Re: box vs film caps (if that even makes sense)
Posted by IvIark on Nov 03, 2015; 8:21pm
URL: http://guitar-fx-layouts.238.s1.nabble.com/box-vs-film-caps-if-that-even-makes-sense-tp25024p25713.html
I will still build things with some caps simply because they look cool, because it's nice when your build is visually appealing and there's no doubt some components do look cool, and that's fine by me as long as no one expects me to pay £15 for an "audiophile" electrolytic. But I'd always use MLC first for the majority of builds because the results sound great, they're cheap as chips, I have gazillions, and they're small so easy to build with. I do enjoy building with box caps too though, particularly in something with uniform 5mm pitch like PCB builds.
Thinking about it, I'm not too sure what real world form cap distortion actually takes in audio circuits, but maybe for the things we use them for it's not necessarily a negative thing anyway. I'm quite fond of distortion
and it could be that the many non-linearities in caps can be a good thing in something inherently lofi like a guitar dirt pedal. It's not something anyone should worry too much about though, just use what you can get cheaply and in quantity I reckon.
URL: http://guitar-fx-layouts.238.s1.nabble.com/box-vs-film-caps-if-that-even-makes-sense-tp25024p25713.html
I have always thought that there are some subtle audible difference between SOME cap types, but in a clean circuit I've never noticed any difference unless the value varied enough to audibly change the frequency of a filter. Any differences that I've ever experienced has been in dirt pedals where I think that character of the distortion can alter in some way. Never anything night and day and always subtle, and really never in a way that I could pick one as better than the other, but different none the less. In the real world I don't think the difference is anything worth bothering about and you could always get significantly more difference by changing the value or the gain of a transistor maybe.
I will still build things with some caps simply because they look cool, because it's nice when your build is visually appealing and there's no doubt some components do look cool, and that's fine by me as long as no one expects me to pay £15 for an "audiophile" electrolytic. But I'd always use MLC first for the majority of builds because the results sound great, they're cheap as chips, I have gazillions, and they're small so easy to build with. I do enjoy building with box caps too though, particularly in something with uniform 5mm pitch like PCB builds.
Thinking about it, I'm not too sure what real world form cap distortion actually takes in audio circuits, but maybe for the things we use them for it's not necessarily a negative thing anyway. I'm quite fond of distortion
and it could be that the many non-linearities in caps can be a good thing in something inherently lofi like a guitar dirt pedal. It's not something anyone should worry too much about though, just use what you can get cheaply and in quantity I reckon.
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