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In Reply to: Re: Audio note caps reliablity posted by Peter Qvortrup on March 29, 2007 at 09:11:40:
"with small handmade items like this variability is always greater, it is part the price one pays for quality I think."Ummm, isn't "quality" a measure of reliability and part-to-part consistency? I would assume that you do not have six sigma capability..?
I'd rather have my capacitors be built by a robotic assembly line than human hands. More consistent, more reliable, less chance of defect and microphony. Admittedly, not as fashionable or as cool a back-story, but a cap is not supposed to make me think of an artisan laboring in a workshop, it's supposed to have a 1/wfC impedance and nothing else.
Follow Ups:
Dear MKJ,In the largely one dimensional world of mass production the measures you mention are generally the ones governing quality, and if one is making a refrigirator or toaster then they are fine as measures.
We define quality in this regard as sound quality, and whilst consistency and reliability are important measures as well, at the end of the day a specialist part or product has to be defined by how it performs within its defined brief.
"We define quality in this regard as sound quality"So how good does an amp with out of spec caps or burnt output tubes sound?
I'm reminded of the old line about Jaguar: "Every part that falls off is of the finest British workmanship."
Dear MKJ,The small percantage of caps that fail, don't sound great, that is true and as a former Jaguar owner myself all I can say is that it is sad that the genius that created the cars was not matched by an equivalent ability to build them.
The point here is that any small volume production item which attempts to expand the envelope in some respect will always suffer from more variability than large scale industrial production items made to a price, and what it comes down to in the end equation is how well it performs within its brief.
It is a very easy argument to just look at what something does not do, how about looking at what it does do well and then seek to reduce the failure rate, that is after all what originally created the cheap mass produced parts that you touted earlier once upon a time.
The Mahatma has missed the point me thinks. A capacitor is very much more than its 1/Wc and ESR and as for 6 sigma lets leave that to the anal retentives who enjoy that sort of thing
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