General capacitor questions

I've stuck caps on an sig gen and scope, then bode plotted the human range and I didn't find any difference between Panasonic and Wima. Yet the sound difference between them as a cap between a solid state amp pre and power sections was marked. As too vs the old electrolytic that had been fried for 25 years..

I can see we're headed towards the cap grave yard conversation.. In the end if the cap is leaky, dried out and in circuit it's going to sound ... not the best irrespective of type.

Many components sound better due to interactions outside of our hearing range. Oscillations, positive/negative feedback and noise can suck power and distort the AC waveform, even if there's MHz noise riding over the top of audio. Same as a bad clock or digital signal causes jitter etc.

However if you use toilet roll, paint it like big caps, give it silver wire leads and put it in the marketing blurb, then suddenly it becomes a thing.

I've bode tested the caps, then experimentally tested it some more, and if it makes a difference then so be it.. the best price works for me - even if that's cheap. In the end the WIMA/Vishay/Nichicon are less "audio" and more reliably built that deliver close performance in every cap.. when you have high voltages you don't want to be the person that experiences the bad day cap. I will pay a little more for that.
 
NickKUK said:
I've stuck caps on an sig gen and scope, then bode plotted the human range and I didn't find any difference between Panasonic and Wima. Yet the sound difference between them as a cap between a solid state amp pre and power sections was marked. As too vs the old electrolytic that had been fried for 25 years..
Click to expand...

....so there's zero quantifiable difference between the two brands, but your non-blind hearing test proved there was?

Come on bro. At least pretend it's anything but imaginary :LOL:
 
drew.spriggs said:
....so there's zero quantifiable difference between the two brands, but your non-blind hearing test proved there was?

Come on bro. At least pretend it's anything but imaginary :LOL:
Click to expand...

I know.. odd ey! It's probably something like the maximum AC signal Vpp/Ipp given the testing (from memory) was low voltage plus the sig gen is limited in it's current delivery capacity, even in 50R mode.

My point here is not all testing is perfect, at the same time A/B testing on a stereo amp with real music can yield different results, demonstrating the "scientific test" may not be representative.

Do I believe that mundorf etc are better? I don't know. I do know I could build a better design that doesn't care. I do know an opamp swap and film caps made a difference when testing A/B. The cost of them was such that I didn't care between the low cost wima, the low cost vishay, or the low cost panasonic. Coupled with the dependability/performance/cost - I'll take wima.

Everyone has a favourite bias or we'd all be using no-name brands randomly shipped from the dark manufacturing parts of the world..
 
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