[poseidonsvoice]

Jrebman,

The AmpOhm copper foil capacitors you sent me are MUCHO appreciated. They are going to be used as a main parafeed capacitor for a differential 6N6P output stage coupled to a Buffalo Mk III (when it comes out). Then that parafeed cap will also be bypassed with a copper foil based Modwright T series truth capacitor.

Dracule1 & Jrebman,

I don't think you two are disparaging Duelund to be honest, you are just curious. However the companies have their own discretionary measures and want to maintain a good market for themselves understandably. Again, as long as the final sonics are the key, we shouldn't care about who stamps it /labels it/constructs it - and that we can agree on. These companies are so small that they have to use larger companies that distribute to a much wider audience. The diy audio and high end audio market is tiny for this boutique stuff.

FWIW, I've planned on using the VH Audio Copper foil cap as my interstage capacitor and the Duelund Alexander as my output capacitor in my personal build of the Transcedent Sounds Beast amplifier.

As you can see, I'm now very partial to capacitors that use a copper foil, and I truly seek them out. They have a different sonic signature, still retaining the frequency extremes, but have an organic glow to them, that highlights the midrange.

Sorry for the audiophile verbal snobbery.

These builds should be fun .

Anand.

[madisonears]

No need to apologize for trying to describe what you hear.  Sometimes we need that audiophile jargon.  That's much better than what some posters here provide, which is next to nothing.  One shouldn't simply state that A is better than B, or all others, without at least attempting to describe why.

I, too, have noticed the organic (for lack of a better term) nature and depth that copper foil gives to the sound, while still maintaining detail and accuracy at the extremes.

Do you have any preference regarding dielectric material?  We can choose from paper-in-oil, various poly types of plastic, and teflon.  I've seen claims that each has a characteristic sound.  It appears that you have selected a variety.  I'm speaking here of true film and foil, which generally provides sonics superior to metalized types, regardless of materials used.

Peace,
Tom E

[poseidonsvoice]

Tom,

The introduction of copper based foils has really changed the landscape for me somewhat, so that became my defacto deciding factor.

But from a musicality standpoint, I would surmise that my rating from best to worst as far as dielectrics would be 1) Paper in Oil, 2) Teflon, and 3) Metallized Polypropylene. However, without a copper foil, the Paper In Oil types lose out bigtime to the Teflons.

Between the Duelund Copper VSF and the Vcap Copper foil teflon, it's a race to the finish, where each will shine in different systems and different tastes.

The crowning king (from my colleagues, not me) is the the Duelund Copper CAST.

I don't think that changes what you think of these caps, because to be honest, they are more in line to what most of the reviews say on the net.
Best,
Anand.

[jrebman]

Anand,

Couldn't agree more on the copper foil thing.  I've been through all kinds of wire and caps with all kinds of metals and alloys and in my room, with my gear, copper is really the only thing that really brings the music to life.  I just got a pair of the v-cap CuTfs for coupling caps, but I've got 4 amps to decide between, though my guess is that they'll end up in either the Carina or the 2a3 monoblocks.

Just FYI, I just got some of the vhaudio occ airlok wire that seems to be making some quiet waves.  I guess I'll see for myself soon enough.

-- Jim

[poseidonsvoice]

Anand,
.....

Just FYI, I just got some of the vhaudio occ airlok wire that seems to be making some quiet waves.  I guess I'll see for myself soon enough.

-- Jim

Sorry for the off topic- I use the Vcap OCC airlok wire for my tweeter connection in my GedLee Abbeys and use them exclusively in my external crossovers. High quality, and cheap.

Anand.

[poseidonsvoice]

Grant Fidelity has now entered the market with their Reference Teflon Copper Foil capacitors...nice! Values available are 0.1uf, 0.22uf, and 0.47 uf, all at 600V DC.





Best,
Anand.

[Jon L]

Grant Fidelity has now entered the market with their Reference Teflon Copper Foil capacitors...nice! Values available are 0.1uf, 0.22uf, and 0.47 uf, all at 600V DC.





Best,
Anand.

Yeah, I saw that.  For one of the more useful value 0.22uF, for example, the Psvane costs 16% less than VCap CuTF. 

Is this enough in cost-savings for someone to gamble on an untested cap vs. a well-established U.S. brand?  If I were the usual consumer, I would want savings more in 25-30% range to take the gamble personally    Then again, manufacturing a copper foil teflon cap is not going to be cheap, even in China..

[poseidonsvoice]

Yeah, I saw that.  For one of the more useful value 0.22uF, for example, the Psvane costs 16% less than VCap CuTF. 

Is this enough in cost-savings for someone to gamble on an untested cap vs. a well-established U.S. brand?  If I were the usual consumer, I would want savings more in 25-30% range to take the gamble personally    Then again, manufacturing a copper foil teflon cap is not going to be cheap, even in China..

It's that copper foil that makes you cringe. Regardless of manufacturer or country, they seem to be expensive. Just one look at the price of the Russian FT-3 Teflon capacitors, immediately centers you!

Anand.

[Jon L]

It's that copper foil that makes you cringe. Regardless of manufacturer or country, they seem to be expensive. Just one look at the price of the Russian FT-3 Teflon capacitors, immediately centers you!

Anand.

To be fair, these Russian teflon caps use aluminum foils and are basically NOS military surplus that got into hands of ebay sellers with the demise of Soviet Union.  Who knows what they would sell for if some astute European "audio" dealer got a hold of all of them? 

[S Clark]

Yeah, I saw that.  For one of the more useful value 0.22uF, for example, the Psvane costs 16% less than VCap CuTF. 
  Then again, manufacturing a copper foil teflon cap is not going to be cheap, even in China..

Why not? Copper foil is a commercially available product, and even if the material cost is 20x the cost of aluminum foil, it should still be no more than an extra dollar per cap. Since copper is more malleable than Al, it should be easier to roll with the teflon.

[srb]

Why not? Copper foil is a commercially available product, and even if the material cost is 20x the cost of aluminum foil, it should still be no more than an extra dollar per cap. Since copper is more malleable than Al, it should be easier to roll with the teflon.

I agree.  I think it's more the difference between manufacturing a low volume specialty niche capacitor versus manufacturing a high volume common capacitor series.  That and taking advantage of the higher profit margin one can usually get away with in lower volume specialty manufacturing.
 
Steve

[tarquineous]

Has anyone tried Solen Teflon caps (green)? They seem to be not too expensive. I wonder how they compare to Rel and Vcaps... I use russian teflons, and, though I like their resolution, I find them to be a bit gritty in upper mids/treble, and not very smooth. I may be mistaken, but they seem to have some resonances here and there, especially in upper bass. I use values of 0.047uf and 0.1uf.

I tried the blue ones, which are metalized, as a bypass on a good sounding oil filled cap. This was on signal. The blue Solens degraded the sound seriously. The green ones, which I assume are teflon and foil should be much better. This is based on my experience with the Modwright teflon-film caps, which are an overall improvement with certain oil filled capacitors on signal. Be aware that bypassing is not consistently an improvement. Sometimes they are, usually they are not, on signal especially.

Regarding the Alexanders; I compared some BAT coupling capacitors to Jensen. BAT has their capacitors made by Jensen. The BAT caps sound noticibly better to me than the Jensens, of the same values. They were more natural and had better weight and impact. One difference in construction is the BAT version has copper lead wires. The Jensens have silver wire. Other than that, I don't know. So the Duelund Alexanders may be better than either. If they are, they will be top quality, because the BAT caps are one of the best I have heard.

I have the Alexanders on order, so I can verify this.

[Henry Shih Tzu]

Hi everyone, I’m new on here but not new to the love our obsession (40+ years).

I’ve read all of this thread and I’m at the point of buying a bunch of Multicap RTX to fit into my Woodside monoblocks and mosfet preamp. The Woodsides at the moment have 0.47 Jensen coppers bypassed by 10n FSC.P polystyrenes. The sound has great depth but limited sound stage. Organic but lacks air and the bass, of which there is plenty, seems a bit rounded off.
The preamp, a MF 3A, of which I’ve done quite a few mods to (so please don’t laugh) is very transparent. But I feel the Sonicap Gen 1’s bypassed by RTX 0.01uf’s, of which there are three sets per channel for signal purposes, could be improved on. The sound when used with my ss mono’s is quite neutral in the midrange with good deep bass and plenty of air to the point where at times the soundstage extends outside the speakers.
Just to complete the ensemble the front end is a Micrmega T Drive (with mods) and a MF Tri-Vista tube o/p dac. Speakers are my own creation using scanspeak drivers and tweeters.

The question is would I be better going for the Russian Tefs. I love the sound of the Jensens but crave for more controll in the bass and better treble extension.
Would all those RTX’s be too much of a good thing?

Please help .

Regards,
Mike

[50jess]

In your experience, how long burn-in time does the Mundorf Silver in Oil take for it to stabilize?  Is it the same for the Supremes and Silver Gold in Oils?     

[tarquineous]

In your experience, how long burn-in time does the Mundorf Silver in Oil take for it to stabilize?  Is it the same for the Supremes and Silver Gold in Oils?     

I usually run in the capacitors before installing, but I find they don't change much. I use them in line with a tuner for the most hours, because the tuner can be left on easily. Then I use a CD player with music, and a run with the Purist break in disk, and I put the capacitors on a Blue Horizons burn in devise.

Even after all that, they need to be run in after installing in the component. I recently did this ( about two weeks ago), installing four Vitamin Q signal capacitors in a balanced headphone amp.

The sound, at first listen, was real narrow in my head using the headphones, and was bright and clear in the upper range especially. This changed after about six hours, the narrowness was about 80% gone.

To make a long story short, I was very pleased with the sound after about 12 hours of playing time, and got a further improvement in naturalness after another 12 hours of playing time. I am really liking the sound now, and it is a significant improvement over the stock poly capacitors made by Dayton.

So I would say, forget the pre-install burn in, unless you insist on it, and give the capacitors (and solder joints) 24 hours to stabilize. I suspect the solder joints needing break in, because that's the only other thing I changed in the amp ( other than bending the leads to shape).

The Purist CD burn in disk, seemed to help the most during the break in process. I used it four times during the 24 hours of playing time. The rest of the time was playing music disks.

[tarquineous]

In your experience, how long burn-in time does the Mundorf Silver in Oil take for it to stabilize?  Is it the same for the Supremes and Silver Gold in Oils?     

I have those but cannot tell you exact burn in time in the circuit. I would estimate 12 hours. One person who has experience with these, is Bill Baker at Response Audio. You might want to e-mail Response Audio.

[madisonears]

Of the half-dozen caps I compared as input caps in my monoblock amps, the Mundorf SIO took by far the longest to break-in.  I think it was more than a month of playing 4 hours or more per day until they finally sounded good, and then another couple weeks before they sounded the same every time I listened to the amps.  It was not worth the wait.  Some caps took only a few hours of playing time to sound their best, and they were better than the SIO's.

I suspect that they would break-in much faster with higher level signal, such as in a speaker xover. 

Peace,
Tom E

[tarquineous]

Based on my own limited experience, and what others are using with happy results, it looks like the Mundorf SIOs are most sucessful in speaker crossovers, followed by power supply bypass use, and AC power conditioners. I've used them in the latter two applications with small but positive results.
For signal, I find them clear sounding, but too bright, and a lack of bass weight.

[50jess]

Based on my own limited experience, and what others are using with happy results, it looks like the Mundorf SIOs are most sucessful in speaker crossovers, followed by power supply bypass use, and AC power conditioners. I've used them in the latter two applications with small but positive results.
For signal, I find them clear sounding, but too bright, and a lack of bass weight.

What about Mundorf use for amplifier and CD players?

[50jess]

I read this interesting article by humblehomemadehifi and it made mentioned of the VISHAY-RODERSTEIN MKP-1837 Metalized Polypropylene Film Capacitor as a good bypass caps.  And the Vishay practically costs nothing.  hat is your take on this?