Audible difference in high-end capacitors? - ABX samples

[fpitas]

The test is interesting - but we should also consider other factors like long-term performance and reliability when assessing the suitability of components for long term use in audio applications. We all like high signal quality, but let's admit we also don't enjoy sending our equipment out for repair because someone took shortcuts and/or tried to increase profitability by packaging in unnecessarily cheapo components.

Luckily, cheap and cheerful polypropylene caps will last forever.

 

[pma]

This discussion about the microphonics of capacitors is quite interesting. Some capacitors are mounted inside speaker cabinets as part of the crossover. If it is true that capacitors are affected by microphonics, it may be plausible that a capacitor with more robust mechanical construction would resist changing its value. Perhaps we should do a test to see how the capacitance (and maybe frequency response?) varies when subject to a loud test signal. Also, it would be interesting to see if heat makes a difference.

Power transistors mounted on heatsinks do "sing" at certain frequencies. Do you thing it adds distortion? You will measures less than -100 dB distortion and the transistors are "singing". So do the transformer windings. Ridiculous.

 

[MRC01]

One audible difference I found with capacitors is in the power supply. I was troubleshooting a low level spurious tone which turned out to be caused by an insufficiently stiff power supply in a battery powered device. I added caps to stiffen the PS. Off the shelf caps from radio shack had no measurable effect, but tantalum caps reduced the tone by about 12 dB, an audible improvement.

Mike's Zoom H4 Mod

 

[voodooless]

People like cosmetically good looking things. It's human nature and satifies a desire. There is really nothing more to the story.

The whole point is that there IS more to the story, or at least that what they want you to think. Otherwise there would not be claims of audibly.

Nobody claims a Rolex tells time better, and as for coffee, I don’t drink any, so I don’t know Surely subjective choices are made all the time, but we’re not debating any of those, so let’s stick to the subject at hand.

 

[MAB]

No there is no more to the story.

Then please leave this thread if you find it boring. It's insulting to post on someone's thread as you do.

 

[antcollinet]

Yep, that everything-sounds-the-same 'virus' is spreading quite fast on ASR lately. I wonder why are all those people spending so much time/effort with their measurements. That does not seem particularly bright of them.
Same as bright for me to pay a monthly 'fee' here when I can just repeat the everything-mantra and all will be roses... also post it a few times every day and become a very popular 'audio-scientist'
/sarcasm

No-one is forcing you to come here.

 

[antcollinet]

If a (more) complete set of measurements is done, this thread could be a very useful reference. One may quote it as solid proof everytime someone says "blabla cap sounds so much different/better". As it stands, without much else than a single FR measurement, it's not much of a proof.
It's just a very small +1 for the null hypothesis that all/most (properly sized) caps sound the same. Kind of useful too and many thanks for the effort. Just saying that it could be much more useful/better.

Anyway, looks like asking for more is not particularly welcome here. Apparently that brings up some sort of audiophile-paranoia. And other useful answers like "go DIY" or "just leave us alone, we're perfect and know it all". Sorry for 'crashing' whatever party was going on here and have fun!

It wouldn't matter how many were tested - the next believer along would say - well, you didn't test *those* - do that now.


It's reallly easy - find a capacitor you believe has a sound, and then get someone to test *that* one.


But if you are not testing them yourself, you only get one go - and *you* have to find someone willing and able to do the test.

 

[antcollinet]

One audible difference I found with capacitors is in the power supply. I was troubleshooting a low level spurious tone which turned out to be caused by an insufficiently stiff power supply in a battery powered device. I added caps to stiffen the PS. Off the shelf caps from radio shack had no measurable effect, but tantalum caps reduced the tone by about 12 dB, an audible improvement.

Mike's Zoom H4 Mod

OK - but here you basically fixed a fault in the PSU.

And we're not talking about the difference between "a cap" and "no cap" or even "This type of cap" vs "That type of cap"

We're mainly talking about "A standard cap of the suitable type" and an "Audiophile cap of an equally suitable type and value but at x times the price" Where x is a big number.

 

[MAB]

Your right, it's only boring because it's been beat to death here and all over the interwebs. I won't be back here.

Yeah, just delete your stuff on the way out of here.

 

[pablolie]

Luckily, cheap and cheerful polypropylene caps will last forever.

I just care about it lasting about 20 years potentially. I just turned 60, so anything beyond it, hey... :-D

 

[fpitas]

People like cosmetically good looking things. It's human nature and satifies a desire. There is really nothing more to the story.

You must be toying with us here. Or you've ignored pages full of woo-woo claims for crossover parts.

 

[BDWoody]

Yeah, just delete your stuff on the way out of here.

No need for that...

 

[ctrl]

Can you also measure distortion @ctrl ?
Also, maybe some of the caps can add a sort of compression-like effect which is somehow measurable?!

Did a multitone distortion comparison between the standard cap and the Alumen Z-cap in the opening post - MD includes HD and IMD.
In the other parts of the mini series on capacitors you can find more comparisons of distortions of different capacitors - all almost identical.

Possible to do some kind of "waterfall" test? I'd be curious to see how capacitors holding on to energy might be relevant. I believe the term is Capacitor Discharge Time Constant, which describes how different capacitors hold energy for differing periods of time when asked to discharge.

The "discharge times" of the capacitors do not influence the decay behavior of the loudspeaker/tweeter, since these time periods are smaller by powers of ten in comparison.

Measurements can be found in the first part of the mini series. Towards the end of the first post where I answer possible questions in advance. Search for:
"2) The difference will certainly be reflected in the decay behavior of the tweeter!"

Sure, here's the difference file: https://app.box.com/s/xcgtrzqj1jgh2z8z76i48h0bue1ssnl5

Listen at your normal listening levels -- let us know what you hear. This is high-pass filtered at 1000Hz.

Thank you very much @pkane, this is very helpful. Will integrate the diff file in my opening posts.

Which amplifier was used for the tests?
I am thinking of class AB crossover distortion and possible masking effects.

I examined the high-end capacitor closely, there was no warning anywhere that the huge, not measurable, but clearly audible differences would not occur when using Class-AB amplifiers

Just do the ABX test with the unchanged files and if you can't hear a staggering difference, maybe consider that the alleged differences could have psychological reasons. Just search for "expectation effect" in psychology.

Just curious but do you have measurements for FR from different loudness levels as well 80,95,105db to see if theres any change in compression?

No, I'm afraid I don't. The electronics specialists can probably be of more help. Would be for amplifiers very hindering if capacitors at 20V would already show significant compression effects.

But at 20V, which corresponds to 100W at 4 ohms, most tweeters will show clear compression effects (if they survive the test) and mask everything else.

Listening to source again, well, there might be a slightest of slightest difference in favor to Alu-Z but I will not catch it in ABX.

If you can't hear the difference in the ABX test with the unmodified files, then there is none for your hearing - this is exactly why you do an ABX test.
Everything else is imagination and "expectation effect".

There is a clear difference between the Alumen-Z Cap and the Standard one.
I A/B tested with volume match (there is a 2.8db difference between the 2 pink noise recordings and 2.4db the music samples).

There is guaranteed no 2.8dB difference in the usable frequency range.
As I wrote in the opening post, the frequency range below 1kHz must be ignored, because there, due to the level drop of the tweeter (electrical second order high-pass), the ambient noise affects the recording.
If you noticed a 2.8dB difference, you made a significant mistake somewhere.

Here again the delta of spectra determined by the program DeltaWave from @pkane.
We compare the Alumen Z-Cap with the standard cap, both the pink noise and the "Fast Car" samples.

Except for very few peaks, the difference in the valid frequency range 1-20kHz, with this type of evaluation is <0.1dB - so practically inaudible.

Just take the unaltered files and do an ABX test in foobar, if you can't find staggering differences there, there aren't any.

 

[Cbdb2]

One audible difference I found with capacitors is in the power supply. I was troubleshooting a low level spurious tone which turned out to be caused by an insufficiently stiff power supply in a battery powered device. I added caps to stiffen the PS. Off the shelf caps from radio shack had no measurable effect, but tantalum caps reduced the tone by about 12 dB, an audible improvement.

Mike's Zoom H4 Mod

So you added 3000uf of capacitance (10 times the radio shack caps) and you got a difference? No surprise. Whats surprising is you think it was the cap quality that made the difference, not just the values.
And be careful with tantalum.
From https://electronics.stackexchange.c...ntalum-capacitors-safe-for-use-in-new-designs

"When used properly" tantalum capacitors are highly reliable.
They have the advantage of high capacitance per volume and good decoupling characteristics due to relatively low internal resistance and low inductance compared to traditional alternatives such as aluminum wet electrolytic capacitors.
The 'catch' is in the qualifier "when used properly".
Tantalum capacitors have a failure mode which can be triggered by voltage spikes only 'slightly more' than their rated value. When used in circuits that can provide substantial energy to the capacitor failure can lead to thermal run-away with flame and explosion of the capacitor and low resistance short-circuiting of the capacitor terminals.

 

[fpitas]

When used in circuits that can provide substantial energy to the capacitor failure can lead to thermal run-away with flame and explosion of the capacitor and low resistance short-circuiting of the capacitor terminals.

Even when substantial resistance is in series, sometimes. We gave up on tantalum and parallel SMT ceramics if we need low ESR to high frequencies.

 

[pogo]

Which amplifier was used for the tests?

???

 

[Cbdb2]

How is a big cap with fancy wrappers any different from any other commodity that people buy? Since all caps perform the same why does anyone need a Rolex instead of a Walmart quartz? Or an ornate and over the top coffee cup instead of the "6 cup pack" from the dollar store. And so on and so on; I'm sure you can think of MANY more analogies. All you guys that laugh at these botique caps need to look at the over the top and scientifically useless products that you personally own, whatever it is, all categories in play.

People like cosmetically good looking things. It's human nature and satifies a desire. There is really nothing more to the story. In fact it's incredibly boring and total waste of time to prove this point. Time you never get back.

You realize we are talking about something nobody looks at. Personally I wish all my electronics where invisible. And if you can find a "over the top scientifically useless" device in my house Ill give you $1000.

 

[MRC01]

So you added 3000uf of capacitance (10 times the radio shack caps) and you got a difference? No surprise. Whats surprising is you think it was the cap quality that made the difference, not just the values.

What makes you think that I think that?

....
"When used properly" tantalum capacitors are highly reliable.
They have the advantage of high capacitance per volume and good decoupling characteristics due to relatively low internal resistance and low inductance compared to traditional alternatives such as aluminum wet electrolytic capacitors.

This (low ESR) in addition to their high capacitance is what made the difference.

 

[MRC01]

OK - but here you basically fixed a fault in the PSU.
And we're not talking about the difference between "a cap" and "no cap" or even "This type of cap" vs "That type of cap"
We're mainly talking about "A standard cap of the suitable type" and an "Audiophile cap of an equally suitable type and value but at x times the price" Where x is a big number.

True. My point was that it made a measurable and audible difference, and part of the reason why was the quality of the capacitors - having low ESR - in addition to the capacity, of course. And to give an example of the kind of situation where swapping caps can make a real difference.

 

[fpitas]

True. My point was that it made a measurable and audible difference, and part of the reason why was the quality of the capacitors - having low ESR - in addition to the capacity, of course. And to give an example of the kind of situation where swapping caps can make a real difference.

Right. But several very measurable parameters changed. The woo-woo boutique cap argument is that some unmeasurable x factor makes them better.