Sound differences between cap brands? Test results?

[guitician]

No METAL here... the closest thing that I can think of would be early Deep Purple, like "Made in Japan"....I mentioned 12000 series because of the Mojo test. And that amp is only two gain stages before the phase inverter, nothing like a METAL amp.

[Steve Conner]

OK guys, get those golden ears twitching... Your mission should you choose to accept it...

In this Dropbox folder are 5 WAV files corresponding to the 5 sections of the Metro Amps #1 file. ("Signal Caps Jan 2013 Vol on 5", also provided for reference.)

I've named them randomly "1" through "5". Try to figure out which is which by comparing them with the original file. You have to get at least 4 out of 5 right if you ever want to be taken seriously again.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/capqdw5wba9ng9g/UmJWMuD1p2

[daz]

OK guys, get those golden ears twitching... Your mission should you choose to accept it...

In this Dropbox folder are 5 WAV files corresponding to the 5 sections of the Metro Amps #1 file. ("Signal Caps Jan 2013 Vol on 5", also provided for reference.)

I've named them randomly "1" through "5". Try to figure out which is which by comparing them with the original file. You have to get at least 4 out of 5 right if you ever want to be taken seriously again.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/capqdw5wba9ng9g/UmJWMuD1p2

Guess you never read my posts. Oh well...

[Steve Conner]

I read your posts, but I disagree with them for the reasons that I stated. I argue that if an amp "feels" different to play, it must be because it is responding in a different way to the electrical signal going into it. Therefore, a test with a guitar signal should show up that difference, no matter whether the signal is live, or reamped as it is in this case.

I'll settle for 3 out of 5, which is odds of 1/60.

[daz]

I read your posts, but I disagree with them for the reasons that I stated. I argue that if an amp "feels" different to play, it must be because it is responding in a different way to the electrical signal going into it. Therefore, a test with a guitar signal should show up that difference, no matter whether the signal is live, or reamped as it is in this case.

I'll settle for 3 out of 5, which is odds of 1/60.

My reply has zero to do with your reasoning in asking me to listen. I said i would never be able to hear it if it's a subtle thing at all unless 1-i'm playing it and probably only if it's 100% my rig because i can tell if a piece of dust lands on my guitar blinddolded. (joking if thats not apparent, but you get the idea) and 2-i keep telling you feel cannot be heard and that it's also the most important aspect.

My point should be obvious, but if it's not i am saying is it doesn't matter whether you think it's impossible to hear, it's that you are right.....IN A CLIP AND WHERE I'M NOT PLAYING MY RIG. You seems to keep ignoring that, maybe because it doesn't speak to your argument. But it speaks to mine and it's not my opinion as to whether MY ears can tell or not. It's fact. I can't convince you and i'm fine with that. But in trying to get me to listen to a test i have already told you i could never in a million years hear or feel, i don't understand why you just seem to gloss over that. Take something easy for anyone to hear and if i am not the one playing and i am not familiar with the amp and guitar, i will have a heck of a time hearing ANYTHING short of LP vs strat or some such thing. Let me ask you this....if you watch a clip of someone screwing you you feel the girl's privates?

[oc disorder]

Ok Steve I'll have a listen but only through this

Sound section of the AOpen AX4B-533 Tube Motherboard

I recall Enzo saying he could change the caps in his TV to improve the colour of the picture?

And the amount of manganese oxide in the Mona Lisa spoils it for me.

Lets face it most musicians and "tinkerers" have vivid imaginations so concern for the purity of sound is part of their "mojo" so it's not unreasonable to expect "embroidered perceptions".

I'm sure Alexander "Howard" Dumble could (and should) write a book about it.From what I gather he worked closely with the artist tweaking his amp to their expectation.

And I liked the post earlier under a similar topic that suggested a variable dielectric !

[defaced]

OK guys, get those golden ears twitching... Your mission should you choose to accept it...

In this Dropbox folder are 5 WAV files corresponding to the 5 sections of the Metro Amps #1 file. ("Signal Caps Jan 2013 Vol on 5", also provided for reference.)

I've named them randomly "1" through "5". Try to figure out which is which by comparing them with the original file. You have to get at least 4 out of 5 right if you ever want to be taken seriously again.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/capqdw5wba9ng9g/UmJWMuD1p2

Here's where I ended up after a couple of listens:
Clip #2 has audible distortion on the first couple notes of the clip. Clip #1 has what sounds to be slightly less top end/break up/smoother distortion. I'd have to spend alot of time comparing the other three to see if I could pick out any differences, but to the point, none of them sound different enough for me to care. My amps are too busy smashing the rails to be bothered with such delicate topics.

And to confirm a point that's brought up very often (this is the first time I've really had a chance to observe it): I can't tell the difference between the clips unless I listen to about 1 second of each back to back. If I let it play, then play another track, they don't sound any different at all, except for #2 which has audible distortion. Hunting for the audio in the big file kills my ability to compare them. I'll see if I split up the original file and play match if I can pick out the rest.

But for now just I'll claim 1 of 5 (highlight to see answer): #2 Sozo Vintage

[frus]

OK guys, get those golden ears twitching... Your mission should you choose to accept it...
You have to get at least 4 out of 5 right

if you get 4 right, then 5th is also right

just sayin'

[Jazz P Bass]

Ok Steve I'll have a listen but only through this

Sound section of the AOpen AX4B-533 Tube Motherboard

!

Man , I thought that was a joke.

[printer2]

F if i know. I'm no tech and i don't subscribe to electronic testing as being proof of changes we can detect with ears or feel or lack thereof. If you built an amp using that criteria your amps would play second fiddle to crate SS amps.....the old models. There IS no absolute proof either way except to YOU and your ears. But you DO have to understand the pitfalls of placebo effect and know how it works and how to avoid it. That's an art within itself, and w/o understanding it and experiencing it till you know it like the back of your hand, you WILL be what i'm being accused of.

Well the way I look at it the 'feel' has to push the speakers in a different way than if there was less 'feel'. The speaker really does not care what is happening in the amp, all it really cares about is the current being pushed through it. And the thing that drives the current is voltage. I am pretty sure we are good at measuring voltage whether it hangs around a bit or moves back and forth. Without the voltage doing its thing your ears are going to hear nothing. I am pretty sure Fender and other major manufacturers of modeling amps learned how to measure 'feel'. Doubt they are going to give their secrets away though.

[Chuck H]

I've named them randomly "1" through "5". Try to figure out which is which by comparing them with the original file. You have to get at least 4 out of 5 right if you ever want to be taken seriously again.

AAaargh!!! Ok, I'll do it. But I'm already on the fence about cap differences. But I will say that even listening through my crummy JBL desk monitors I can hear differences. I'm sure my poot doesn't have the best amp in it either. My disk player hooked to my home stereo might play the files. Dunno yet. At the very least I'll need to find a good pair of headphones. Gimme a couple of days and I'll step up to it. But only because I don't really care.

[Gaz]

Thanks for chopping up the samples Steve. I will say that even I am surprised there is no significant difference just due to part tolerances alone. And my name may rhyme with a certain poster, but my opinion on this matter sure doesn't. Nowadays, I gotta have a whole different circuit to really care about the difference, or at least tonestack or something really significant. little things like this get so lost in the mix. I agree with Defaced - amp's are raging too hard and loud for this touchy-feely stuff... and I'm the sensitive type!

[exclamationmark]

I'd argue that the 'feel' of an amp is intrinsically related to it's frequency response and topology. I also think we're getting back to ye olde' argument (fallacy?) that we can somehow measure good tone. We can't. But what we can do is measure parameters such as frequency response, harmonic distortion and transient response which ties into real world observations. That being said, it's easy to tell if changing components did indeed affect the tone - you can tell just by looking at the recorded waveform (as is the case for the metroamp clips), but it doesn't tell us HOW it changed it (in terms of tone - did it change for the better or worse?).

I spend a lot of time recording so I guess I kind of always base my opinions on what a recorded amplifier sounds like. If you play large venues, 90% of what you hear on your monitors is a mic'd up guitar amp. The 'feel' of your amplifier is now just a 4x12 mic'd up through an SM57, going into a PA. Isolation booths in recording studios are more of the same deal. You can literally be in the same room as your amplifier, record something that you think sounds great, and later find out that your playing was just as sloppy as a direct monitored recording from an isolation booth (where the 'feel' of an amplifier is vastly different). There's no illusion in it - your playing doesn't change drastically, it's really just revealing what you are ACTUALLY playing when the sound isn't drowned in reflections/absorbtions with all the treble damped out of it. I theorize the increased treble response (where our hearing is most sensitive) probably has a lot to do with this, allowing us to discern what we couldn't hear before. The smearing effect brought on by reflections also play a huge part in what we perceive to be natural sounding (and it tends to drown out any sloppy playing - ala digital modelling drowned in reverb and delay).

Also, I'm sure that even in the CERN Large Hadron Collider, there are capacitors in the signal path of some of their instrumentation. I wonder what they think about this mysterious, immeasurable mojo that some capacitors have?

[Steve Conner]

Daz I hear what you're saying but I can't bring myself to believe it. The amp can't send some sort of mojo back up the guitar cord that makes your guitar feel different. All it can do is make a different noise, and your brain interprets that as a change in feel. Even feedback-assisted sustain doesn't change this argument.

I have copies of the files before I renamed them, and I've been ABX testing using foobar2000 with its ABX comparator plugin. I'm not doing too well. I didn't publish these reference files because it would encourage cheating by comparing file sizes.

[Alex/Tubewonder]

Are you guys still struggling?
Golden Ears only 999$ a pair, ear wax remover as seen in the picture not included.