different type caps sound different?

[uvacom]

OK, so go look up some capacitor datasheets to get a feeling for typical values of ESR, ESL and tan delta.

Then try to think of some place in some amplifier where those extra milliohms (OK, so some small electrolytics can have a few ohms) and nanohenries could make a few dB of difference to the frequency response.

I have, and I agree that it doesn't appear that there should be any difference for modern capacitors. I'm saying for those who feel that they can hear a difference, there are ways one can satisfactorily prove or disprove that the difference exists without any consideration for the underlying electrical reasons behind those differences. Then if a measurable, audible difference is detected, we can find out why, and the best part is that if it is due to some intrinsic device characteristic we might be able to compensate for that elsewhere in the circuit in order to influence the desired output.

[hasserl]

Somewhere there's a website with XY scope plots showing the performance of various capacitor dielectrics. The electrostatic equivalent of the B-H loop of a transformer, so a D-E loop or whatever. The only one that shows non-linearity is ceramic.

I've seen that, if you look at the voltage/amp's used in the test you'll see they are way beyond what would be found in a typical guitar amplifier, making it not really applicable.

[defaced]

what if you were given the opportunity to answer the original question and you were only allowed to say yes or no and not another word beyond that.

Physically impossible. Engineers are not born with the mental or physical features that would allow them to answer questions as "yes" or "no". There's a good reason for this. If they were able to answer questions in such a way, the universe would undo itself and we'd be uncreated out of existence. It's a sad state of affairs, but someone's got to be the stick in the mud, nit picky, doubting Thomas, SOB.




...yes, I'm an engineer

[Steve Conner]

Remember if someone tries to corner you with a yes/no question, you can always answer "mu".
Mu (negative) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"No" isn't right, because Daz had a real point. He found a capacitor that sounded different, and I bet it really did sound different.

But "Yes" isn't right either, because if I found a capacitor that did that, I'd suspect it of being bad.

[daz]

Remember if someone tries to corner you with a yes/no question, you can always answer "mu".
Mu (negative) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"No" isn't right, because Daz had a real point. He found a capacitor that sounded different, and I bet it really did sound different.

Thank you. thats exactly the point. Whether or not it's a cr@ppy model, if it's out there and for sale the person who buys it and finds it very different isn't going to care why it's different. He just wants to know if this can happen.

But "Yes" isn't right either, because if I found a capacitor that did that, I'd suspect it of being bad.

But what if it's not so you buy another only to find it too is like that? then my point is you would think it wasn't bad after all, it's just that those caps sound way different. So you now DON'T think it may be defective.

[Hardtailed]

Physically impossible. Engineers are not born with the mental or physical features that would allow them to answer questions as "yes" or "no". There's a good reason for this. If they were able to answer questions in such a way, the universe would undo itself and we'd be uncreated out of existence. It's a sad state of affairs, but someone's got to be the stick in the mud, nit picky, doubting Thomas, SOB.

...yes, I'm an engineer

The space between yes and no justifies their job, so it's just normal

If I paid you big money to research warp drives, would you tell me it's just not possible

[Steve Conner]

But what if it's not so you buy another only to find it too is like that? then my point is you would think it wasn't bad after all, it's just that those caps sound way different. So you now DON'T think it may be defective.

No, as I said before, if I got another one of the same type, and it made shitty distortion too, I'd suspect the whole batch of being bad.

Based on what Hardtailed said, I could easily take the cap into the lab and stick a DC voltage across it to see if I could reproduce his symptoms.

[tedmich]

Fine, send me your capacitors folks, and I'll do it, and you can have 24-bit FLAC files to download and do your ABX tests.

I already know what the answer's going to be, though

Golden ear answer: The imperfections of the digital equipment* swamp all differences in the capacitors. The only valid test is one where I know the expected outcome so I can cheat.

Engineer's answer: There's no point in doing this, it wastes time that could be used for playing guitar too loud and drinking.


*in my case a Focusrite Twintrak with the 24/96 ADC option board

one could make the point that vastly larger issues than cap sounds (omnipotent being guiding all of existence) are supported with much less data than an A/B listening preferences. People believe what they want, unless science is used, and even then its bloody hard.

Lord Kelvin didn't think you could know anything without numbers, but Gödel showed these could be fishy too.

[Joey Voltage]

No, as I said before, if I got another one of the same type, and it made shitty distortion too, I'd suspect the whole batch of being bad.

Based on what Hardtailed said, I could easily take the cap into the lab and stick a DC voltage across it to see if I could reproduce his symptoms.

I believe this was the article you were referring to:
The "Sound" of Capacitors

now you can probably hear a bit of difference when the capacitor does impose non-linearities in the signal path, such as the case for maybe a class II, or III ceramic being run near it's limit, but I have a super hard time believing that you can hear a difference between film cap types, as others claim, which are pretty linear as far as caps go. The scope shots in the page above even show this.

Now I agree with almost everything R.G. said regarding the "Jungian" testing effect, The test conductor may impose what ever it is that they want to find on the result. There are other real factors at play as well, such as damage due to overheating the part that may affect the result, etc...etc.. I don't know how anybody could reliably concretely prove anything

[Groover]

Engineer's answer: There's no point in doing this, it wastes time that could be used for playing guitar too loud and drinking.

Finally some true wisdom in this thread!

R.G. and Steve, you are my new heroes.

[Groover]

... the fact is, the original post concerned whether caps can sound very different. I don't care what the reason.....if they do for WHATEVER reasons, they CAN sound different ! ...

As someone bearing the closest possible resemblance to the original poster I should add that, although perhaps I didn't spell it out precisely enough, the intent of the original question was not "can different individual caps sound different?" but rather "do different types of caps (ceramic vs silver-mica vs polypropylene vs polyester vs whatever) sound different because of the particular type of material they use?"

Also note that I asked "what is the physics of this" and IMHO that question has been best addressed by Steve C. and R.G.

[octal]

I once read a saying (I'm paraphrasing here) about audiophiles which was something along the lines of "how do you separate a true audiophile from a gearhead tweaker? A true audiophile has tried many pairs of speakers and one preamp and a tweaker has tried 12 preamps and is still on the first pair of speakers." (Of course, this is in an audiophile context where most decent preamps have almost no sonic differences while even good speakers are the 'weak link in the chain.')

The point in this is that given that there are so many things which clearly make large tonal differences (in the case of guitar amps- speakers, EQ, biasing, type of circuit topology, NFB/ no NFB, pickups, etc.) that EVERYTHING else should be super optimized before you start worrying about the differences between how (properly functioning) different types of capacitors sound.

[daz]

I just want to say this again because it seems many people never read this in one of my posts because i keep hearing ya'll talking about placebo type scenarios and audiophiles and how they critique every little thing. I did NOT stick one cap in and then another and listen for a difference ! Thats audiophile stuff. Whats the difference between this and what i experienced. it's this....I did NOT purposely try different caps....i tore the amp apart to clean it up and when i put it back together, one of the components that i had removed to get to some solder joints i wanted to clean up was that cap. When i put it back together i used a DIFFERENT cap. same value, different brand. Heres the key....I DUID NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT ! I simply put the same value in w/o the slightest thought about tonal differences. When the amp was fired up the tone was so bad it sounded like i frucked something up in reassembly. It took a day or so of trying to see what had changed and change anything back to the way it was when it hit me that the only difference between this horrid tone and how it was before was that cap. I had no hopes of that making this kind of difference, but i put it back anyways because i wanted to use process of elimination to figure it out. When i replaced the cap the tone changed back.

So you see, it was NOT a matter of listening to two caps to try and hear the difference. Instead i heard this huge tonal difference WHEN I HAD NO REASON TO EXPECT IT NOR WAS I LISTENING FOR IT ! Put yourself in this situation. say you have an amp you love and one day you fire it up and it sounds like azz. Were you expecting it to? Thats my experience...i had no expectations of any change. Now say same scenario except you changed the speaker. Were you expecting something? Yes, because you are A/B'ing speakers aren't you?

I thought i made this all clear but apparently only to some, not all. so hopefully everyone will read this. maybe later on if after another page of replies is see even more people debating this moot point i will cut and paste this into another post.

[defaced]

I just want to say this again because it seems many people never read this in one of my posts because i keep hearing ya'll talking about placebo type scenarios and audiophiles and how they critique every little thing. I did NOT stick one cap in and then another and listen for a difference ! Thats audiophile stuff. Whats the difference between this and what i experienced. it's this....I did NOT purposely try different caps....i tore the amp apart to clean it up and when i put it back together, one of the components that i had removed to get to some solder joints i wanted to clean up was that cap. When i put it back together i used a DIFFERENT cap. same value, different brand. Heres the key....I DUID NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT ! I simply put the same value in w/o the slightest thought about tonal differences. When the amp was fired up the tone was so bad it sounded like i frucked something up in reassembly. It took a day or so of trying to see what had changed and change anything back to the way it was when it hit me that the only difference between this horrid tone and how it was before was that cap. I had no hopes of that making this kind of difference, but i put it back anyways because i wanted to use process of elimination to figure it out. When i replaced the cap the tone changed back.

So you see, it was NOT a matter of listening to two caps to try and hear the difference. Instead i heard this huge tonal difference WHEN I HAD NO REASON TO EXPECT IT NOR WAS I LISTENING FOR IT ! Put yourself in this situation. say you have an amp you love and one day you fire it up and it sounds like azz. Were you expecting it to? Thats my experience...i had no expectations of any change. Now say same scenario except you changed the speaker. Were you expecting something? Yes, because you are A/B'ing speakers aren't you?

I thought i made this all clear but apparently only to some, not all. so hopefully everyone will read this. maybe later on if after another page of replies is see even more people debating this moot point i will cut and paste this into another post.

Who are you talking to? I don't recall anyone calling you an audiophile or a tweako in this thread. The post before yours is just as applicable to the OP's original question as any other post in this this thread. Seriously, you used to be kinda cool, but you've been going overboard alot lately.

[daz]

wow, sorry.