When you solder them in the first thing you notice is that you do not have to turn up the volume as much. That is an interesting observation!
Jim, I have to tell you that your design work makes it much easier to hear sonic changes with passive components and tubes. Kudo's for designing such as simple and effective circuit.
I came across these FT-3 Teflon caps by sheer accident. I purchased some K40Y9 PIO Russian caps to evaluate as bypass caps and the vendor claimed his best audio cap was the FT-3. I just had to try a few to see what teflon does for the overall sound. After all there are some expensive American teflon caps out there and I do not have an endless budget for parts evaluations.
After soldering these in, I went straight to my toughest CD. When the FT-3 caps allowed high energy passages to just flow by like a live performance, I was stunned. I had always said before that if you want to hear really dynamic music, it would have to be a live performance. No electronics I knew of would transact these tough passages perfectly. They always had a short coming in the sound field either with peak dynamic collapse, or imaging stess, or a combination of failures here or there.
I guess that the very large surface area of aluminum is what allows for the transients to stream along and still have energy left in reserve.
Here is something I think you might appreciate. My father was an aeronautical engineer for Hughes Aircraft. His division specified teflon coated wire for the missle guidance process. They did so because no other insulation allowed faster response times to electronic signal propogation.
The feedback systems between the guidance and the control devices to steer the missle were always under incredible stress. He told me it is one thing for an aircraft to funtion at 400 knots per hour and another thing altogether for a missle which might be negotiating directional changes at mach 2 or faster. Extremely fast reaction times were critical to performance. He was sold on teflon insulated wire. He said it was the most responsive dielectric they had evaluated.
I was really taken with the sonic improvement of the FT-3 caps. I tried them with all three of my final signal caps, Auricaps, Dynamicaps and the Mundorf Silver Supremes (SIO). The fact that all three brands sound better with the FT-3 bypass caps was very impressive to me.
I took them out for about a week, just to see if I could adjust to the sound of the SIO Mundorfs alone. I just could not enjoy the music as much. The Mundorf could not navigate the tougher dynamic pieces.
BTW on my Dale Vishay stepped attenuator, I have 24 steps. To get to 86 db I had to run the Mundorfs at 14. With just the addition of the Teflons I get to 86 db at approximately 9-11 steps. I say between, because there seems to be some cd's with "hotter" recorded levels than others.
Jim, have you evaluated the Vishay nudes or Texas Component nudes. They are the same, just not labeled Vishay.
I ran into a Naval scientific equipment tester about 3 weeks ago at my local electronics shop in Reno, and he told me the sound analysis equipment used in US submarines can detect digestive noise from biologicals. Sometimes over very great distances based on the ocean thermal layers. He said this equipment utilized these nude resistors.
Interesting!
