CAPACITOR !,HELP ME,PLEASE....

[aries]

Please people help me!
I'm having a truoble in capacitor choice.
I have not done direct comparison between they,but i would know which capacitor,suonds warm and natural.
i will put in crossover for morel mdt33 and dynaudio d52af.
The candidates are :
- solen 400v;
- solen 630v;
- audyncap 400v;
- audyncap plus 800v;
- mundorf m-cap 400v;
- mundorf m-cap supreme 800v (no oil);

I would know which give to me a more relaxed suond.

I already seen the Tony Gee cap. test,do not intrest me.

[Audiomanikern]

Hi!

In A*´s opinion it really doesn´t matter! They´re all equally good & identical, regarding sound quality !

Best Regards A*

[EngelholmAudio_inaktiv]

Are you sure that it is the capacitor that is errorneous?

I sell some of the brands you mention and do not agree with Audiomaniker although...

Very often it is not the capacitors fault if the "sound" is wrong - it is mostly the construction, room or simuliar which has an error.

Could you give us more info about your system, the cross over, your room, amplifier etc?

[Morello]

You can buy "SCR" high quality caps frpn www.elfa.se.

[jonte0]

You can buy "SCR" high quality caps frpn www.elfa.se.

WARNING - THESE ARE NOT ANY GOOD SOUNDING !

[Naqref]

You can buy "SCR" high quality caps frpn www.elfa.se.

WARNING - THESE ARE NOT ANY GOOD SOUNDING !

Exactly! They are very quiet and doesn't sound much at all!

They do look nice imho.

[Bernt_inaktiv]

I have very limited experience with the specific caps you are referring to. However, I do like the sound one gets with paper in oil caps. It is possible to get those at a fair price at E-Bay. The best I´ve tested are Russian military standard. Some people talk enthusiastically about teflon/oil types, also russian military stuff if you want a sensible price.

There´s a lot of salestalk around these things of course so watch out and trust your ears. In other words: buy a bunch and test for yourself. I guess you´re the one who is going to listen day long to this in the end anyway.

[Martin]

You can buy "SCR" high quality caps frpn www.elfa.se.

WARNING - THESE ARE NOT ANY GOOD SOUNDING !

Exactly! They are very quiet and doesn't sound much at all!

They do look nice imho.

Hi Naqref, have you (or anyone) compared these capacitors with the M-cap or Audyn-cap? Any noticable/measurable difference? Are all decent poly/pp-caps equally good?

[jonte0]

Hi!

I have evaluated the horrid black ones in both as coupling caps in amps and as first order x-over for tweeters.

In the amp, I replaced the SCR with Audyn-Cap Plus and it was a relief. The SCR sounded grey and boxy but not distorted. Eventually I removed even the Audyn - aah... no cap is the best cap

In x-over I have compared to Jenzen caps and the difference was quite big. This was tweeter only testing. Here the SCR sounded distorted and confusing compared to a few different jenzen types.

I try to avoid the SCR caps. At best, they sound clean but never involving and they always leave a trail of deadness or grayness in their path ... It's also my experience (and these are based on test I made on speakers I live with every day) that a speaker with SCR caps will never let the sound "leave" the speaker completely i.e. they have a signature that makes the speaker not completely transparent.

I have not found a replacement in the same price range but I have not given up - it must be out there somewhere.


Thats my experiences and 0,02 €

/

[Naqref]

Hi Naqref, have you (or anyone) compared these capacitors with the M-cap or Audyn-cap? Any noticable/measurable difference? Are all decent poly/pp-caps equally good?

All pp-caps are more or less prone to microphonics and when excited by the sometimes very loud music inside a speakercabinet they can behave bad. The scr I (and Morello) referred to is the quietest I know of.

[Morello]

Jonte,


What are you talking about?

Have you done any distortion measurements?

[Nattlorden]

All pp-caps are more or less prone to microphonics and when excited by the sometimes very loud music inside a speakercabinet they can behave bad. The scr I (and Morello) referred to is the quietest I know of.

The solution seems a very simple one - don't put them inside the speaker cabinet.

[jonte0]

Jonte,


What are you talking about?

Have you done any distortion measurements?

No - these are MY listening experiances

/

edit: added "MY"

[Martin]

So, in theory, making a separate compartment for the crossover is as good as or better than any capacitor upgrade?

[Morello]

Jonte,


What are you talking about?

Have you done any distortion measurements?

No - these are MY listening experiances

/

edit: added "MY"

The caps you are refering to are much more prone to microhonic effects than SCR. Microphonic effects causes the capacitance to be modulated by amplitud (due to electrostatic force), which implies distorsion. However, these non-linearities are in most applications several orders of magnitud lower than non-linearites inherent in typical drivers.

[Erik]

Many people seem to prefer the rather expensive "paper in oil"-capacitors.

Has anyone done any measurements on these?

Are they sensitive to microphonics?

/Erik

[Morello]

Many people seem to prefer the rather expensive "paper in oil"-capacitors.

Has anyone done any measurements on these?

Are they sensitive to microphonics?

/Erik

Typical paper/pil-caps have very low loss high frequencyies. They can be good for RF-duty, but a good waste of money for LF-applications, such as loud speaker filter networks and tube-amps.

[DQ-20]

Many people seem to prefer the rather expensive "paper in oil"-capacitors.

Has anyone done any measurements on these?

Are they sensitive to microphonics?

/Erik

They are good enough and relatively expensive. However, since no diy-ers test and report in any way that could be described as scientific, valid results about the actual sound they produce are far and few apart. The typical "Tales of mystery and imagination" that we have seen proof of in this thread is numbingly dominant. However, from a social standpoint the paper in oil caps have an underground following. For nostalgics/tube aficionados, brands like Jensen has an air of great days gone by. This type of capacitor was, I believe, originally hyped in Japan, spreading to Europe by France and the magazine "L'Audiophile". Recently, paper in oil has become popular in the US, as the market for tube gear has expanded. So, in conclusion, paper in oil are not necessarily bad capacitors but their actual technical or "sonic" quality is probably not the reason why people choose them. For coolness, they are hard to beat, preferably parallelled with mica/silver caps.

/Dahlqvist

[RogerGustavsson]

So, in theory, making a separate compartment for the crossover is as good as or better than any capacitor upgrade?

Capacitors senstive to pressure will also act as small "loudspeakers" when feed with electrical signals. It will probably be a very bad capacitor, changing their characteristics with the signal.
There is a test you can do (at your own risk!). Connect a capacitor in series with a resistor and hook it up to your power amplifier (without loudspeaker). Avoid the loud sounding ones. Polyester capacitors are less prone to these effects than polyproylene capacitors.

[Morello]

Rogers test setup is ok, BUT one must remember to take dielectric constant into account. A cap with higher dielectric constant must be quiter.

[Magura]

Hmm, a quick hint. Most industrial pp fillmcapacitors are of quite a bit higher quality than the socalled "audio" caps.....and at a fraction of the price. Look for Siemens or Comar, they are both of very high quality.

If anybody really want to go up from the regular industrial film caps, you should look into nitrogene impregnated pp film caps....a bit pricey, but very low distortion and loss figures, better numbers than anything else I am aware of.

Morten

[Audiomanikern]

Hi Morten!

Sounds very interesting ! (Do you perhaps have some more specific recomendation ?)

Best Regards A*

[Magura]

Hi Morten!

Sounds very interesting ! (Do you perhaps have some more specific recomendation ?)

Best Regards A*

I assume you mean recommendations of nitrogene impregnated pp film caps.

In that case I guess siemens is the way to go, as they are known for their reliability and long service life, contrary to others (can't remember by heart what the crappy ones were called).

You have to be prepared to let got of 300+EUR for such a cap, and as far as im concerned they don't come in less than 2*50uF.

Besides the price issue, you need to run an external x-over to use such caps as they are huge (about the size of a 1.5L pepsi bottle for 2*83.5uF).
http://www.briangt.com/gallery/magura

Look at the image in the lower left corner.....those are my toys

Morten

[aries]

what do you mean with "They are very quiet and doesn't sound much at all!"
are they without life?
are not dynamics?
regards.

You can buy "SCR" high quality caps frpn www.elfa.se.

WARNING - THESE ARE NOT ANY GOOD SOUNDING !

Exactly! They are very quiet and doesn't sound much at all!

They do look nice imho.

Hi Naqref, have you (or anyone) compared these capacitors with the M-cap or Audyn-cap? Any noticable/measurable difference? Are all decent poly/pp-caps equally good?

[Audiomanikern]

Hi!

Yes, without life and dynamics in that they add & subtract as little as possible, they´re just... transparent!

Best Regards A*

[aries]

i do not understand!

"without life and dynamics in that they add & subtract as little as possible, they´re just... transparent! "

if they are without life and dynamics,they are not transparent,they are less aggressive than other caps with more dynamics.

excuse me if i do not understand,please explain better.

regards

[Martin]

If they don't add or subtract anything (audible) except for the clean and constant capacitance(ideal component with small series resistance), then you can say they are transparent.

If a capacitor adds distortion (not as a product of the application in which the capacitance is used) or picks up external noise (microphonics etc), it might distort the sound to an audible level. Then the capacitor is not transparent. It's making a sound!

It might be that some capacitors sound "dynamic" or aggressive because of the distortion they add. To me, a dynamic capacitor is a capacitor that does not change its value depending on the magnitude of the signal fed through it. I don't think it is likely that a decent capacitor subtracts "low level detail" from signals passing through it.

[aries]

ok,thank you
....but bettween solen and scr are there differences,or are the same???

[Martin]

ok,thank you
....but bettween solen and scr are there differences,or are the same???

I don't know, would like to though.

But as Naqref points out the SCR:s are among the better pp-caps so I don't think the solens are much better.

[Bernt_inaktiv]

Just swapped from SCR to M-Cap Supreme in the output stage in my CD. Not a huge difference but there is definitely a difference in favor of the M-caps. Sounds more exact, more distinct. And no - I didn´t do any measurements.