Capacitor cocktail - types, locations

[pompeiisneaks]

Yeah. I'm a diehard fan of analog. Much of my music collection is vinyl and I appreciate the difference. But, I don't think that digital is evil, or inorganic, or anything like that. I do think that it needs to mature; "CD quality" is actually piss-poor by the standards of today's technology. What makes me sad is that I don't think there's a bog economic incentive to improve it. The majority of consumers of music today are happy with MP3 quality levels. They're listening to music through earbuds, or at best a crappy car stereo system, and they're OK with the quality that they're getting!!!!!

Big advances in sound quality were made when there was an economic incentive for recording studios and manufacturers of playback equipment to do better, to continually improve on what they were already doing. But it seems that today the majority of money spent on both recordings and the gear to play back those recordings is spent by people that really don't care. So, digital audio could come a lot closer to vinyl, and the people that design playback equipment have built it, but the source of quality digital recordings just isn't there. The trend away from albums (i.e. CDs) and towards selling single songs might make higher quality, high resolution recording available in the future, especially with artists that care about that stuff themselves. Many (but not all) recording studios already create high quality digital recordings, but then they down-grade the final release to a shitty mp3. Some artist and studios know that the product will end up being a low res mp3, so they don't even try to make a high quality recording in the first place. But, if the market is there...

I see the same problem with telephones. That phone on the wall of the house I grew up in, the one with a dial instead of push buttons, sounded WAY better than the cell phone that I just bought for $500. WTF?

Can't agree more, when phone manufacturers are getting rid of a super cheap part that guarantee's higher fidelity (headphone jack) for bluetooth, which sounds like absolute shit, I'm stunned.

[JD0x0]

I'm trying to sort it all out Polyester, metal film polypropylene, polypropylene, mylar, ceramic, silver mica? I see fender reissue just uses those cheap metal film polypropylene.. Any suggestions? Really want my 102 to shine!

You forgot Polystyrene, tantalum. Also, there's multiple types of ceramic, which perform differently. The C0G are supposed to be decent for audio, low distortion, while Y5F, used in Fender, distort a lot, generally considered poor for audio quality, due to this. Mostly odd order harmonics, but some people like that coloration in guitar amps.
https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r26989 ... n-Analysis


Also, if I'm not mistaken, there's differences between construction such as film/foil and metalized. Metalized caps tend to be 'self healing', but they seem to cause a bit more distortion compared to film/foil. Film/foil seem to be desirable for audio coupling, IMO, they seem a bit more 'neutral' compared to metalized construction, if that makes any sense.

The 'Orange Drops' that seem to be coveted, and which were used in many D-style amps were film/foil construction. The 715P being Polypropylene Film/Foil and the 6PS being polyester Film/Foil. Ken Fischer seemed to like these types, too.. IMO, the film/foil polyester sound a bit more open and less congested than metalized polyester, like Malory 150's which tend to have a bit more of the 'treble smear' in comparison.

Each have their advantages and shortfalls. I try to stock a little bit of everything. There's no wrong answers, so long as the parts are in spec, and safe to use.

[samrock55]

I know 715 and 716 series caps are the standard for most of the coupling but did anyone ever build a Dumble using inexpensive Chinese polypropylene or Polyester caps? Just curious if anyone ever did like those small brown epoxy coated polypropylene films??