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My power supply filter network is all Solen fastcaps. Any benefit to bypassing these with film and foil?
I've measured fairly high inductance on large Solen caps, so I would say yes, there is benefit from bypassing them with smaller film/foil types to a point. At high frequencies, the inductance of the wire between your power supply and the load will be greater than a small bypass. The key is to put those small bypasses near the load so there is less inductance from the wire.Next time I measure caps I will try L-cancelling that Black Gate suggests in their literature. I would paralell two Solen's so the writing direction is reversed (and hopefully inner/outer plate direction) and see if that makes a difference other than lower impedence due to having more capacitance.
Mark,How do the Solens compare measured against the better electrolytics (say the FAs)? The reason I ask is because I've heard it said that Solens make pretty good PS caps if one has the space.
I understand that as far as comparing metallized polyprops, Solen caps certainly don't hold up to something like the Multicaps. But then, they aren't even in the same ballpark pricewise.
--daryl
Compared to a generic power supply electrolytic capacitor, a Solen is superior in every way except having much greater cost and physical size. The impedence is lower, and the Dissipation Factor is much lower. The thing about impedence is that at low frequencies, more capacitance will mean lower impedence for unregulated supplies. So, if its an amp and you don't have enough capacitance, bass will suffer. One way around this is to use choke filtered supplies where energy is also stored in the choke.Compared to a FA electrolytic, a big Solen will have higher impedence above 100khz. I would rather use a higher quality/lower impedence film cap of 1-10 uf close to the load as a bypass of a good electrolytic cap supply. Cost is kept reasonable, as are space requirements. I have not experimented with all film supplies and hope someone else could comment on it.
Solen caps are well suited for some applications like speaker crossovers and cost-effective coupling caps. For someone wanting no electrolytics in a supply, they are cost effective also. I'm not sure a well bypassed electrolytic power supply couldn't do just as good.
Thanks,Tim
Have you tried this?
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