Propeller Head Plaza

Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics.

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RE: Any scope photos of different resistors...

Posted by Old nuff 2 no better on July 30, 2015 at 05:24:46:
Though I lurk here every now and then, I rarely post, as my beliefs and philosophies really don't go with the mainstream here. I can measure differences between just about anything, including resistors, but in general I rarely hear the subtle differences others claim. Usually, the more I refine the listening tests, the less difference I can hear. I've been down the interconnect and tweak rabbit hole plenty of times and still only partially understand all the biases that can be present, but I'm as subject to them as anybody. Thus, I don't make claims about what's real and what isn't.
It's interesting that Audio Precision has some notes where they found the expensive metal foil resistors have unexpected modulation distortion, and regular metal films are to be preferred! Nobody wants to hear that, since $$ resistors must be better. I use metal foils in DC metrology equipment, but not my audio stuff.
I recently built the "JCan" noise test fixture for resistors. It's interesting to note that excess noise is current dependent, and resistors with near zero current all generate about the same noise. It's even more interesting how incredibly bad carbon track pots are, compared to even carbon comp resistors. Metal film stepped attenuators for me any day of the week.
There may be other resistive effects beyond the usual tempco, stray L or C and voltage dependence, but all of it is incredibly small. There's probably nothing I can show you on a scope that's very meaningful. It would tend to be more tables of numbers and statistics!
A couple things I've come across are that thick film SMT resistors can be very noisy and that some MOX resistors have a surprisingly high voltage coefficient. Not all, so testing is the only way to know.
Conrad H.