I swapped from the Standard Z to the Q4 and noticed an immediate difference. To be fair, I had been listening to the Standard Z for a couple of weeks before they calmed down. They were very sibilant and lacked clarity. So, I will give the Q4 some time to break in.
The difference that I heard was the Q4 was very dry, lacked air around the singers, lacked dynamics and sounded flat, sound stage wise.
So after some break in time we will see what happens with them. Hoping they open up.
Drop a wima in there.
I would say the Q4 are a good basic inexpensive poly cap. They arenât bland or uninvolved like the Daytons tend to be.
The Standard Zcaps however can be from the other side of neutral. Sometimes the effect they have is good, other times they can sound shrill, forced, bright, or hot. Overly sparkly could be a good description. Acoustic guitar, or something recorded in a room with lots of reverberance tends to shine with these caps. On my Vijon build with the RT1.3 planar, they sound great. I didnât like them with the AMTHR4 in my Hancocks.
I agree, the standard Z did not sound good at all, at first. took a good long time to smooth out. They cost about the same as the Q4 so I thought I would compare them. Thanks for the input, Ben.
Pretty sure those are the caps that made me literally flinch with how shrill they were in the Hancocks.
Yep, they are, Brad.
Reverberation depth and length are my focus when evaluating crossover tweaks and special caps
Thanks Ben
the second tier caps, like the Dayton polys seem to have less depth
I would agree that the Dayton caps have a very flat soundstage. There really isnât much depth to them.
When it comes to qualities different capacitors can provide, it comes down to what the listener wants. Some have an emphasis in a certain bandwidth, or is more (etched) or less (rounder) articulate or detailed at the job. Some have the soundstage depth of an immense or vast nature (bloom), whereas others impart a smaller and more focused quality. Of course, fizzy, spitty, gritty, bright, dull (warm), etc also exist.
To top it off, good driver plus good cap does not always equal good result, and combinations of cap types (like in bypassing) can create other problems. On a project several years ago, I had a bypass cap on the treble resistor to lift the top octave a bit, 0.1uF value. I wondered if I needed more, and added a 0.33uF cap of different makeup/mfr to it. This resulted in an audible echo in the sound where the source was cleanly heard playing twice with between them in delay. I still donât know why this occurred. Because of this, I typically avoid paralleling of different type or brand capacitors. However, I have never had issue with paralleling a small mylar capacitor to match values required due to capacitor tolerance.
Rolling caps can be rewarding.
0k, it has been 11 days of listening to the Q4. Not quite 2 weeks but they have changed dramatically in that time. They may change even more if I give them more time, which I will. Just wanted to update what I hear.
The soundstage is huge. Way deeper and a bit wider than the Z. The sound is more focused with the Q4. The Z seems to have a bit more air around vocals and such. The top end on the Q4 has come in very nicely. Before they sounded rolled off. The cymbals sound much better now but still has a somewhat dry sound. I think most people like that but to me, that is not how cymbals sound in real life. Transients are smoothed off with the Q4 which, once again, I think most people like. To me, it doesnât render drum attack properly.
Overall, I think they both sound good but it is a matter of taste. I will update after another week of listening to the Q4 and then will switch back to the Z to confirm my findings.
For a 4 dollar cap shootout, I did not expect a noticable difference. Maybe I should expand the shootout to include the Dayton caps with the white ends. The yellow ones also. Any other 4 dollar caps you would like to add to this? It is a 3.3 uF cap.
I will then be testing a 6.8 uF cap on the midrange.
You wonât like the Dayton caps compared to those.
Try these:
You can parallel several to make value, or parallel with say, a Dayton cap, and see what bypassing does. The price is rightâŚ.
I honestly canât hear a real difference between quality caps. Had a crossover built with a switch and two different caps (I believe Q4 and some higher end one), there was a very slight difference which also may have been imagination but to me as long as one uses good quality caps you are fine. Speaker was a semi-active 3-way with XT300-Neo, SS 15W and Peerless Nomex Woofer so nothing shabby.
Just bringing this up here to state that not all people have perfect hearing.
By no means is mine perfect. I canât hear 14k+.
I didnât think that there was any difference in caps until I tested Clarity Cap CSA against Dayton five years ago and I liked the Clarity much better. Surprised my buddy liked the Dayton better. But my ears are basically trashed.
I am sure I wonât like the Daytons but would like to compare them to see what they lack.
I was at the cap test Wolf performed back in Grinnell, like in 2011? I could hear differences between the caps, so I believe itâs a real deal. But some of the changes were so minute I couldnât tell you if B was better or worse that C. Kind of like going to the optometrist, â1 or 2, 3 or 4, just smaller, does this make it better or worse?â lol. I remember Wolf had quite a range of cap types. Did you ever list out what they all were? I kinda think you did. I know one of them was a poly in oil motor run cap and think there was a NPE in there somewhere. Not sure if they were all caps in series with the tweeters or some caps in the shunt leg of the wooferâs filter or a mix.
Long story short I stopped using any Dayton caps or resistors. Iâve had quite a few of their leads break off flush with the bodies with little to almost zero stress (Iâve actually had way better luck with the Madisound buyout 10 uF). I like using the Audyn Q4âs. They are sturdy and always measure well within 1% tolerance. They sound clean to my ears. And I donât lose sleep worrying that I spent more on a couple caps than what the tweeters cost. JMHO YMMV
What resistors do you now use? Iâve noticed that the selection of capacitors has increased, but there is very little choice of resistors these days (or so it seems to me).
The ones JF sells are nice, and price is right.
What JR said
It was 2010 for the âTudes test in Grinnell. I had several in different places in the circuit.
Iâm pretty sure I listed them at some point back then.
On the woofer 82uF shunt:
CrossCap, Solen, and NPE.
On the 1st mid highpass 20uF cap (3rd order):
Clarity SA, ASC X386, Tecate, and Dayton.
And the secondary positions for the 3rd order electrical on both tweeter and midrange:
Dayton, CrossCap, SilverZ, Carli, Clarity SA, SoniCap, MultiCap, StandardZ, etcâŚ
Iâve subbed in several into the test bed that is that setup since then. Itâs nice that I can try them out.
Yes, I have close to 100 JF resistors. (Two of the 42 pc sets plus whatever else I have bought in one-off purchases.) 