Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ.

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RE: You're making a bigger mistake

Posted by madisonears (A) on January 22, 2015 at 22:43:45

In Reply to: RE: You're making a bigger mistake posted by Cougar on January 22, 2015 at 21:58:59:

Okay, great to know that you're willing to learn. Some posters come here feeling they're smarter than the people who made their equipment.

I don't know if there is anything such as "too low," other than DC. What you want to do is NOT stop any part of the AC that is musical. Anything below 20hz is inaudible and possibly harmful. In order to pass 20hz without excessive phase distortion, you need a corner at least ten times lower, so 2hz is reasonable, and even lower than that is not crazy. A lot lower than that may be excessive from a cost standpoint: cap cost increases pretty fast above 1uf.

One reason the manufacturer may have selected such a large value is that electrolytic cap ratings are notoriously optimistic and woefully inaccurate, and they change for the worse as the cap ages. A film cap will be much more accurately rated and its value will never change with age, so you can select a value closer to what you establish to be the optimum.

Almost any film cap will yield a sonic improvement, but the better cap you can afford, the more it will be improved. Seek a brand name metalized polypropylene at a minimum, but you don't need to go crazy to get improvement over an electrolytic. If you're interested in value and good sound, check out Sonicap from Sonic Craft or Obbligato from various suppliers. There are plenty of other commercial grade caps that might be perfectly adequate for your needs. If you seek the ultimate, then an expensive true film and foil cap is necessary. Cap value/sonic performance is a complex topic.

Peace,
Tom E
berate is 8 and benign is 9

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