Capacitor cocktail - types, locations

[roberto]

http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showth ... p?t=122507

http://sound.westhost.com/articles/capacitors.htm

http://www.diyitalia.eu/forum/download/file.php?id=5049

http://www.lampizator.eu/UPGRADE/CAPACI ... itors.html

http://www.humblehomemadehifi.com/Cap.html

http://www.wima.com/EN/pulseselection.htm

http://www.bsproj.it/index.php?option=c ... icle&id=58

http://www.nichicon.co.jp/english/produ ... uminum.pdf

Some of the links I've posted six years ago on a similar thread.

[Gainzilla]

Lots of great reading there, thanks!

Edit: Wow. I just finished reading through the 10 pages on TGP. Some pretty useful information there. If you are interested in this thread and haven't read that yet (and also have a ton of time to kill. lol) I found it really worthwhile.

I will say that for me personally, that thread was validating. Several builders claim to fine tune their builds through careful auditioning of signal and bypass caps. That tells me I'm not crazy. Well, at least not about this.

On a side note, I recently had the opportunity to listen to some pristine vinyl recordings of the Beatles (Newly cut from the original masters, or something like that... Suffice it to say, this was reportedly really good vinyl) on an average or better than average system. My friend's system was a mix of average to coveted (Pair of vintage loudspeakers... not sure of the make, McIntosh Mono amps, average turntable with average needle). He's just getting into vinyl so not every piece in his system is where he'd like it to be yet. ANYWAY, bottom line: the vinyl sounded better. Hands down, no comparison, night and day difference, better. We A/B'd it against the CD. It wasn't even close. These are songs I've grown up listening to and felt like I knew like the back of my hand. Every nuance. The vinyl made it sound more intimate, detailed, dynamic, and "powerful" for lack of a better word.

Why bring this up in this thread? Because analog works the way our ears work (a single, continuous waveform), whereas digital recordings attempt to take 44,100 snapshots per second of the sound and try to represent it as a single continuous waveform (for CD spec anyway). Our ears inherently work differently and as a result there is a perceivable difference. Is digital good enough? Yes. Does it sound good, even? No question. But there is undoubtedly a difference in the way we perceive sound and the way the technology is allowing it to be reproduced. The differences may be subtle, possibly too subtle for the masses. But those of us who care about music, audio, guitar, etc likely can hear the difference.

[roberto]

I would keep the argument on the different caps.
We can talk about that on another thread on the bar.

I would suggest to try different caps on the NFB of the PI,
with a crunch channel.

[Gainzilla]

Good call. Apologies, I got a little excited there.

I want to order a few different types and roll through the PI inputs and PA coupling. It probably makes sense to start with one, likely the PA coupling caps. Thoughts on that?

What sort of sonic difference would you expect with the NFB cap? Or put another way, how influential to the overall tone/feel is the NFB cap position?

Cheers!

[vibratoking]

I would argue that the biggest audible difference between the vinyl and CD version is in the mastering. I have done the exact same comparison as you with a $500k system. The performance of that system aside, I came to the conclusion that it was the mastering that was the major difference.

BTW, capacitor opinions on TGP are next to meaningless from my POV.

[Reeltarded]

More folklore.

N/A

[jam-mill]

[...]
I would suggest to try different caps on the NFB of the PI,
with a crunch channel.

Indeed! I stumbled upon this by accident.

[samrock55]

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!

[diddymix]

Lots of great reading there, thanks!

Edit: Wow. I just finished reading through the 10 pages on TGP. Some pretty useful information there. If you are interested in this thread and haven't read that yet (and also have a ton of time to kill. lol) I found it really worthwhile.

I will say that for me personally, that thread was validating. Several builders claim to fine tune their builds through careful auditioning of signal and bypass caps. That tells me I'm not crazy. Well, at least not about this.

On a side note, I recently had the opportunity to listen to some pristine vinyl recordings of the Beatles (Newly cut from the original masters, or something like that... Suffice it to say, this was reportedly really good vinyl) on an average or better than average system. My friend's system was a mix of average to coveted (Pair of vintage loudspeakers... not sure of the make, McIntosh Mono amps, average turntable with average needle). He's just getting into vinyl so not every piece in his system is where he'd like it to be yet. ANYWAY, bottom line: the vinyl sounded better. Hands down, no comparison, night and day difference, better. We A/B'd it against the CD. It wasn't even close. These are songs I've grown up listening to and felt like I knew like the back of my hand. Every nuance. The vinyl made it sound more intimate, detailed, dynamic, and "powerful" for lack of a better word.

Why bring this up in this thread? Because analog works the way our ears work (a single, continuous waveform), whereas digital recordings attempt to take 44,100 snapshots per second of the sound and try to represent it as a single continuous waveform (for CD spec anyway). Our ears inherently work differently and as a result there is a perceivable difference. Is digital good enough? Yes. Does it sound good, even? No question. But there is undoubtedly a difference in the way we perceive sound and the way the technology is allowing it to be reproduced. The differences may be subtle, possibly too subtle for the masses. But those of us who care about music, audio, guitar, etc likely can hear the difference.

Interesting on the digital/analog thing! Do you know that a 1/4 inch analog master tape running at 15ips has approximately 90 million randomly stacked particles of information per second of recording/playback.. compare that to the measly 22'000 slices (at 44.1K) and thats a big part of the story. We are simply hearing so much more of all the original information that got stored. Your comments on vinyll are spot on and remember... those vinyll masters have never seen a digital convertersion process.. its analogue tape straight onto the cutting lathe. No wonder official vinyll releases sound good!

[TUBEDUDE]

I am a vinyl fan with an average table (Rega w/ Ortofon Blue), and i love the old abums i've had since the '60's. Be aware that most vinyl today is recorded and/or mastered in the digital domain. Look for the AAA indicating analog. Frankly, the romance of old Telefunken ribbon mics , Neve consoles and 1 inch tape aside, the digital products that used 24 bit 192 kHz sounded good to me in every way..

[SoulFetish]

I think a quality digital recording sounds better

[roberto]

I personally think that there are too many variables to be able to generally say that analog is better than digital or viceversa.
Is like to say that blondes are better than brunettes... but then it comes a brunette with KT88 vs a blonde with EL84, or more jacks to plug in and you know...

[pompeiisneaks]

I personally think that there are too many variables to be able to generally say that analog is better than digital or viceversa.
Is like to say that blondes are better than brunettes... but then it comes a brunette with KT88 vs a blonde with EL84, or more jacks to plug in and you know...

I agree, also the point about 44.1k sample rate is a good one but most studio's used 48k sample rate, and I think nowadays 96k samples is more common. sadly, most mp3's only support the 44.1 samples and of course add in artifacts due to non lossless encoding, but I think if you use flacc or some of the other lossless formats you can also encode at 96k and have outstanding quality. Of course that means you get a high quality master on CD and encode yourself etc.

That being said, I do know I've heard the difference between digital and analog back when it was 44.1k and could hear it. Now I probably couldn't due to the hearing loss I suffered in the service

~Phil

[roberto]

I agree with Phil, and I have to say the difference between a FLAC file and an medium MP3 file is quite evident to me. As it has to be.

[Tony Bones]

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?