Will someone explain how a bypass cap works if they are still both attached to the lead? I am no electric engineer, but i am finding it odd the signal does not just pass through both???/ Thanks
Think of a capacitor as an energy storage device. The larger it is the more it can store. Also the larger it is the slower the rate of discharge. Think of it as power in... charging up... then discharging. The time involved in that process represents some smearing to the audio signal. Faster discharging caps are cleaner sounding. That's one of the reasons a Sonicap (for instance) sounds so much cleaner than so many others. Also, the fast discharge caps really give you the space between notes and that can be a big improvement in sound quality.
Now the tiny little by-pass caps are so small that they hold nearly no charge at all by comparison. It is basically power in and power out. So they tend to help discharge the stored energy of the larger cap when by-passing them. So you have a big needed cap value but you take on some of the fast discharge rate of the smaller cap.
How's that?
