different type caps sound different?

[raiken]

And by the way Daz, when measuring small caps like this, you won't get an accurate measurement when holding on to the leads or the body of the capacitor.

Exactly. I just stuck a 47pF cap in my capacitance meter and it reads 49pF, but if I hold the leads lightly it reads 500pF...

RA

[raiken]

But then that doesn't account for the one reading close to 470 or why the shop has had these in a box labeled 470pf for at least a year that i know of if not two.

I've seen many, many cases of mislabeled parts bins - most of the time people working stockrooms don't know how to properly read caps and resistors. I've debugged many boards with every single instance of a particular value part loaded incorrectly because the stockroom pulled the wrong part value - from the right box!

RA

[dai h.]

customers can take stuff out and put them back in the wrong bin, drawer, etc. also, so it can help to double check, esp. with similar parts, small, hard to read parts, etc.

[tedmich]

Exactly. I just stuck a 47pF cap in my capacitance meter and it reads 49pF, but if I hold the leads lightly it reads 500pF...

RA

its ok to use as a 500pF as long as you can keep holding it right?

hmm grabbable caps as part of a ultra tweakable amp?

[Steve Conner]

Well, we always rave on about feel and touch sensitivity...

[EELP89]

here, watch and decide for yourself. this guy has alot of other cool videos on his website.

YouTube - Guitar Tone Capacitors, part 1: Evaluating Material Types

EDIT: after watching, i felt like i could not tell much of a difference between any of the capacitors. always when paying attention to the graph on the right, i couldn't tell significant differences.

once believed that PIO caps were a godsend and ceramic were the devil. now i am questioning myself, and the forum i learned all the " capacitor information " from.

lmk what you think.

[R.G.]

here, watch and decide for yourself. this guy has alot of other cool videos on his website.
...
EDIT: after watching, i felt like i could not tell much of a difference between any of the capacitors. always when paying attention to the graph on the right, i couldn't tell significant differences.

once believed that PIO caps were a godsend and ceramic were the devil. now i am questioning myself, and the forum i learned all the " capacitor information " from.

lmk what you think.

I think you're a the threshold of reason.

Welcome. Come on in.

[uvacom]

here, watch and decide for yourself. this guy has alot of other cool videos on his website.

YouTube - Guitar Tone Capacitors, part 1: Evaluating Material Types

EDIT: after watching, i felt like i could not tell much of a difference between any of the capacitors. always when paying attention to the graph on the right, i couldn't tell significant differences.

once believed that PIO caps were a godsend and ceramic were the devil. now i am questioning myself, and the forum i learned all the " capacitor information " from.

lmk what you think.

I'm really glad that guy did that video because I felt like it really showed that the capacitance value is the only thing that matters in a guitar's tone circuit, but I was disheartened to see that somehow, a lot of people listened to that and heard these significant differences between caps. It does lead one to wonder whether they could still hear those differences if they didn't know which one they were listening to.

[tedmich]

oh they proved it...
http://aetheraudio.com/Clarity%20MR%20Capacitors.pdf


and that conductors matter:

http://aetheraudio.com/Sub-Debye%20P...%20rev1%20.pdf

apparently the best cables have as many as 5 different metals in them...
Audiophile Vindication! - Cables Are Different And Now There's The Science

[uvacom]

oh they proved it...
http://aetheraudio.com/Clarity%20MR%20Capacitors.pdf


and that conductors matter:

http://aetheraudio.com/Sub-Debye%20P...%20rev1%20.pdf

apparently the best cables have as many as 5 different metals in them...
Audiophile Vindication! - Cables Are Different And Now There's The Science

Look at those graphs! Consider me a believer!

[Wilder Amplification]

This is the one thing I love about this place...LOTS of knowledgeable guys who know enough not to believe in "mojo" and realize that there has to be some sort of scientific explanation for all things that happen in amplifiers.

Daz...you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink it. You've stated your case countless times over...nobody claimed that you didn't hear a difference. They just strongly disagree with your assessment as to why you heard this difference. I've read through this thread and for the record I side with the majority on this...not because they're the majority, but because they're speaking the facts. You're in the company of some very knowledgeable people here who have been there/done that. Some of them even have engineering degrees in this field and they know more than enough to know what can and can't cause what. You probably call it "closed minded". I call it "knowing the true facts and having a clue as to what's really going on".

Let's use an example to put the shoe on the other foot. Let's say that I were to tell you that I went deer hunting and got me a nice 9 point buck that I shot down dead with my umbrella. You'd say "There's just no way that's possible". I'd say you're "closed minded". You're not saying that I didn't kill a 9-point buck...you're merely stating that it's completely impossible to pull off shooting anything dead with an umbrella. That is exactly what these guys are stating to you about the cap types causing the difference you heard...just like with the solid wire vs stranded wire debate.

RG...you hit the nail dead nutz on the head with your "true believer/faith" statement.

Groover...you've come to the right place to get the facts you've been seeking regarding caps and I think you see that.

[Ronsonic]

Let's use an example to put the shoe on the other foot. Let's say that I were to tell you that I went deer hunting and got me a nice 9 point buck that I shot down dead with my umbrella. You'd say "There's just no way that's possible". I'd say you're "closed minded". You're not saying that I didn't kill a 9-point buck...you're merely stating that it's completely impossible to pull off shooting anything dead with an umbrella. That is exactly what these guys are stating to you about the cap types causing the difference you heard...just like with the solid wire vs stranded wire debate.

Bad analogy. We aren't comparing umbrellas to rifles. The guy isn't saying that he shot a buck with an umbrella (though disguised firearms like that exist) he is saying he bagged his venison with a .22 and someone else is saying that's not possible because he's done ballistics tests that prove it can't be done.

The difference I see, and I say this with respect for the knowledge, integrity and understanding of all who are here speaking their truth as they perceive it, is that we have one side describing an observation and another claiming that observation cannot be possible. The latter is operating on a faith-based premise "I know of no physical characteristic which would explain this phenomenon therefore it must not have happened."

The lack of a theory to explain an observation does not negate that observation.

I will agree that any difference that can be heard can, somehow, be measured. I will also argue that most audio measurement tools and procedures are so crude as to be useless for this. It's only in this century that we've gotten close to being able to measure the differences in sound discussed in this thread and don't know of any serious recent work in the field. I'm sure some has been done and would expect it to be mostly proprietary.

[Steve Conner]

I found it made my life far easier to simply refuse to hear any effect in audio circuits that I can't (or couldn't in principle) measure.

If, based on my knowledge of circuits, I don't believe that a change in some circuit would produce a measurable effect, then I don't even bother to try it. And I don't believe anyone who says that it makes a difference, unless they can show me an experiment that demonstrates a measurable difference I can repeat for myself.

Modern (well, 20th century!) tools like FFT analysis are far more sensitive than your ears, and can pick out effects that you could never hear unless, like the audiophile tweaker brigade, you simply cheat in the tests. You have to draw a line somewhere, and I draw it arbitrarily at "3dB of difference to something".

I'm aware that this is somewhat of an extreme position that many people might not share, but it certainly freed up a lot of time for playing guitar, and designing the dull, soulless industrial electronics that pay my mortgage.

This is why I stick to the line that if someone tells me two capacitors of the same value sound different, then one of them must cause a few dB difference in some measurable property of the system.

"I know of no physical characteristic which would explain this phenomenon therefore it must not have happened."

That is essentially what I'm saying, yes. I guess to substantiate that, I must also claim that I know all of the physical characteristics of tube amplifiers and their component parts, and there are none left to discover by me or anyone else in the world. I hadn't realised that implication, but I'll stand by it. They are a pretty mature technology after all.

[madkatb]

What frequency does a DMM test capacitors at? And what frequency does the capacitor affect "in circuit"? And what is it's capacitance at that frequency? And could that vary between capacitors from manufacturor to manufacturor? Even if they are both nominally made from the same material? And is this the right application for silver mica capacitors if they are best used at 1kHz and up?
See this page and read the notes. Capacitor Frequency Response (interfacebus)
(Just more fuek for the fire)

[Steve Conner]

Well, you got it! There are a lot of ways to cause a measurable difference in a circuit.

A silver mica capacitor should be a "perfect" capacitor in a tube amp. That is to say, its non-ideal properties should be negligible compared to the impedances of all other things in the circuit, over the whole audio band.

So, either the capacitor is broken (bad ESR or damping factor) or it was measured wrong, or it's affecting something outside the audio band (parasitic oscillations etc.) that then causes a further effect back inside the audio band.

DMMs are quite inaccurate at measuring small capacitors. They test at a few kHz and the reactance of a small cap is very high there. So the test current is tiny, and things like hum pickup and hand capacitance can affect it.