The 'Sound' of Capacitors..

Frequently asked questions on capacitor types, ratings, brands, use and abuse.
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Post by mictester »

RnFR wrote:I have to say, i'm with Dirk on this one. :thumbsup you might not be able to hear the difference right away by just switching out one cap on a board, but these things do add up. and to tell you the truth, i have made some listening tests with two extremely different caps of the exact same value, and i swear i could easily hear a difference. for the record, one was ceramic, and the other was a fancy russian polystyrene. i found it was easy to tell that one was simply "clearer." now whether or not it is always that easy to tell the difference is another story. i'd bet most of the time it's not.
Trust me - you either just fooled yourself or the capacitors were different values (though marked the same)!
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Post by mictester »

culturejam wrote:I've never actually built two of the same circuit at the same time with only the cap material being different. So I guess maybe it's not fair for me to make an assertion one way or another.

But in paying around with simple circuits on a breadboard, I've not been able to discern differences in capacitor types. I also have not been able to hear a definitive difference between metal film, carbon film, and carbon comp resistors.
EXACTLY! You should try building two identical circuits with differing capacitor types - carefully selected to have exactly the same values:

I've done it several times to demonstrate that the "Golden Eared" Audiophools are full of BS. In proper, double-blind tests nobody has been able to correctly identify "expensive" from "cheap" or "mojo" from "normal" components. That's exactly nobody (not me, either!). I can sometimes identify things with the increased noise of carbon resistors, and I can hear considerable differences between active components....

The clue is in their name - resistors and capacitors are passive components, and as long as their values are the same, there is no difference whatsoever in their "sound".
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Post by Dirk_Hendrik »

mictester wrote: The clue is in their name - resistors and capacitors are passive components, and as long as their values are the same, there is no difference whatsoever in their "sound".
Passive or not, capacitors are in many cases optimized for a certain function. This means that a tropical fish might add a lot to the tonat character for many but when utilizing that thing for power supply decoupling in a cpu board.... leave it out just the same. Similar the other way around. A cap intended to filter clocknoise from those power supply lines in that CPU board is optimized for those frequencies is definitely not the perfect choice for your tone control.

So,
Although I do agree that some scepsis is justified on this matter, putting it all aside as mojo crap might be a step too far.
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Post by Dirk_Hendrik »

As well,

Just for the fun I looked up datasheets for WIMA capacitors, just as an example.
If there's no difference..then why am I looking at characteristics that display capacitance vs.... Frequency. And impulseresponse? Apparently something is happening there.

As well,
Thousands if not millions have spend time on capacitor selection for audio applications.. and now we have to take mictesters word that it's "all" not true?? and is all related to the exact capacitance... naah.

too much of a shortcut
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Post by soulsonic »

Greg_G wrote:I keep seeing references to how capacitor properties are affected by circuit impedance...
:hmmm:
Oh, it does totally make a difference in how it behaves. I've found some caps to have a great deal of microphony with high impedance input circuits. But when they're used with lower impedances, this problem is reduced. I'm currently on a quest to find what sort of cap has the lowest microphony in high Z circuits. I am absolutely convinced that this has an effect on how the thing sounds. If it is so sensitive to vibration that it makes and audible sound when you tap on it, I can only imagine what it might be doing when used on a loud stage!
Gus made mention of this phenomena as well in a discussion about different guitar tone caps and whether they physically touch the body inside the guitar and how loud the stage environment is.
Vibration is vibration, be it electrical or physical, you cannot separate the two; especially when you're talking about a component which has properties in common with a microphone!
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Post by floris »

More articles with measurements and comparisons:

The Sound of Capacitors - Capacitor Linearity **Expanded**
http://greygum.net/sbench/sbench102/caps.html

The Sound of Capacitors - Electrolytics
http://greygum.net/sbench/sbench102/caps1.html

The Sound of Capacitors - Ceramics
http://greygum.net/sbench/sbench102/caps2.html

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Post by mictester »

Dirk_Hendrik wrote:
mictester wrote: The clue is in their name - resistors and capacitors are passive components, and as long as their values are the same, there is no difference whatsoever in their "sound".
Passive or not, capacitors are in many cases optimized for a certain function. This means that a tropical fish might add a lot to the tonal character for many but when utilizing that thing for power supply decoupling in a cpu board.... leave it out just the same. Similar the other way around.
Sorry, Dirk, but NO!! It doesn't matter what the capacitor is made of - at audio frequencies, and inside the dielectric breakdown voltage, any two "100nF" capacitors will both measure the same and sound the same! The only percieved difference will be in the way they look!

:D
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Post by IvIark »

mictester wrote:Sorry, Dirk, but NO!! It doesn't matter what the capacitor is made of - at audio frequencies, and inside the dielectric breakdown voltage, any two "100nF" capacitors will both measure the same and sound the same! The only percieved difference will be in the way they look!
Sorry but I disagree with you too. There must be a few of us here imagining things.
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Post by celadine »

any two "100nF" capacitors will both measure the same and sound the same!
So, I should toss out all my film caps and go completely ceramic disk? :hmmm:

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Post by MoonWatcher »

I've found it to be a cumulative thing, as well, very generally speaking.

I've also found a few instances where putting a polarized cap in certain high gain portions of circuits will produce some really nasty results - clearly audible stuff - D.C. blocking was not effectively occurring. I've had similar experiences on just a few occasions with ceramics in some of the same locations. I wanted to believe that it was just my imagination, but when I hot swapped for another dielectric type (with capacitance being equal), I could confirm that it was an actual audible difference.

But for the most part, it's become a nonissue for me, as I tend to mix up whatever I have on hand, anyways.

I've told most folks that I prefer box films for the main reason that they are compact and make population very easy. I also like monolithics for tight high count layouts.

Perhaps the most fun of all for me throughout the years has been the "magic Muff capacitor experiment," where I've built the same exact Muff circuit and only swapped out the couplers for another dielectric or even just a different brand. So many folks claim that there's "preferable" types of caps that I just had to try them all for myself over the years. My conclusion is that there are zero audible differences between the caps in the Muff circuit (big surprise), unless there are some monster tolerance differences at key points in the circuit, namely the couplers before and after the Sustain pot, the pair that set the shelf for the clipping diodes, and the tone stack caps, mainly the treble cap. But none were deal breakers, or produced a "superior" tone.

I really like the saying that something is more than the sum of it's parts. It holds true in the case of pedals, at least to me. I'm more concerned with attention to circuit design than component composition most of the time.

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Post by umutgokcen »

Great thread! I also find myself wondering about this very issue from time to time but haven't gone through the trouble of building two of the same circuit differing only in capacitor types. If someone's done this please post clips.

Here's another thing I've noticed though, and I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed it too. When I'm auditioning pedals/circuits/components, it "feels" different than recording it and listening to the playback. I can't exactly describe it but the subtle differences somehow become more apparent when you're actually playing the guitar. Words you hear often like "transparency" or "warm" certainly have more meaning to me when I'm actually playing, as opposed to listening a recorded piece.

What do you think? Are we just chasing our own tails or is this a real phenomena?

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Post by Greg »

MoonWatcher wrote:- D.C. blocking was not effectively occurring. I've had similar experiences on just a few occasions with ceramics in some of the same locations. I wanted to believe that it was just my imagination, but when I hot swapped for another dielectric type (with capacitance being equal), I could confirm that it was an actual audible difference.
:scratch:
AFAIK a cap will always block DC totally unless the dielectric has broken down... there's no path for it to pass.
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Post by silverface »

I tried a few output caps in my fuzzface some time ago, and could clearly hear differences between the various types. Is it the type of cap? Or the variation in actual capacity due to tolerances? I don't know, but it's real.

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Post by MoonWatcher »

Greg_G wrote:AFAIK a cap will always block DC totally unless the dielectric has broken down... there's no path for it to pass.
That's what I was thinking, as well. Maybe passing DC isn't what I was really experiencing. Perhaps it would simply be more accurately to say that the AC signal wasn't being "properly" decoupled, and was producing clearly audible results. For whatever reason, a nonpolarized type cap always nixed the issue without fail.

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Post by oldgravity »

silverface wrote:I tried a few output caps in my fuzzface some time ago, and could clearly hear differences between the various types. Is it the type of cap? Or the variation in actual capacity due to tolerances? I don't know, but it's real.
Definitely tolerance. Even WIMA caps have 10% tolerance, which in an RC filter can mean up to 1/3 octave difference in cutoff frequency, if the resistor stays the same.

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Post by KMG »

Did you attentively looked at these pictures? Or only I see the difference in the transfer of signal by the different capacitors? The greater the change in the DC component on the capacitor, the greater the influence of the nonlinearity of the polarization of dielectric on the sound. In low voltage stompboxes maybe you can`t hear the difference. In the vacuum-tube amplifiers with the large amplitude of the repolarization of dielectric the difference is distinctly audible.
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Post by bumblebee »

I can definitely here a difference between 1uF mini box caps and 1uF 16 volt electro's either polarized or NP,(I think everyone can) in big muffs I've made and modded. I can also definitely here a difference between 100nF ceramic and 100nF mini box types. They are the most noticeable to me. In the pF range I cant tell (as far as I've ever noticed) a difference really between ceramic and brownies/greenies etc.

I don't like a lot of ceramic caps in big muffs. Just doesn't sound right if its all ceramic.

I haven't made a real big effort listening to cap types outside of the big muff and a fuzz of mine to see which sounds best to me so that's about all I can contribute on this subject.
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Post by KMG »

Some prefer to use ceramic instead of film capacitors for "bright" compensation on the gain controls because they tincture sound with the upper harmonics at low gain control position.
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Post by Dirk_Hendrik »

And why shouldn't there be a difference? Because someone in this thread claims a "no" without any decent explanation where millions of others have spent endless hours and do hear a difference, with explanation or not. Again, the subject is definitely worth the discussion but just stating plainly it's all bull. No sir. That does require better explanation on experiences on the subject.
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Post by RnFR »

years ago, when the digital audio age was just coming to be, i saw a talk about analog vs. digital with Rupert Neve. his main point was, that i'm sure many of you have heard before, is that just because digital audio goes from 20-20kHz, it still doesn't sound as good as tape because the frequency response doesn't go high up enough to capture all of the harmonics. he said that in listening tests, frequencies past 50kHz were still affecting the properties of audible sound to listeners. i think the same effect could be happening here. whether or not all caps are the "same" over the audible frequency spectrum does not mean that the inaudible frequencies aren't effecting what we are hearing as well.
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