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Are Your Capacitors Installed Backwards ??


Kreg

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Hello everyone, I tried the Jupiter VT caps oriented both ways. I like the sound better with the outer foil towards the source. The music sounds smoother and seems to flow better, far more enjoyable.

 

Regards,

 

Greg

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22 minutes ago, Kreg said:

Hello everyone, I tried the Jupiter VT caps oriented both ways. I like the sound better with the outer foil towards the source. The music sounds smoother and seems to flow better, far more enjoyable.

 

Regards,

 

Greg

Thanks for that...hope your question has been answered for you.

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54 minutes ago, Kreg said:

Yes, I was having fun to. We are all loons I guess. All joking a side, the speakers do sound better to me with the caps oriented one way over the other.

 

This is a great forum, Thanks!

 

Greg

What caps did you get?  A week ago you hadn't decided on a brand.

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42 minutes ago, CECAA850 said:

What caps did you get?  A week ago you hadn't decided on a brand.

I put some Jupiter VT caps in the crossover. They have been in use for a couple of weeks. I also have a pair of 2uf Arizona Blue Cactus caps that I am going to try for the upper horn. I'm going to put them in, in the next couple of weeks.

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3 hours ago, Jeffrey D. Medwin said:

Thats great Greg !!

 

The best way to determine each film cap is to tack it in and give a listen, both ways, on music !!   It ain't " the way de writing on de cap is reading the neatest or symmetrical  ".  🙂

 

Now, (1) get rid of ALL tie wraps around the film caps.  (2) Do not let film caps touch each other.  (3) If you would like to secure film caps, neatly use GE SILICON 2 from ACE,  Lowes, etc, and allow to dry overnight.  Have fun.

 

Important news !!  GOOD news.

 

ElectroCube has come out with a brand new line of film caps, designed and made specifically for AUDIO applications !!!    Need to try them and compare.

 

Jeff Medwin

I always like to align my caps with other wires. I find they work much better when there is continuity. 

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ElectroCube is certainly offering a huge range of options in their "audio-optimized" lines - Teflon / foil, Paper / foil, Metallized film with a pretty blue wrap - if somehow they could do this and have lower prices (?) 😀 

 

looks like some of these lines top out at 2.2uF max value

 

https://www.electrocube.com/film-capacitors/audio-optimized-film-capacitors/

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Even better - with 2 channel recordings - one can listen to one channel - then the other for "double the pleasure" - and that experience could be radically different too if the recording were made from the days of when a mixer would pan almost everything "X" to the left - and "Y" to the right via switches vs "pan pots".  A vocal chorus might appear just on the left channel for example. (I really like those recordings - especially with headphones plus have a cascode 12xa7 tube mixer with good (Altec 4722) transformers which is like that as assigns each of its six inputs to L-C-R via toggle switches) 

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I was referring to the polarity of the leads hooked to the crossover from the amplifier.  If a crossover cap can be discerned to sound differently wired in one way or the other (if!) it would have to be due to the polarity of the signal going through it.  This can easily be confirmed by trying all four wiring (polarity) combinations.

 

It would likely be fun to be a fly on the wall (with a six-pack of beer) watching the process of checking capacitor polarity:

 

- "tack" a capacitor in place, listen to some music

- "untack" the capacitor, swap ends and "retack" it in place - after those several minutes, listen to the music again, comparing what you're hearing now to what you heard "not now"

- repeat until convinced one way sounded better than the other

 

The process could be streamlined by wiring where the cap leads would go to the centers of a DPDT switch, the cap across one set of poles along with leads crossing to the other set of poles.  At least that way you could merely flip the switch while listening so as to draw your conclusion.  Hell, each cap should be permanently wired that way so you can make sure you're getting all the cap has to offer with different program material!  (Make sure the switch is capable of properly handling the edges of a transient - might require something pretty massive what with all the Amps inside those edges.)

 

Unless you try all four polarity combinations you'll never know what you might be missing.

 

While I'm thinking about it, if a capacitor audibly handled the positive-going portion of an electrical waveform differently from the negative-going portion, I wouldn't consider it suitable for the purpose of handling an audio signal.

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