Cyril Bateman Website Capacitor Sounds

Cyril now has a site featuring his Wireless World Articles

http://uk.geocities.com/[email protected]/index.html

Good catch Claude! I wondered what our man Cyril had been up to of late.

Zapnspark brought that one up as well recently at the micbuilders list, IIRC he added that it's a 'limited capacity' site, so if you don't get access or something a retry will be in order (and worth it :wink: :thumb: )

wait a minute: does the COG m-layer cap measurement really mean that ALL such caps are good or JUST a certain brand? He says more than 3000 were tested ...

hmmm ... mlayers aren't expensive in SMD

NP0/C0G is really good--probably all of them.

Samuel

[quote author="tv"]
hmmm ... mlayers aren't expensive in SMD[/quote]
They do get a bit pricey for the highest capacitance values.

I checked @ my local dealer and they (smd's) go upto 220nF cog/npo for the price of upto 100nF cog/npo t-h. Higher values are x7r and y5v which I read is no-go. And they come close to tantalums price range.

Now I need to find a technique to parallel tantalums and cog/npo m-layers to minimize distortion and up the vfm.

Any suggestions/links?



btw:
step1: download "wget"
step2: copy the following into a flat file called "caps.txt"


http://uk.geocities.com/[email protected]/download/measure_cables.pdf
http://uk.geocities.com/[email protected]/download/capsound1.pdf
http://uk.geocities.com/[email protected]/download/capsound2.pdf
http://uk.geocities.com/[email protected]/download/capsound3.pdf
http://uk.geocities.com/[email protected]/download/capsound4.pdf
http://uk.geocities.com/[email protected]/download/capsound5.pdf
http://uk.geocities.com/[email protected]/download/capsound6.pdf
http://uk.geocities.com/[email protected]/download/cablesrc_pt1.pdf
http://uk.geocities.com/[email protected]/download/inductors_networks.pdf
http://uk.geocities.com/[email protected]/Download/CapSoun1.pdf

step3: invoke wget -i c:\temp\caps.txt -P c:\temp\downloads
or wget -i /home/myself/caps.txt -P /home/myself/downloads

step4: RTFM if it doesn't work on first try
step5: google "wget help"

I had available three 4.9metre long development cables having nominal RF impedances of 30 ohm, 16 ohm and 14 ohm. I selected the 14 ohm impedance, my highest capacitance cable, labelled as #55 made using Raychem 55A0111 wire. With 440pF/metre, it has slightly more than double the Supra 2.0 capacitance, perhaps that might produce a measurable distortion difference. This 440pF/metre presents a very modest capacitance compared to some commercially available cables which have more than 1500pF/metre.

With this cable and 3 volts 1kHz drive into the 4.7 ohm/25mH test load, something was clearly wrong. Distortions increased almost 30 fold to now measure some -60dB second and third harmonic, so immediately switched off the power supply, but too late, both power supply rail 4A fuses blew as the amplifier disappeared in smoke. The output devices, several small signal devices, PCB tracks and five of the small signal section resistors were destroyed. The 100nF capacitor and 10 ohm resistor in the Zobel network and the output inductor, when removed and measured, were undamaged.

Click to expand...

:shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :sad:

I think that Mr. Tesla discovered that caps and inductors are badass and can survive massive abuse quite some time before that .

Updated address:

https://linearaudio.nl/cyril-batemans-capacitor-sound-articles

Doug Self has a more up to date section on this topic in his Small Signal Design book.

Cheers

Ian

tv said:

Now I need to find a technique to parallel tantalums and cog/npo m-layers to minimize distortion and up the vfm.

Click to expand...

Why tantalums? Why not aluminium lytics? Their performance has improved to a point they are comparable - or even better - in many aspects. Is there a "technique" for paralleling components?