Was this an homage to Frank?... or am I free associating again from my psychodelic history?
"what kind of a gu-ru are you anyway? Is that real poncho or is that a Sears poncho?"
You win the prize, yes it was a Frank homage
Oh I forgot, I got told by an authority on crossover networks (another parts swapper that just puts expensive parts with no electrical understanding) told me that the metalized film capacitors sound awful because they are compromised by the self healing, he said it amounts to noise from all the arcing internally.
First of all the healing process is caused from possibly and arc, say there is a failed spot and shorted, this arc or fault current clears that area and effectively fixing itself. The only issue from this is if the process happens too many times and reduces the surface area, the reduced surface area reduces the reactance/capacitance. There is no way you are hearing these arcs from constant faults, the clearing process happens very fast and only from a fault. It's as if these people that have a very vague understanding of the how these parts are made and how they function make up this stuff to just sell their stuff. Nothing changes, the dielectric is the same and metal is the same just impregnated onto the plastic during the extra step in production to make them. They end up having much more surface area and less distance between plates making them smaller than rolling the plastic with metal film. It's the same concept just constructed differently so distortion and dielectric properties are the same between them. I have not read any papers on the self healing capacitors having any sort of higher noise floor from this internal "arcing". Personally I like the idea that
IF there was a problem my capacitor will self heal and continue functioning, the size of the clearing are very small and don't effect the amount of capacitance normally, on a huge scale I'd say the worst thing that could happen is you lose surface area from too many clearings and capacitance/reactance would diminish. This is better than having the capacitor fail dead short which would happen with a film and foil type. These snake oil people make up problems where there are none and completely disregard this great advancement in technology we have for parts, they only make a price correlation to performance in that if it's more expensive it has to be better. They don't think that with all the high tech competition and the fact we need better parts as tech improves, the tech purchases these superior parts in higher quantity and the competition brings the price down, you get amazing performance at an amazing price. It's the opposite with boutique parts, they need to charge more money because they are only filling a niche market which is audio, and let me tell you passing audio signals is a far more relaxed application compared to being pulsed 150,000 times a second or more with high currents all day long in commercial electronic equipment. So ya that Wima MKP is going to be a far more advanced capacitor in terms of performance compared to that $500 copper foil and paper beeswax capacitor, the latter would melt all the wax out from losses and internal heat and end up failing while the Wima just plugs along living another 10,000 hours of use. Go ahead and pay the $500 for exotic materials, I'll take high tech performance hands down, especially since it's WAY cheaper. That's the kicker, you get better for less.
I was happy with the speaker as is.
