Guest thesloth Posted October 5, 2015 Share Posted October 5, 2015 Do caps really break in? No. The original caps were within 10% of spec, not bad for 35 years old. The esr is what has increased and which is why it's good to change them out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimjimbo Posted October 5, 2015 Share Posted October 5, 2015 Members 305 posts ONLINE Posted 05 October 2015 - 07:51 PM Bubo, on 05 Oct 2015 - 7:49 PM, said: Do caps really break in? No. Where's your data and listening tests to back this up? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest thesloth Posted October 6, 2015 Share Posted October 6, 2015 Members 305 posts ONLINE Posted 05 October 2015 - 07:51 PM Bubo, on 05 Oct 2015 - 7:49 PM, said: Do caps really break in? No. Where's your data and listening tests to back this up? Aluminum oxide in electrolytic capacitors do have a forming process, if you want to learn something read under Leakage current on page 4. http://www.vishay.com/docs/25001/alucapsintroduction.pdf The capacitors in question are film caps and should not change. If anything your ear will. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bubo Posted October 6, 2015 Author Share Posted October 6, 2015 (edited) ESR Measurements ................New......Old ...............200V....100V 13uF........0.16......0.24 02uF....... 0.17......0.21 My new toy (Blue-Bob Parker) that arrived a couple of days ago, still learning how to use it. Edited October 6, 2015 by Bubo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimjimbo Posted October 6, 2015 Share Posted October 6, 2015 Shoulda, coulda, woulda.....I didn't ask about electrolytic caps, I asked about the caps in question, and you didn't provide any data, nor any supporting listening tests and verification. Pretty much exactly what I expected. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest thesloth Posted October 6, 2015 Share Posted October 6, 2015 Shoulda, coulda, woulda.....I didn't ask about electrolytic caps, I asked about the caps in question, and you didn't provide any data, nor any supporting listening tests and verification. Pretty much exactly what I expected. The only that would change would be due to defects in the dielectric, the cap clears itself in less than 10uS. I don't know what else to tell you, if the cap is used properly it won't change. Read under self healing: http://www.vishay.com/docs/26033/gentechinfofilm.pdf Then mention of burn in at the end is just to weed out duds, if they don't heal they fail. But they don't burn in like a new pair of shoes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted October 6, 2015 Share Posted October 6, 2015 Richard Marsh told me that "new caps are cranky", and that it takes 10-20 for a cap to "settle down". A certain Klipsch engineer told me that Klipsch determined that it takes about three days for things to "settle in". Al and Bob say it's just the ears getting used to the new sound, I'm not so sure - since I heard a network that I had just worked on two days before completely open up on me while I was listening to it. Whatever it is, it's done doing it within 20 hours. Self healing in a horn loudspeaker is doubtful, there just isn't enough current generated for the clearing action to take place - which just leaves "noise" from the continuous low level arcing. See Bob Stout's comments in the capacitor thread. Richard Marsh and Mark Kaufman are serious engineers. We have not reached the point where everything in quantifiable. Something is going on, we don't fully understand it - but we notice it. The answer is NOT to dismiss it and denigrate those who acknowledge it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest thesloth Posted October 6, 2015 Share Posted October 6, 2015 I agree with Bob Crites; Q: Do components have a break-in time? A: Some do and some don't. Capacitors would be a definite NO. Let's look at this one a bit. You have new good quality capacitors installed in your crossovers. Capacitors have exactly two qualities that effect the sound of your music that goes through them. Those are capacitance (what we use them for) and ESR. ESR is the sum of all other qualities of a capacitor other than capacitance expressed as an Equivalent Series Resistance. ESR is a bad thing. Good caps have ESR so low it is barely measurable, on the order of a couple of hundredths of an ohm. ESR is made up of stuff like the resistance of the leads and their connections to the foil inside the capacitor or stray inductance or dielectric absorption. So, we put our new caps in the crossovers. These new caps are right on the capacitance value the design calls for and the ESR is almost unmeasurably low. What exactly of these two qualities do you expect to change with break-in? And if either of them changed, why would you expect the sound to get better since the only way they could change is to go away from the "perfect" values they had to start with? I hope any caps you use in your crossovers are good enough that they do not change at all for many years of use. Self healing in a horn loudspeaker is doubtful, there just isn't enough current generated for the clearing action to take place - which just leaves "noise" from the continuous low level arcing. See Bob Stout's comments in the capacitor thread. Self healing only requires uW of power. And what level of "noise" have you measured from low level arcing in crossover network capacitors? I am sure the "noise" would be so far below the noise floor of the amplifier that it's basically non existent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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