capacitor to a new one it can sometimes cause the gear or speaker in question to sound very different, especially bright at first, due to the new cap needing to form as well. |
Not so with all caps And as far as non-polarized (plastics etc) coupling caps go, the BEST CAP IS NO CAP, if the circuit allows for it to trim out any dc offset manually, or a simple dc servo can be installed. (direct coupled always sound better) but not all circuits can be dc coupled As for polarized big or small electrolytic power supply caps go, some quality makes NOS (new old stock) can be very good, but very important they need to be "conditioned" first using an ac variac, over a couple of hours and bought up from zero very slowly to their max voltage. Cheers George |
I've been modding for perhaps twenty years now, IME, both film and electrolytics have improved, I presume for all the reasons above. Really, very few choices years ago with boutique caps, most were general use variety. As I recall, the first audiophile grade film caps I used were from VH Audio, Duelund, Jantzen, Mundorf, seems like they all came to market in about the same range of time. So many brand choices today, way more values, voltages, metallurgy available today. I've yet to hear a bad boutique film cap in my mod projects, only sq issue has been less than preferred colorations, large physical size sometimes makes fitting a chore. |
I am not sure the best capacitors today vs 15-20 years ago are in fact better. It seems to me there is now a market for high grade fancy capacitors in the DIY hifi community, and so there are some smart companies who are riding that wave and marketing to that audience. Dueland, for instance. It would be interesting to hear from people who have been in the high end hifi manufacturing business for a long time, hear their commentary on this. There seem to be some others on this forum who will do modifications to some gear for a fee, using these fancy branded caps and other components. Things like salt used to just be salt. Now there is Himalayan salt, Moldon salt, etc etc. It is still just salt, and before there were better quality and worse quality salt for cooking, the marketing business just had not latched on and did their thing. |
Switching from electrolytic capacitors to film caps has brought the focus on the materials used in the construction of capacitors. Electrolytics can sound poor because the insulator is actually an oxidized plate. Basically a capacitor is two plates separated by an insulator. Film caps allow that form of construction. Using high purity metal foils and Teflon insulators without the need to use a paste to oxidize a plate improves the transmission of a purer music signal. |
