audio grade electrolitic capacitors?

What is the 'audio grade' worth in, for example, Nichicons 'audio grade electrolitic capacitors'?
Is it worth buying these since they're only slightly more expensive then their non-audio grade counterparts or will it not sound any different?

If you are only using one or two it will "feel" better. If using a bunch it should be easy enough to compare a few... There is no practical difference that I can think of, that would necessitate a different internal capacitor design.

JR

The 'audio grade' caps tend to use materials which they feel will appease audiophiles' ears in the dielectric construction. I.e. panasonic ECA use 'Manila hemp', Elna Silmic use silk and the now-defunct Black Gate used graphite.

It's quite funny when you mention this to audiophools. They tend to start associating the materials with how the cap will sound, in the same way that they often believe silver cable to sound bright and metal film resistors to sound 'metallic'  :

Manila hemp is best for dub reggae. Seriously. The guys in white coats designed it that way.

I once worked with a person that was a strange combination of audiophile and degreed engineer... This made him slightly more dangerous than typical audiophools since we would get into discussions about esoteric minutiae of atomic structure (electron bond angles?) inside capacitors for example, and there could arguably be some real phenomenon deep down there to debate about the audibility in context of how used.

In general he was a solid engineer who didn't believe in magic, and his work product was more likely to sound good than bad. I did not encourage his more phoolish inclinations, but working between the sharp pencil lines at peavey we all did, he did some good work... (probably still is). I was pleased with the several projects he worked on for me (he worked in the transducer engineering group). I would often lend him new amplifier prototypes from my group to listen to over several days in his home system just to make sure we didn''t miss something obvious.

I didn't bother to tell Peavey dealers we had our resident golden ear bless the products, who would believe me.  ;D

JR

While we can debate the sonic differences of caps all day long, I have noticed a definite difference in the durability of a certain series of audiophile caps.  I was recently called in to troubleshoot a console that the master section had been re-capped using these caps, and the caps kept failing.  Upon inspection I noticed that the power supply had a nasty turn-on transient that was reverse-biasing the coupling caps, causing them to leak and fail. We tried a different series of caps and the problem went away. So, there are certainly differences in construction, and more things to think about than just the sound when comparing capacitors.

Joe

I think you can diminish their "sound impact" if you put the elcos within the nfb-loop. But this is mostly doable only if you design your own gadgets, and much less likely to be doable on your already-built gear.

But yeah, more power to the hemp-caps, haha.

Engineer talk:
Yo, imma little dizzy, yo, wassup?
Yo, bud, 'em caps fried, damn, yo.

joe-electro said:

I have noticed a definite difference in the durability of a certain series of audiophile caps.  I was recently called in to troubleshoot a console that the master section had been re-capped using these caps, and the caps kept failing.  Upon inspection I noticed that the power supply had a nasty turn-on transient that was reverse-biasing the coupling caps, causing them to leak and fail. We tried a different series of caps and the problem went away. So, there are certainly differences in construction, and more things to think about than just the sound when comparing capacitors.

Click to expand...

Joe, would you tell us what brand was this?

To give Hank a sensible answer, some Golden Pinnae stuff is better in some applications.  eg Sanyo Oscons have lower ESR than most so have less noise when used in Lo Z low noise signal paths.  I've never used them but prefer the Panasoic Lo ESR series for the same reason.
But electrolytics certainly do vary in reliability.  Again, Panasonics are good in general.

These 2 points don't need Golden Pinnae to tell the difference.  In fact, from more than a decade conducting alot of Double Blind Listening Tests, I found most (all?) self declared Golden Pinnae are deaf and the man and woman in the street usually has more discriminating hearing. 

If you are a Golden Pinnae, you need caps from Cooktown Recording & Ambisonic Productions.  Send me US$500 in used bank notes for a sample.  No Confederate currency please.  8)

An amusing thread imho. I think there is a world of difference between best practice theory and the statements and opinions of audiophiles. The only things that are important to me are the longevity/reliability of the lytic (hence 105 or 125 degree caps and never 85), certainty they are not counterfeits, low ESR and in my opinion the dielectric material has minimal impact when dealing with lytics. The basically behave badly compared with COG/Polypropylene. Polystyrene. Best approach is to try and avoid having to use them by design - although that holy grail is hard to achieve thanks to phantom power and inevitable offsets etc. A couple of years ago I bought a whole bag of "audiophile " caps from an Australian guy who was exiting the DIY arena. This included the esoteric Black Gates, Silmic I and Silmic II etc etc. I bought them because it was cheaper than buying standard caps due to his attractive "fire sale". Tried them in a number of designs and didn't remotely improve anything to my ears. I am a recording engineer with supposed "good ear for detail"

Do agree that Low ESR in low Z circuits is important when considering noise, and obviously very important in switching power supplies - but that's a different topic.

I am expat in Manila Philippines and manila Hemp caps are illegal here I would imagine. When you consider the whole chain from source material to loudspeaker output and therefore what the ear hears - its pretty hard to attribute perception to a certain brand of lytic (or speaker wire )

Attributing a sound to a capacitor is even more specious when dealing with microphone preamplifers using iron/nickel transformers as they mask the sound far more than a capacitor (typically in a pleasing way to the human ear regardless of deviance from electronic theory of perfection).

The biggest irony of all is the vast majority of people listen through dreadful earphone and transducers, and the playback material has already been murdered by horrible MP3 encoding. I am a fan of George Massenburgs ravings against MP3 after all the effort we all make to churn out pleasing and accurate sound. You don't need golden ears to hear the difference between an original WAV versus an MP3 of the same track.

I still haven't seen a convincing explanation of why electrolytic caps ever need to be in series with the signal path except for cost...  Power filtering or course, maybe a signal filter (as in, cap to ground), but why use them for coupling?

millzners said:

I still haven't seen a convincing explanation of why electrolytic caps ever need to be in series with the signal path except for cost...  Power filtering or course, maybe a signal filter (as in, cap to ground), but why use them for coupling?

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Size, have you ever seen a 47uf film cap?

Regards,
Mark

Biasrocks said:

Size, have you ever seen a 47uf film cap?

Click to expand...

Dude, I think one of the girls from nancy Fridays' books fantasized about it.

(Could be wrong, tho... err)

millzners said:

I still haven't seen a convincing explanation of why electrolytic caps ever need to be in series with the signal path except for cost...  Power filtering or course, maybe a signal filter (as in, cap to ground), but why use them for coupling?

Click to expand...

Cost generally matters to most people (like me). Especially in a console design where there can be several DC blocking nodes in a single channel, with tens of channels. A few hundred huge film caps inside a console would make the cap manufacturer happy, but that's about it.  :'(

In an ideal would we could scale impedances up and use film caps, but that isn't always practical. To consumers judging a console by what they hear, switch clicks and scratchy pots are a definite buzz kill (no pun there).  When staging multiple HPF in series it is good practice to set the poles much lower than needed so the cumulative effect is still low.  My preference was to set all electrolytic poles way low, then use one film cap HPF to establish the effective operating LF skirt. If the electrolytic caps never see terminal voltage change their terminal voltage related effects have little opportunity to express.

DC blocking for phantom power wants to be substantial to A) provide low impedance for noise considerations, and B) for the effective HP pole to be way way below mains frequency, so cap tolerance related differences between balanced inputs does not degrade LF CMRR. (As I have mentioned before, I am interested in alternate approaches that float the front end up to phantom voltage and AC couple later with film caps, or translate output level without caps at all. )

Electrolytic caps when applied conservatively are very far down the list of audible links in your playback chain to worry about.. (speakers?, room Acoustics? microphones?, for just a few).

JR

I have noticed a definite difference in the durability of a certain series of audiophile caps. 

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+1 

"durability"  That word may freeze an audiophile conversation on cap merits.  But for the typical prices I'd sure want it to be very high.

A broadcast tech friend of mine who's spent over 20 years doing full recaps of station equipment will only use the long life industrial versions of whatever cap is needed.  He tried going the budget route years ago and learned a lesson.  Mind you, these caps are not considered "audiophile grade" though they are more $$$ than budget but usually less than the former, and money well spent on the less discussed quality of durability.

It's quite funny when you mention this to audiophools. They tend to start associating the materials with how the cap will sound, in the same way that they often believe silver cable to sound bright and metal film resistors to sound 'metallic' 

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Yup.  You'd think they were shopping for exotic fruit, or other . . . ..  I guess Sprague Black Beauties should make everything sound faster (for those who survived the 70s) 

Marketing Depts of yore had it already figured out I reckon.


Base your cap or tube buying decisions on one with a dragon printed on the side - you get a mythical creature!

lassoharp said:

. . . ..  I guess Sprague Black Beauties should make everything sound faster (for those who survived the 70s) 

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rjs blacks? Where's the diet pills when we really need them?

JR

Imo, if one designs SMT devices, now the 10, 15 or 22uF X7R ceramic-chips are abundant and priced competitively enough (still more expensive than elcos, but will usually last almost forever - i.e., much longer, and still cheaper than oscons or polymer lytics).

If +/-12V rails are used, the low-cost 25V-rated ceramic-chip variety will suffice (usually survives some overvoltage pretty well). Especially if used within the opamp nfb-loop, these ceramics will almost always work and sound "fast and crisp (TM)". The opamp will work hard and diligently towards canceling the cap-distortion, and will generously add some of its own in the process. Now that's called "Fidelity".


And now, the Inventors of hemp-grade caps:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2pXxHW1DHs

Don't try this at home.

Thank you all, for an interesting thread.

Silly beliefs can plague our mind with wild subjection.
Obvious sensibilities should plague our actions.
Audio is deeply subjective. Audio parts it seems, can be a welcome objective, if treated as such.


.....plays into a book I'm reading....
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/05/19/fanboyism-and-brand-loyalty/

Freq Band said:

Thank you all, for an interesting thread.

Silly beliefs can plague our mind with wild subjection.
Obvious sensibilities should plague our actions.
Audio is deeply subjective. Audio parts it seems, can be a welcome objective, if treated as such.


.....plays into a book I'm reading....
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/05/19/fanboyism-and-brand-loyalty/

Click to expand...

Music is subjective, audio can be treated as mostly objective but with somewhat fuzzy perceptual tools.

A new book that deals with that and much much more.


http://www.ethanwiner.com/book.htm

Sorry if I have mentioned this before.. the book was written by a friend, and I helped him fact check it, while he was writing it.

JR

JohnRoberts said:

A new book that deals with that and much much more.

http://www.ethanwiner.com/book.htm

Sorry if I have mentioned this before.. the book was written by a friend, and I helped him fact check it, while he was writing it.

JR

Click to expand...

Any torrents to download it? 
I'm kidding here...
Looks great. It might well be my next purchase. Thanks for that.

Sorry if I have mentioned this before

Click to expand...

Glad you shared the link.  I saw his myth busting presentation from AES on you tube but didn't know about the book.  Pretty sure I'll be getting a copy.  Looking forward to it.  Thanks.