I wasn't going to post this due to the crap that some of you will give me, but there may be a few people interested in this:
I have changed the audio out capacitors on my DVD player and my televisiion satelite receiver. (no joke)
Along with the audio outs on the DVD player, I also replaced the S-Video out capacitor.
All caps used were Black Gates. I just matched the uF rating and either met or exceded the voltage ratings depending on availability.
The difference in sound quality on both units would make you sit up and laugh out loud! The difference is THAT noticeable.
The bass is just what you would expect from a Black Gate cap, deeper and faster. The first thing I noticed with both units was extended, faster treble. After a few hours I started to notice depth and positioning within the soundstage. This was really entertaining to have sound this good coming from a DVD player. It was absolutely hillarious to have clean sound coming from a television satelite receiver.
For the video out sections, I was able to replace the S-video cap in my DVD player. It was the only cap next to the S-Video output. The difference in video quality was an immediate increase in white and red. Later the black level became far more defined and I had to adjust the TV video settings. I used to have the TV settings at higher levels of contrast and lower levels of bright. This made up for the grain. Now I have it set almost flat with the dvd player. I just turn the brightness down (this turns up the black). If you are new to the contrast and brightness controls actually controling the white and black levels, go rent one of the new Star Wars dvds. The Lucas Film movies come with a video setup option that gives you all of the tools that are sold on dvd video setup discs for $25 to $50.
While I was at it, I changed the binding posts on one of my MGIIIA outboard crossovers to big gold fancy WBT binding posts from
www.partsexpress.com. I just changed one speaker because I wanted to see if this would do anything besides making it easier to hook up my speakers. The result: slightly clearer sound out of the new binding posts than the old. I had to drill the holes to 7/16 to make the new binding posts fit. No complaints here since the posts were 50% off as a discontinued item.
One very cheap and fun experiment I did a month ago was to add a single film cap 1uF 100v from Radio Shack to the bass crossover cap on my MG12s. This was an experiment to test the reports that a bypass cap fundamentally serves to speed response. The bass was significantly faster which gave the illusion (or reality) of it being louder. Another result of this ultra-cheap experiment was an increase in the perfect 5th harmonic.
Next up:
power supply cap in the dvd player
power supply cap in the tv receiver
bypass caps in my preamp
bypass caps in the crossovers of my Klipsch RBS3 speakers
bass bypass caps added to the Black gate bass cap in my MGIIIA
The goal of all of this experimenting is to gain enough proficiency to tackle an old Radio Shack Optimis 4x100 watt receiver. I'd like to replace every audio cap I can find in the Optimis and maybe hire someone to bridge the two B speaker channels to the A speaker channels. How cool would it be if that 35 pound radio shack receiver from 1990 was converted to a mid-high-end piece of audio?
Steve K will guide me through building all new internal crossovers for the IIIAs. He, Alex B, and I will all have new internal crossovers for out IIIAs eventually. Ideally, by the time we get around to doing my crossovers, I will know enough to do them myself.
Once all of that is accomplished, I will apply Black Gate caps to the Bissel vacuum cleaner, the living room lamp, and the door bell. If that goes well, I'll add copper foil in oil caps to the door hinges on the house to smooth out their response.
Again, I'm only posting this in case someone else is interested in getting into the fine art of cap swapping.
It is similar to tube swapping except they last longer and they're cheaper and you have to solder them in and you could get electricuted and things could blow up if you put them in backwards and you could destroy your equipment if you put in the wrong values and you can burn yourself with the soldering iron and you could ruin the circuit board by getting it too hot. Other than that, its the exact same thing a tube swapping.
But seriously, the difficulty is highly exaggerated. Soldering is no big deal. Logic plays the most important part. If you heat the lead and the part to which the lead is to be connected, the solder will flow onto them both. If the solder is shiny and you have heated both pieces completely, the connection should be okay. If you hear the sound of record static, the solder connections need to be reheated. I am a newby and by no means experienced at this soldering bidness. These tips that I am passing on are tips given to me by champs like Scott F, Steve K, Sturgis, and G.
Have fun!
Mike
