[]|[ GorE]

Guys,
I changed the 2.2 uF and 4.7 uF 50V Panasonic Bipolar Electrolytics in my Morel bookshelves to same valued 5% tolerance metaliized polyester 100 V caps.

result : No difference i can hear.

I now dont believe in caps either.....

 

[Ori]

I've had mixed results with these and in some cases they even degraded the sound vs. plain electrolytics.

If you're serious about the upgrade then go for metal/film caps. You might also have luck with Russian teflon caps that are sold on ebay. I haven't heard those, but all indications are that they're fine caps, as they should be from their basic specs.

 

[twc5964]

Yep,go for polypropylene caps instead.Just curious,are those the only caps in the crossover(2.2uf and 4.7uf) ? It also helps using non inductive resistors instead of the white sandcast types normally found. Madisound and Speaker City carries these parts.

I'm not saying it's an endall solution but in my crossovers there was a very pronounced difference in sound. It brought the recessed mids out..more forward,cleaned up the harsh treble immensly,and bass is much tighter and more focused.

 

[Wodgy]

Speakers are an odd thing. The folks on the Madisound forum did two sets of listening tests at two of the DIY speaker meets, with identical speakers with outboard crossovers where the only difference was capacitor type, and no one could reliably detect any difference between them.

I found that a little surprising, because bipolar electrolytics do make a difference in small-signal applications. It may have something to do with large signals versus small signals.

In any case, there's no reason to use anything lower quality than metallized polypropylene in DIY speakers. Spend the extra buck or two over electrolytics. Even if you can't hear a difference in sound, the film caps will last the lifetime of your speakers, while the electrolytics will leak or degrade after a number of years.

 

[braillediver]

So you’re basing your opinion on a random sampling of 1?

Yup I just looked out the window and the Earth is flat.


Mitch

 

[SemperFidelity]

Messy topic; polyester capacitors range from OK to pretty bad, depending on construction and materials. Also, sometimes the electrolytic can have euphonic benefits. I once changed an amplifier's input capacitor, (Citation 12 iirc) an electrolytic cap, to a well-reviewed polyprope. Change was a disaster. The softness of the electrolytic had masked the amplifier's typical early-transistor-design sound.

I believe in capacitor breakin. I find that a good rule of thumb is 40 hours. Ouch. Try not to listen during breakin, but just beginning and end.

It also depends on the drivers. A Scanspeak 8636 coated Kevlar mid and large Focal alnico tweeter in the '80's responded only mildly to improved resistors (Sandcast --> Mills) and minimal metallized polypropylene ---> better polyprope/foil. More recent project, using ATI 4" mid/Scanspeak 99000Revelator tweeter is sensitive to everything, as were the Accuton ceramics we also tried. The later drivers are also much more revealing with music.

Poke around on the web, and you'll find paraphrases of the Wireless World article; to the author's surprise, distortion was, in some cases, quite easily measurable for some capacitors. The earlierJung/Marsh article in Audio was the first to find a correlation between dielectric absorption and listening results, and also found that some types had measurable distortion.

 

[]|[ GorE]

I have read that the metallized polypropylene cap is as good as a metallized polyester cap for high pass tweeter applications .........

 

[Wodgy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ]|[ GorE I have read that the metallized polypropylene cap is as good as a metallized polyester cap for high pass tweeter applications .........

In general, metallized polypropylene is considered to be "better" than metallized polyester. They're also more expensive.

In my experience, you can usually get great results by using an average quality cap and then bypassing it with a small value high-quality cap.

 

[PinkFloyd]

Quote:

Originally Posted by braillediver So you’re basing your opinion on a random sampling of 1? Yup I just looked out the window and the Earth is flat. Mitch

lol