Are Vishay capacitors any good?, Was: capacitors, any good (TOS #6) Options

[john11]

Hi and thanks for taking the time to read this post.

Has anyone had experience of vishay capacitors. I was thinking of buying some for an audio upgrade and wondered if they were any good.

Here's 3 links to the ones i am interested in:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/260873087101?ssP...984.m1423.l2649

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/260898271783?ssP...984.m1423.l2649

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/250936036279?ssP...984.m1423.l2649

These are available here in the uk, unfortunatly other decent ones are from china and there is a 20 to 30 day delivery time.

[DigitalMan]

What does "any good" mean? Are you talking quality / defect rate, tolerance to expected value, durability, etc.?

If you mean sound quality, well, that's a tough ask - how would buying capacitors achieve an "upgrade?" Where are you planning on putting them (on top of your speakers, in your ears, output coupling caps, power supply....)?

[saratoga]

Is it worth buying caps off ebay verses a more reputable place like mouser or allied electronics?

[RobWansbeck]

Vishay is not a capacitor manufacturer as such but a company that has acquired a large number of component manufacturers. You would need to check the spec for the specific brand.

As saratoga says, have you looked at mainstream suppliers e.g. Farnell?

[john11]

Hi. Many thanks for the responses.

I want to upgrade a few caps in my dac. The power supply uses 2x 2200uf caps and 2x 1000uf (cheap) which i want to replace with panasonic fm caps.

There are also 4x100uf caps in the analogue section which i would like to replace with elna silmic II.

I was told to bypass all these caps with 0.33uf paper in oil caps. Do you think this is sound advice? A quick google search indicates bypassing (decoupling)

can smooth the voltage a little.

I am looking at mouser and farnell, after your advice, as they have a base here in the uk

Many thanks. John.

[DVDdoug]

Upgrading your capacitors is likely to make an awesome placebo affect... Or, no effect at all. Or, you'll damage the circuit and kill the thing!

Are you hearing any defects? Noise? Distortion? Frequency Response variations??? Don't you trust the DAC designer/manufacturer to make a good design. Do you think you know more than the design engineer? Do you think the people giving you advice know more then the design engineer?

I was told to bypass all these caps with 0.33uf paper in oil caps.

I think you mean foil Sometimes there are reasons for bypassing electrolytic capacitors, because at very-high frequencies (above audio frequencies), electrolytics stop acting like capacitors. But if this needs to be done, the manufacturer should do it.

...can smooth the voltage a little.

Well, bigger capacitor (more uF) can sometimes smooth the supply, but the power supply is probably already regulated, and the active electronics of a regulator are better than capacitors. And I doubt that you have a noisy power supply and I doubt a "smoother" power supply will make the sound any better.

[pdq]

I was told to bypass all these caps with 0.33uf paper in oil caps.

I think you mean foil

No, paper in oil is an actual type of capacitor, though I don't think they are used much any more.

[john11]

Sorry not trying to be funny with anyone, the guy who advised me has tried this cap upgrade and says the dac does sound better.

Q. If i bypass the 2200uf caps in the power supply with a .033uf cap, should i still be using a 2200uf cap, or does the bypassing cap change the capacitance

so that a different value must be used.

Many thanks in advance. John.

[db1989]

Sorry not trying to be funny with anyone, the guy who advised me has tried this cap upgrade and says the dac does sound better.

People say a lot of things.

[saratoga]

Q. If i bypass the 2200uf caps in the power supply with a .033uf cap, should i still be using a 2200uf cap, or does the bypassing cap change the capacitance

If this is an AC power supply, I really think you should not be doing this. Its both unlikely to help and fairly dangerous given the questions you are asking.

[pdq]

If you add a 0.033 uF paper in oil cap in parallel across the 2200 uF or 100 uF cap, the worst that will happen is that you will damage something by the heat of soldering (electrolytic capacitors are fairly heat sensitive). The best that will happen is it will probably make no difference whatever.

[Wombat]

Sorry not trying to be funny with anyone, the guy who advised me has tried this cap upgrade and says the dac does sound better.

Q. If i bypass the 2200uf caps in the power supply with a .033uf cap, should i still be using a 2200uf cap, or does the bypassing cap change the capacitance

so that a different value must be used.

Many thanks in advance. John.

It doesn´t count here much what the guy that advised you claims. Ask him for details then.

Since your 2200µF cap has a tolerance of minimum +/-5% guess what these 0.033 do in changing capacitance...
My Amps have 2.2µF foil caps as bypass at the main caps and the developer had some reason in mind when he did it. I did read about simply bypassing with small values can even do harm under some circumstances.
Regarding Panasonic FM and Elna Silmic II these are for sure very nice caps that measure well. Nelson Pass himself once offered some measurements about the Silmic II and found them to be very usable.
In most situations you won´t be able to measure any effect when exchanging just blindly normal high ESR caps against these newer ones. In some design spots high ESR may even be wanted. When exchanging SMD parts you even most likely will worsen the noisefloor of the design with only the leads of these inserted parts collecting garbage. This is very hard to measure and needs expensive equipment.

Edit: IF! you really can archieve some difference in sound it may be that you just change the distortion specs in a way. You may voice the unit then and not better it. Such things only make sense if you have a second device for further comparison imho. No one can remember the sound of a unit after a while. Me often enough fooled myself with such boutique caps improving sound.

This post has been edited by Wombat: Jan 9 2012, 22:03

[DVDdoug]

Q. If i bypass the 2200uf caps in the power supply with a .033uf cap, should i still be using a 2200uf cap, or does the bypassing cap change the capacitance

Capacitor values in parallel simply add up. The resulting capacitance is 2200.033uF (if we make the silly assumption that the original value is exactly 2200uF). In other words, you are not changing the capacitance by a meaningful amount. You may be changing the way the circuit behaves at radio frequencies, or you may be doing nothing.

[RobWansbeck]

The oil-filled capacitor seems to be an audiophile thing although it looks like the paper is being replaced by mylar due to reliability problems. I have seen versions advertised for more than 2000 quid!

There are industrial applications for oil-filled capacitors but I would use typically 0.1uF polypropylene capacitors for bypassing electrolytics. In most cases you will find that the manufacturer has already done this.

The bypass capacitor is not there to change the value of the capacitance but to compensate for the fact that the impedance of large capacitors starts to rise at high frequencies. If you are really, really worried about this you could even place a 1nF class I ceramic capacitor across the 0.1uF polypropylene.

My personal belief is that using oil-filled capacitors will have no audible effect.

[Arnold B. Kruege...]

Is it worth buying caps off ebay verses a more reputable place like mouser or allied electronics?

Buying parts is all about price.

One caveat is that there are such things as counterfeit parts (particularly power transistors) and bad parts runs from normally reputable manufacturers.

Another caveat is that sometimes even reputable retailers will sell parts that are lots that have a specific range of values removed. For example, one might buy a lot of 100 10 ohm resistors and find that their actual resistances fit into a normal distribution, except for this big hole around exactly 10 ohms. Not a problem unless you intended to select out the 10 ohm parts! ;-)

[Arnold B. Kruege...]

Sorry not trying to be funny with anyone, the guy who advised me has tried this cap upgrade and says the dac does sound better.

Not to beat a dead horse, but the world is full of people who ignorantly say things like this. Some of them are even credible when they speak on other topics. Many of them are self-proclaimed gurus who only know what they read or heard on the web.

Of course, what you read and believe can affect the outcome of your listening tests if your listening tests are very casual, and that is one reason why false claims like this have a lot of legs.

My friends and I, who include some very highly experienced and well-regarded audio engineers, have beaten the component upgrade audiophile myth to death for the past 40 years with actual DBTs, technical analysis, and bench measurements. It is indeed a myth.

Q. If i bypass the 2200uf caps in the power supply with a .033uf cap, should i still be using a 2200uf cap, or does the bypassing cap change the capacitance
so that a different value must be used.

As other have pointed out capacitors in parallel add using simple arithmetic. The idea of putting a small value cap in parallel with power supply caps actually made some sense several decades back, when some large electrolytics had signficant equivalent series inductance (ESL). Since then, reducing ESL (and ESR) became competitive hot buttons for capacitor manufacturers, and everybody making these parts these days pays quite a bit of attention to it.

[Arnold B. Kruege...]

The oil-filled capacitor seems to be an audiophile thing although it looks like the paper is being replaced by mylar due to reliability problems. I have seen versions advertised for more than 2000 quid!

There are few if any reasons to make paper caps since the alternatives are generally so superior. Since they are no longer being made in volume, and that there is some audiphile cachet to them, of course they are sold at inflated prices.

There are industrial applications for oil-filled capacitors but I would use typically 0.1uF polypropylene capacitors for bypassing electrolytics. In most cases you will find that the manufacturer has already done this.

I know of no actual situations where paper capacitors are currently preferred for any technical purpose. They are, as you have observed pretty good extractors of audiphile cash.

The bypass capacitor is not there to change the value of the capacitance but to compensate for the fact that the impedance of large capacitors starts to rise at high frequencies.

Making a large cap whose impedance doesn't rise at high frequencies is pretty easy. Just everybody does it these days. The limit to this effect is the inductance of the capacitor's leads or terminals, which is moot at audio frequencies and higher frequencies relevant to audio.

I ROTFLMAO at audiophile projects where there is a little cap soldered across every power supply cap and then a few inches of wire, neatly bundled and going around corners with length-increasing square corners. The inductance of the neat wiring could easily be greater than the actual inductance of the large cap with no small cap paralleling it!

My personal belief is that using oil-filled capacitors will have no audible effect.

Hold that thought. Paper has only been used professionally as long as there wasn't a viable alternative. Viable alternatives started showing up during or right after WW2.

[Destroid]

Sorry not trying to be funny with anyone, the guy who advised me has tried this cap upgrade and says the dac does sound better.

People say a lot of things.

@john11 - I would also suggest that this operation not be performed unless you had another identical
unit to compare it to. It would even be more preferable to have three extra identical units and a technician to perform the modification. I've seen a fair share of magic upgrade ideas and even more magic re-cabling suggestions that was pretty exciting and motivating but the end result really wasn't all that magical. I, however, was one of the few lucky ones not to render a device inoperative by tinkering with it, so there's that inherent risk.

[slightly OT- another placebo thing I've dealt with was Ibanez TS808 mods, especially regarding TS9 or TS7 conversions, which was a lot of fuzzy-warm feelings and little proof.)