Ceramic vs. Ceramic

[J M Fahey]

(capacitor wise) a chinese made amplifier, trimmed for lowest costs possible, would play in the same "quality league" as any boutique amplifier. Again - capacitor wise.

Telling it in the shortest way possible, yes.
Of course, we should qualify "lowest cost possible".
If you mean "the cheapest of the cheapest: factory rejects, out of spec parts, bad batches, crap that should go to a landfill and not to *any* electronics product", well, *that* will hurt any product where they appear.
Now if you mean regular parts, made massively by major manufacturers , say Vishay, T Rec, Royal Ohm, etc., which are cheap because of the billions (literally) made, they are *all* good.
As a practical example: any component used by Peavey, Fender, Marshall, Laney, etc. in their production amps, is good. Just like that. They're not crazy.
There you'll find tons of electrolytic coupling capacitors (not only as DC decoupling), ceramic capacitors everywhere, generic "plastic" capacitors, be them mylar, polyester, polypropilene, the one with the right specs which can be sourced massively and prove least troublesome.
Of course, warranty repair is bad for the business, so it must be avoided as much as possible; paying a few cents more to ensure reliability *is* a good business practice.
On the other side, Boutique amp builders must provide "something else" as a selling point, nothing against that. The client decides.
Are there "better" parts?: yes.
Will they sound different? No. (They might *measure* somewhat different, on sophisticated equipment)
Will they last more? Maybe, why not?
Besides, 99% of passive components *are* made in Taiwanese/Korean/Chinese/Japanese owned companies today.
Most American and European companies left that cutthroat market to concentrate on "better" businesses.
Motorola sold its semiconductor interests (later called "ON") to concentrate on the lucrative cellphone market, as earlier Jensen had given up its musical instrument speaker line to concentrate on lucrative car speakers.
Others left the day to day "manufacturing headaches" to invest in brilliant businesses as the DotComs, Housing/Real Estate or straight Stock Market. Oh well.

[guitician]

speed and accuracy are going to effect to the sound

Can you tell the difference between an audio CD and a Hi resolution DVD with 92khz audio? There is a difference in how a capacitor can transfer every bit of detail in a very subtle way. Engineers don't design for these subtleties, it's just comes as an added plus when the parts that are used "work" for the application, some better than others.

[Enzo]

And I wonder how many techs would even think of temperature coefficient causing capacitance to drift when thinking about an amplifier sounding different after it "warms up." There is a whole lot of caps in an amp....

[J M Fahey]

Hi guitician.

difference between an audio CD and a Hi resolution DVD with 92khz audio

Probably yes, if using *excellent* , neutral, high quality speakers, in a good, quiet living room, and if I'm relaxed, not tired and with worn ears after a long day in the shop, or even worse, live sound at a show.
Unamplified drums, just by themselves, can destroy subtle hearing to anybody within a 5 meter radius for quite a few hours.
Mind you, the difference will be perceived as a "more transparent" sound, less strained, very subtle improvements on fidelity.
Claiming I will hear an amp (which by the way is the flattest and less distorting element in an audio chain) and say "now it sounds better because C47 is a SoZo instead of an Orange Drop " borders on the ridicule.
And of course, in a guitar amp, with 5% "extra" distortion contributed by each tube in the signal chain, rollercoaster frequency response (on purpose), huge bass or mid cut, or treble boost, saturating output transformers, jagged response narrow band speakers on terrible cabinets and treble killing guitar cords, claiming that the change of the brand of a capacitor (by another one of the same capacitance) can be heard, is even more unbelievable.
However, if somebody swears he does, all fine with me, let him be happy.
There are worse things in this world.

[Steve Conner]

Can you tell the difference between an audio CD and a Hi resolution DVD with 92khz audio? There is a difference in how a capacitor can transfer every bit of detail in a very subtle way. Engineers don't design for these subtleties, it's just comes as an added plus when the parts that are used "work" for the application, some better than others.

Yes, but there's a known physical basis to that. The 44.1kHz sampling rate of CD was not really enough to reproduce the whole audio spectrum properly. Every ADC and DAC has to make compromises at the high end. It's a three-way tradeoff between aliasing, treble roll-off, and "smearing of transients" if you'll forgive me coming over all audiophile. Every maker of DACs handles the tradeoff differently, giving them their own signature sound. Some high-end DACs offer a choice of reconstruction filters so you can pick the one that sounds best to you.

Higher sample rates offer enough headroom that the problem is greatly relaxed. CD should have been 48kHz.

On the other hand there is no physical basis to two capacitors that measure the same sounding different.

[BackwardsBoB]

Ceramic caps have their share of problems:

Capacitor Type Selection Optimizes PC Sound Quality for Windows Vista Audio Requirements - Maxim

Just using one for an input cap can blow a high performance audio circuit's THD+N out of the water.

Much of the distortion comes from the voltage dependance of the capacitance. High capacitance ceramic dielectrics wind up rated +80%/-10%, not because the manufacturing process is under control, but because the capacitance really does change that dramatically when you get them near their voltage rating. Using a higher voltage rating helps.

They're best for for power supply filtering. If you can stand the microphonics (low-microphonics versions are available), you might also use them on pre-amp tube cathode circuits, where the effect will be swamped by tube non-linearity, and to fight high-frequency oscillation. NPO and COG dielectrics aren't as bad, but they're only available in low values.

Tantalum caps blow up when you plug them in backwards.

[dai h.]

I think those cheap ceramics can be just fine. Just depends how they're used and the taste of the person deciding. The "good" ones might be worse also depending on the situation. A demerit (one) for those is that they have more distortion. But so what. Guitar amps can have tons of distortion, but that doesn't mean they are unlistenable.

[guitician]

Steve don't knock audiophiles, if it weren't for them we'd all be listening to mono recordings......
File:Audio Fidelity first stereo LP.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I measure my caps with my ears

[Steve Conner]

No, if it weren't for ENGINEERS like Alan Blumlein, we'd be listening to mono recordings.

Then again, if it weren't for engineers we'd still be listening to uncompressed CDs instead of MP3.

Ears are for enjoying, instruments are for measuring, and there's a huge body of literature relating what can be measured to what can be heard. (Much of this research comes about as part of the development of lossy audio codecs: you have to know the limits of human hearing very accurately, to know what parts of the music are outside it and can be thrown away by your encoding algorithm.)

By and large it shows that ears are lousy as quantitative measuring instruments.

[guitician]

People like Alan Blumlein wouldn't spend much time or money enjoying stereo music, they're too busy inventing things.

ahh... and what's up with tweeters responding out to 50khz?

I guess it's kind of like sub-woofers going down to 10hz.

It may be that the technology that measures what audiophiles really hear hasn't been discovered? Lots of profiteering to spin off that I bet

[J M Fahey]

Hard fact Vs fiction.

I LOVED that article on ceramics, it's a perfect example of the truth-twisting so often quoted by "audiophiles", without understanding its meaning.
Let's analyze it part by part:
1)
.

To look is not the same as to see.
Has anybody noticed that we are using a 1V RMS signal, which translates into 2.8V PP , applied to a 6V3 (six point three volts) rated capacitor?
To boot, don't forget it's an SMT part, designed for miniature size above any other parameter.
And yet, it causes almost unmeasurable (and definitely "un-hearable") distortion, some 74dB below signal level.
To know what it means, 60dB means a 1000:1 ratio, or 0.1%, so 74dB is less than 1/4 that, less than 0.025% distortion, at 80Hz, the low end limit of guitar signals.
Switching to a 25V rated part, we upgrade to -78dB, even better.
I'm starting to respect ceramic capacitors, based on sheer performance.
2)
.

Here we have a variation in capacitance.
The 10V rated part, shows a big variation when applying up to 10V, its maximum voltage; the 25V part much less so, less than 8%.
Can I hear an 8% variation in capacitance?
If it's part of a tuned circuit, yes, in an LC circuit it will translate into a 4% frequency shift, a musically significant detuning.
If it's the input capacitor in a power amp (as an example) I doubt very much I will be able to hear that the single pole highpass RC filter now has a -3dB cutoff frequency of , say, 3.7 Hz instead of 4.0Hz. (1uF in series with 40K, the suggested example).
3) Won't waste time with Figs 3 and 4, because the author says the end result of them is shown on Fig.5.
.

And what does it show?
The humble 10V and 25V rated ceramics OUTPERFORM the 200V (TWO HUNDRED VOLTS) rated "plastic" capacitors, at ANY frequency above 80Hz or 35Hz respectively, are not bad at all below that, showing better than -70 or -73dB , against -75dB produced by "plastics".
.
Do I need to go on?
Note: the whole article is written in praise of Windows Vista, clearly shown as the summum.
I think that explains the rotten fish stench.

[Rhodesplyr]

And what does it show?
The humble 10V and 25V rated ceramics OUTPERFORM the 200V (TWO HUNDRED VOLTS) rated "plastic" capacitors, at ANY frequency above 80Hz or 35Hz respectively, are not bad at all below that, showing better than -70 or -73dB , against -75dB produced by "plastics".

Yes...but remember that these were "laboratory conditions" tests. The microphonic/piezoelectric behavior of Class II ceramic dielectrics is quite real. Put a polypropylene film capacitor and a Class II ceramic capacitor in a combo amp, and you might find that the ambient sound pressure levels send those Class II ceramic THD measurements quite a bit higher. Class II dielectrics are also subject to aging effects that are listed on the manufacturers' datasheets.

[Enzo]

But then we get away from those vaunted night and day differences and closer to some 7:15AM vs 7:16AM differences.

ANd if we keep looking, perhaps there is some tiny effect from possible inductance in a wound up strip of foil/mylar vesus a hunk of ceramic, I don't know.