DIY caps

[joshuatan]

Hi guys i`m sorry if i have posted this in the wrong section but i`m planning on diying my own caps.
Most likely getting sonic caps from Sonic Craft however i`m unsure of what uf values to take.
so any recommandations?
Prefered Sound signature would be lushy mids or Powerful but clean bass


Thanks in advance!
Regards
Josh

 

[Good Times]

What????

 

[Uncle Erik]

Are you going to physically build capacitors or are you planning to order some?What are you going to use the caps for? Are you looking to put them into the power supply or into the signal path? What are you going to put the caps into? Are you going to upgrade/modify a piece of gear or are you building a piece of gear from scratch?

Further, don't get your hopes too far up about modding the mids and bass with capacitors. In my experience, the circuit itself has more to do with performance than individual components. Even that is outweighed by the headphones you use and, especially, the recording you have.

Anyhow, let us know what you're up to here.

 

[Good Times]

You've edited your post, but it still is far too vague.

 

[joshuatan]

I'm so sorry about how i post.
Ok usually normal set ups of Portable audio
Ipod -> Lod -> amp -> earpiece. (of cos there are alot of others but just an example.)
There are caps that are included in like
Ipod -> LOD- > Caps(Which some ppl put it inside the LOD, example the IMOD LOD.) -> Amp -> Earpiece.
we can sup it with those mordofs and sonic caps, there are no pcb boards involved etc. so its just a cap that goes into the cucirut in series .
Most of the time they are 47uF with another value, to go with it. i forgot that one, and would like to hear some of your suggestions about different values too!

 

[FallenAngel]

Ah, OK. So you're making an iPod dock with inline signal caps.

Different values are don't really sound "different", but you will want to make sure the value is high enough for the next stage (in this case an amplifier). For a portable amplifier, it is likely to have a 10K pot so you will want a 4.7uF cap. If it's a stationary amp with 50K or 100K pot (input impedance), you can go with 1.0uF or 0.47uF accordingly.

47uF is grossly oversized, but BlackGate NX comes only in 22uF and 47uF minimum so people pick them.

 

[JamesL]

I'm not very familiar with ipod-related mods, but I'm guessing you'd want a 1-5uF film cap if this is going to your amp.

edit - oops, fallenAngel already had an answer for you.

 

[qusp]

first you should actually confirm that you have an IMOD or DIYMOD ipod, if not you are wasting your time

 

[joshuatan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by FallenAngel /img/forum/go_quote.gif Ah, OK. So you're making an iPod dock with inline signal caps. Different values are don't really sound "different", but you will want to make sure the value is high enough for the next stage (in this case an amplifier). For a portable amplifier, it is likely to have a 10K pot so you will want a 4.7uF cap. If it's a stationary amp with 50K or 100K pot (input impedance), you can go with 1.0uF or 0.47uF accordingly. 47uF is grossly oversized, but BlackGate NX comes only in 22uF and 47uF minimum so people pick them.

ok cool i get it, thanks for explaining but could u explain more what you mean by pot & 10k pot u need 4.7uF 100k pot 0.47uF the higher the pot value the lower the uF needed?

 

[m1abrams]

Quote:

Originally Posted by qusp /img/forum/go_quote.gif first you should actually confirm that you have an IMOD or DIYMOD ipod, if not you are wasting your time

In case the original poster did not see this post. Adding a cap to the signal path is a waste UNLESS you have one of these mods. These mods remove the signal caps onboard so that you can use a larger "better" offboard cap. If you did not do the mod then the offboard will do nothing for you may even make things worse.

 

[robm321]

LOL - I clicked on this thread to find out if the OP was actually going to build caps from scratch....

 

[r_d]

Quote:

Originally Posted by joshuatan /img/forum/go_quote.gif ok cool i get it, thanks for explaining but could u explain more what you mean by pot & 10k pot u need 4.7uF 100k pot 0.47uF the higher the pot value the lower the uF needed?

"pot" is short for potentiometer. A potentiometer is a resistor with a third "wiper" terminal that can slide from end to end.
"10k pot" means a potentiometer with 10kΩ resistance.

If you're placing coupling capacitors right before the amp's input, you're basically building a passive high-pass filter with a corner frequency of 1/(2πRC), where R is the input resistance of the amp and C is the capacitance of the coupling capacitor. The corner frequency is the frequency at which a filter has a gain of -3dB (approximately 0.707)

You want to keep the corner frequency way below 20Hz, or else the filter will attenuate your bass.

If you use a 4.7 uF coupling cap and your amp has a 10kΩ input potentiometer, the corner frequency will be 1/(2*π*10e3*4.7e-6), or about 3.4Hz, which is well below the audible frequency range.

You need to find out what kind of input impedance your amp has before you start picking capacitors.

 

[Pars]

Quote:

Originally Posted by robm321 /img/forum/go_quote.gif LOL - I clicked on this thread to find out if the OP was actually going to build caps from scratch....

Me too...

 

[logwed]

Quote:

Originally Posted by robm321 /img/forum/go_quote.gif LOL - I clicked on this thread to find out if the OP was actually going to build caps from scratch....

Yeah, I was definitely confused. You could probably build your own parallel plate capacitor, but it would be huge.

 

[m1abrams]

Quote:

Originally Posted by robm321 /img/forum/go_quote.gif LOL - I clicked on this thread to find out if the OP was actually going to build caps from scratch....

Yep I think many of us had the same thought. It can be done with many different materials, usually it is messy!