Unless you checked the values of all the capacitors to verify that the values are all exactly the same your not accomplishing anything other than listening to what difference capacitance makes to the circuit. Those caps have a -/+ 20 % tolerance from the printed value. There should be less than 1% difference in value to make any kind of real differential between brands. I’m sorry but this test just doesn’t answer anything because your caps are not value matched.
do the the caps have the same value , these are 10% caps .In a tone stack this can vary the frequency response with plus and minus 10 %, thats what you hear 😊
To get a real value of how different they sound you need to have the amp at or past the point of breakup. Even fully distorted. That's usually when the "bees" come out in an amp. Having the amp in overdrive emphasizes the differences in the tone values by a lot more then a clean amp! Great test to do on your amp. I know a lot of people complain about amps having a fizzy tone when cranked up and changing caps can help sometimes.
Mama is right. It was so close though. definitely won't be wasting money on expensive capacitors. Longevity and reliability seem to the the only worthwhile factors. Thanks for doing this experiment!
Pretty darn interesting comparison. I'm a ham radio operator who happens to love using the old AM mode of radio transmission as opposed to modern Single Sideband (SSB). With AM (amplitude Modulation)... sound differentiation is a big thing among us old hams. It is possible that the longer a charge remains on these capacitors (which are electro static in nature) the more similar they sounded and that relates to slightly different charging time constants. But I'm just guessin here. These are all pretty good caps you used. Thanks for the effort that went into this Prof. Dan. It was informative and illuminating. As a side note: If my dear mother in law were still alive - she wold be my number 1 "go to" for advise as well. It's nice to see a man who reveres his mom-in-law's opinion on things.
Dude! I'm getting into building tube amps and have come to the part of the process where it's time to start ordering components. Good info here and even cooler than you're just up the road from me. 🤘
Ive always felt Orange Drops have a hard unmusical top end in tweed amps. I like the Mallorys as they are inexpensive and sound pretty good. Love to hear a paper in oil.
I build and repair amps......... Unless you specifically ask me for any of these "fancy" caps, you're going to get red drops or yellow tubes......... WHY??? They have been very reliable and keep your repair affordable.
Cool comparison rig! Would really like to see another comparison on an amp with some distortion in it. Nothing crazy, just like a cranked Deluxe Reverb. I think that's where the highs would make their presence(haha) known.
I'm thinking there might have been ever-so-slight variations while the amp was warming, but as the experiment went on, it became difficult for me to notice any significant changes in the different caps. Very interesting video, Dan. Thanks for posting. Fred
I prefer the Mallory's as they bring forth more tone. The others just sounded more choked off. You can always roll off the treble, but you can't get it back, and when it sounds so muted like that, wow. I don't know what the difference in specs the Jupiter Yellow to the Red is, but the Red was certainly the worst. I would rank them like this: A, B, D, C. Thanks for setting this up!
I listened to the samples with Sony WH1000XM4 headphones (€400 new) and I could not hear much of a difference in the high res files playing in VLC. But after a few more listenings, and cheating, I have formed an opinion: A Knowing from other peoples comparisons I now recognize the sharpness of the Orange drops in A. B is nice and clear, but is also quite sharp. C I didn't like C which sounded a little muffled. D sounds nice and mellow. A and B are very similar, C sucks, and D is just nice. But after learnimg more, I don’t want to damage my amplifier and drivers so I m going for regular poly caps.
Did you measure capacitance and verify they were close in value? Caps have huge uncertainty. If you didn’t check, you are likely just listening to difference in capacitance. Which is interesting, but not repeatable or something someone can expect from buying a given brand. Thanks for the video tho, fun to watch :)
The only way to do this is with a loop so the performance is exactly the same and then do null tests where you invert the polarity of one of the recordings the play them back together to hear ONLY the differences. The plain fact is there is only minimal differences and you’re experiencing the placebo effect. bc you expect a difference you hear a difference. Now go change your speakers if you want your amp to sound different.
Other than the fact that there was virtually no difference, I am going to say that I, being a golden ear type of asshole could hear the difference. There is no difference. The amp sounds great, but the caps? Nope, you are fooling yourselves. I am in fact a mastering guy. There is nothing here that matters at all. We all better start being honest or people will start believing anything...... Oops too late...
Just that the mastering guy knows how to technically measure a signal and find out if what they hear is imagination or real. It`s not called "engineer" for no reason. Audiophiles are very often completely mislead, but the anti-audiophiles are just as bad.
No-one really knows, we did'nt get to see inside the box. Maybe they were just switches wired in series and that may have been what we spent 10 mins listening to? We wanna know whats in the box next time.
RUclips compression ruins it. The volume level you have mic'd isn't coming thru. They sound the same until the sound level tails off to a lower volume. ON the First strum test.
Maybe this is asking too much, but if you have an oscilloscope or quality frequency analyzer, it would be more scientific also, as mentioned, you need to loop the exact same track again & again to be scientific. I could hear the difference on my iPhone 14 phone. Definitely, no question about it. Perhaps orange drop providing more top end “brilliance” is a good thing. I mean, guitars AND amps have tone knobs right?
There is a huge problem with the analysis. Every amp reproducing this WAV file is going to treat the music differently. So, not only are we listening to a recording from YOUR amp, we are analyzing the results with OUR amp through OUR speakers. There are way too many variables in between to say one capacitor would be better than another. And... everyone's ears hear and interpret things differently. And each of our brains like different things. There is no right or wrong. I think the bottom line is buy the most reliable and cost-effective ones that suit your needs. The Mallory have a nice form factor that fits in a lot of tight places well. And, they do the job nicely.
I'm building a 5e3 and was really wondering about the cap tone difference. Thank you guys for putting in the time for the comparison... that being said, I really cant tell a difference at all...
You will hear a difference if you build the entire amp with different capacitors and crank it up.... for sure. I build a Marshall with Jupiters and it was wrong in sound, way to 'cleanish'. Vishays MKT are my choice for Marshalls, they Sound brilliant and emphasize the roar the old ones did. Build an AB763 with Jupiters and it sounds fabulous. Cranked it up and was instantly in SRV's region with the help of a Strat. There this cleanish Sound works. Each brand will slightly emphasize or understate specific frequencies. Cranked this effect gets bigger. Not to mention power supply filter capacitors, which will also color the sound in a way. (Their value and even their brand, trust me) Ceramic vs. Silver Mica is also audible
Listening through nice headphones I can hear no difference. From now on any boutique amp company touting that caps make a difference is pure snake oil. There are other ways to make an amp sound different. Tubes and speakers.
I would love to see some white noise applied and some frequency analysis of the sound without speaker. Maybe you could even do it without a tube amp...
Here's a big tip. Don't use the cheap silver micas for your treble caps. Stick to MODERN ceramic. Way better for the high end...Especially in Fender-like circuits
So true. Stopped using them in my new builds as half of them leak DC. Got scratchy pot and noise in tone stack?-cleaning the pot didn't help-look? look for a failed silver mica and replace with ceramic! Retire that old crappy stuff already...
Might be a small difference on an edge of breakup or clean tone, but once you start applying gain, the difference is not as subtle...try it on a JCM 800
I think I preferred C or D, depending on the content. A was too snappy / bright and B was too scooped. That said, either of those could be used for voicing. Curious what the speaker was (sorry if I missed it) and why you didn't choose a more dynamic and cleaner sounding amp design as the test subject? A Twin Reverb with D130s would show it all.
Great video, I've been wondering about this myself for some time. Appreciate you doing it right! Definitely a small difference, but a difference nonetheless. Didn't like A as much, liked the other 3 fine.
Cool video, soon my tech will build a JCM 800 for me and I currently am searching for what components to use. I'd like to hear the same comparison with some distorted tones.
Have your tech buy whatever quality parts he needs cuz it makes no difference. The minor differences come from nebulous differences in the capacitors like their internal resistance and inductance. If they’d done a null test they’d have found the differences between caps to be so minimal as to be w/in the margins of error. So just buy quality caps from a reputable source and you’ll be fine. You do want to make sure your caps are oriented correctly also. Even non-polar caps have a preferred direction in tube circuits
Its called tolerances. If both caps have a 10% tolerance then the two could sound 20% different. If they all had the same capacitance then I'm sure they'll sound the same.
You are not wrong (as a rule) but don't discount the effect different dielectric material can have on two capacitors with the exact same value. ESR also plays a big factor.
@@cgavin1 It's the mostly the difference in ESR we're hearing as well as it's self inductive properties. Large sized caps like Orange Drops are built up of multiple capacitive elements wired together in parallel cutting the total ESR and self induction. The way modern film cap manufacturers compensate for these losses is keeping the physical size of the cap as small as possible, a particularly important point in high frequency applications. To me, the most balanced sounding film caps are WIMAs. They have a good high end content without getting as harsh as Orange Drops in some designs. A good cheat if you want to mimic the high end response of an Orange Drop with a cheap film cap is bypassing it with a small value ceramic cap; ceramic caps have a near zero ESR. It's only a 2-3 picofarad difference but for guitar amp purposes you'd be hard pressed to hear any difference a between a 47p cap and 120p cap.
I found a happy compromise for a Stratocsster tone control; 1x .022uf mullard and a Wima .01 in parallel, the treble is clean and not harsh, rings and sustains and the bass end is tight and clear. I discovered a great tone by accident.
@@noel3422Well, I don't drink alcohol. I do have 50+ yrs working on electronics. To keep it short, it's the rating not the material that makes caps produce a diff. tone. I hear diff's of pico farads. that's way within the 5-10% tolerance for even good caps. .022 + 10% & .022 - 10%, will sound diff. No current EVER actually passes thru a cap, AC or DC. Electrons cannot pass thru the dielectric. If ANY current passed thru it's called a shorted cap. Caps charge and dis-charge. How fast determines freq. How much current is stored then released from and into the circuit to which they are connected.
What would be interesting is 1-Hook the capacitors to a bridge and see if tolerances come into play 2-Use a function generator with the capacitor and a resistor in series and see if the roll off varies on frequency.
So you have two different caps , the orange drops which are the same as the old brown dog turd caps found in many amps and the mallory 150 caps and the rebranded same caps for more money.
I believe there are subtle differences in the 4 capacitors. Albeit negligible. However, I believe that even 4 of the same value and brand of capacitor from different batches will each sound subtly different as well, perhaps even in a similar manner as this. As long as the physical construction and value is correct the brand (or color) is negligible.
Some capacitors are rated with a 20% tolerance. if you test with a capacitor of -20% vs +20%, you will definitely here a difference. there should be no difference if both are exact same value. I believe those are the differences you are hearing. before doing this sort of test, each capacitor's value must be tested for accuracy otherwise the test is meaningless, "Electronics hobbyist for 50+ years"
I was hearing much more difference during live play than the reamp, and not because different attack with the pick and variations of play, but as much as it seems the reamp was biased like not matching the same output resistor as the guitar pickups high output impedance. Or maybe the quality of converters during reccording, I don't know exactly but it seems to me a lot of details in the sound went out during reamping. Also not playing the same parts like chords versus solo must be in cause. Otherwise the Jupiter red is far superior than the others with much more details in the high end of the spectrum, better dynamics and sounds more open with air. the yellow Jupiter comes close behind but mallory and orange drop are not in the same competition. I'm listening through HD560S headphone L30 topping amp, fx audio pre-1 ge5654 tubes, d10S dac, realphones at around 115dB SPL peak. Before this setup I was on my pc headphone amp with the akg K702 and prefered the Jupiter yellow, because it was compensating for too much highs in my system. I mean one needs to have decent gear to hear subtleties which are not so subtle once at this level of definition. I react to comments stating all caps sound the same, this is very very wrong.
Maybe .2% of a difference to the overall tone. It may seem bigger in person but by the time it goes through a recording chain and comes out the other end of RUclips the difference is negligible. Put it in a mix with a live band and I doubt anyone could ever tell.
Interestingly, in a similar vein to your mother(-in law?)'s ears: my left ear had a muscle twitch which decreased on the chopped intro to "Jingle Bell Rock" on both C and D. It was repeatable. Really cool of you to set up this experiment, and a special thanks to ETSU and some East Tennesseeans, y'all- that's my neck of the woods! Grew up in J.C. and Kingsport.
Why wasn't the test on the amp breaking up/ cranked? Caps do sound different! The guitarist was right...it went from highest to darker sounding...especially with the jingle bell loop!
A useful review as (1) the recording uses a properly placed SM57 Mic. and (2) listening to the downloaded mp3s with headphone allows a real comparison. Also thanks to ProfessorDan for making a realistic "apples to apples" comparison box with the 4 capacitor types. Clearly the Orange Drop 715/716 are the inferior cap here unless one wants a slightly thinner tone and a strident top end. While I think the Jupiter Round slightly came out on top, the Mallory 150 - at 1/7 the price - is very close and works. The Jupiter yellow being polyester film like the Mallroy150 is good but not quite there. How the capacitors will sound with more signal cranked into them would have been useful, to hear them with the amp well into clipping.
They sound different but the difference is very subtile. I used good headphones to hear it. Your mother in law is right. A was the most bright. D was the lessest bright. So it really was A, B, C, D from brightest to less brightest sound. But not only less bright, in my ears but also more dynamic. The single notes were more harmonic and better seperated from each other. Esspecially in the christmas song. Is the difference enough to pay x times the price of the orange drop? I dont know. Maybe you fooled us and only played the same sound each time with same capacitors and look how stupid we are ;)
Hello, i hear a quite bothering "clip" at each start of the picking short loop (8:18). This peaking clip is on B,C,D but not on A. My headphones (sony MDR7506) may be old or too bright, but the clip clearly dissapears on A so the difference should be valid and noticable (?) on any gear, cliping or not cliping. A bit shame that we don't hear the A position longer on this short loop session, only 1 bar at 8:18 then just 1 bar at the end. Then we are not shure if this clip really dissapears on A or if that is accidentaly due to position switching.. Thank's for sharing experience
Pretty much the end of that argument if momma said….. Backs up what I have found over the years, like to have had some vintage blue molded caps into that mix, what values are you using? I could lend you some, if round two of this is being done, they are rare and expensive though , so would need them back, no esr or leakage at rated voltage have I ever found on a old blue molded cap, drift is very negligible, they are a special cap, imo, I have messed with clones for awhile now, like 40 plus years, and only blackface Circuits, I found the same a momma, orange drops are harsh, I stopped using them after a few amps, and used Mallory , that lead to using only vintage blue molded caps, after awhile, I build very small volume, that makes that possible, many hours with bode plots, study of wave forms in a daw, listening to what a sound engineer thought, had your mom been around it sure whole have saved me a ton of time…..lol Love the video man, thank you for posting it.
Hello you Gents have done a great job. At this end the difference is more obvious when you play higher up the neck.Maybe do a similar test on one of the Fender Re-issue amps ? Listen to your Mother , she has super hearing! Thanks.
Its not the sound of a capacitor but how each cap treats the small ac signal passed through it, but now days you can buy 20 different caps that have the same properties and different names, so caps no longer matter, you get a cap use a cap and hope for the best.
I agree, the capacitors should be measured for value to understand any differences there. I have a HP 4274A Multi Frequency LCR meter. Send me the caps and I'll measure them for free for you.
This is really interesting. And I feel like I could hear differences, but! how much are each of our experiences different because of how we are listening? Headphones, bluetooth, speaker, etc. how are the rest of you experiencing it compared to how I am.
Listened on monitors, can't hear much of a difference. Nothing that couldn't be dialed in or out with the amp's eq section or the guitar's tone control IMHO.
interesting..! I hear some suddle diferences in the attack specificly, in tone too, D sounds the most round, and A and B sond more attacky, and C and D sound more rounded off in general. D the most smooth sounding. Thanks for this! It's suddle but it's there
I thought the same as your mother in law and generally i dont care if it is from the caps or the speakers, i like some sparkle but dont want earbleed and that was difference in the caps but i just listened to it on my cell. Nice video.
Which cap was which? I liked B the best. I’ve watched the video twice and missed which cap was A, B, C, and D. Unless you guys didn’t mention. Forgive me if I missed it.
They say "a" and "d" around 10:20 but show all of them at 13:20 a) Sprague 716P “Orange Drop” (polypropylene and film) b) Jupiter Yellow Vintage Tone (polyester and aluminum foil) c) Jupiter Red Astron (polyester and tin foil) d) Mallory 150 (metalized polyester)
It is very hard to believe that there is (or could be) any objective difference. The effects introduced by capacitors can be frequency response (if capacitance is different) and non-linear distortion (if the old capacitor does not have soldered contact of foil to terminals). The capacitance is capacitance... And non-linear distortion in capacitors is surely smaller than that of the speaker's. It is great if the seller manages to sell you for $$$$ something placebo that costs $. That is called marketing...
Unfortunately, your test is flawed. May I make a few suggestions. I have done similar test here over the years and learned, people often have what they think is the best cap, tube, wire, audio tube, transistor/FET etc but here is a definitive test anyone can try. Firstly, chose a group of at least 4 to 5 people, around the same age in each group. Something someone in their 20's hears may be different than someone in their 50's and higher. 1) have a single source, CD, Tape, but not someone playing live 2) give your participants a sheet of paper and pencil 3) don't let the participants see what you are or are not selecting. 4) make the test simple, no more than 3 caps, tubes, wires etc at a time. 5) play your source through the various test items at least 5 time each. 6) have your participants write down what they THOUGHT they were listening to and ask for comments like, rich, dull, noisy, airy, etc. 7) compare your test results against what the participants claimed were better or worse. 9) repeat the same test with at least 3 groups of people. I have done this double blind test numerous times and with so called golden ear audiophiles with results all over the spectrum from each person. I once did this test with a $10k turntable and a $127 table. Both tables were using the same cartridge type, same, preamp amp, wires and speakers. Even repeating the test 3 times with 3 groups of people, the accuracy was ALWAYS below 30% got it right except for different types of "audio cables" vs lamp cord and the results were less than 20% got it right. Unfortunately, we are all guilty of being biased from what others tell us or what we read in magazines and online is even worse. I am guilty too of my own biases and would do as bad as those I have tested. The biggest area of snake oil and BS is in the area of audio. Does not matter if it's guitar amps, HI Fi systems etc. Having written this, I fully agree a sound system designed well with decent components will sound better than something which is of much lesser quality. Try this test and amuse yourself and your friends.
As an audio-engineer I find it funny how both audiophiles and "anti-audiophiles" always talk about this stuff as if you couldn`t simply measure it. If you want to know if there is a difference, nulltest it. Simple as that. Yes, there is a lot of BS in the field of audio, but I think the food-industry is way worse. Also, there is also the other way around: the utmost majority of people cannot hear compression, even if you shove them 18dB of gain-reduction in their face. Because, as you said, the human hearing is way too subjective, and it`s not just personaly bias via knowledge, its also because your brain processes sound so hard that literally the colour of the wall you are looking at the time you listen to something will change your perception of what you hear. So while I agree that your methodical approach of testing is better than that of the video, it still gives no meaningful results. As said, that is what nulltests are for.
The other Fender amp may have an entire chain of Orange Drops in its signal path. It would be interesting to hear the polyester 225P series Orange Drops.
Those are the only orange drops people recommend too! Mallory 150's in mine and far more important in the AB763 signal chain are the low value ceramic coupling caps. The channel treble and especially the reverb mixer can be smooth as butter ice-pick city. The Phase Inverter coupling cap too. Probably the single most important cap in the entire circuit for filtering frequencies.
@@cgavin1 a blackface does not have ceramic coupling caps….. Nope…..they are blue molded coupling caps and they are vital to the vintage blackface sound. Filter circuit caps are not coupling caps, you have some things mixed up here.
If the VALUES are the same, the caps SOUND the same. You can prove this for yourself. Find caps that are different types but measure to exactly the same value and you'll never hear the difference. Find caps that are the same type but different values, and you WILL hear the difference.
No discernible difference. If you switched them blind I challenge anyone to hear the switching... With the caveat that this it RUclips. On the other hand most people who do music do it on RUclips these days, so...
It's taking a while for the hi-res video to process. It should clear up in a little while. You can check out the full resolution audio files at www.dansmusiconline.com/caps.
Why r u conducting this test??? Rightly pointed out ,no values mentioned, .Better quality ones r within specied ratings..................in any case there is induced distortion in guitar amps . Even the play back amps don't have any difference unless v bad quality.....
The capacitance of the alligator clip cables will have changed the values away from stock, but they were a constant throughout the test so there’s still some relevance to the results.
You would really ned to do a double blind exact volume loop etc no visual i d of any kind. Its not as definitive as you think. I sat here with eyes closed and maybe....maybe heard a difference with this amp
Unless you checked the values of all the capacitors to verify that the values are all exactly the same your not accomplishing anything other than listening to what difference capacitance makes to the circuit. Those caps have a -/+ 20 % tolerance from the printed value. There should be less than 1% difference in value to make any kind of real differential between brands. I’m sorry but this test just doesn’t answer anything because your caps are not value matched.
do the the caps have the same value , these are 10% caps .In a tone stack this can vary the frequency response with plus and minus 10 %, thats what you hear 😊
Did you measure the cap values? Tolerance is the major difference cap to cap.
i was wondering the same thing.
To get a real value of how different they sound you need to have the amp at or past the point of breakup. Even fully distorted. That's usually when the "bees" come out in an amp. Having the amp in overdrive emphasizes the differences in the tone values by a lot more then a clean amp! Great test to do on your amp. I know a lot of people complain about amps having a fizzy tone when cranked up and changing caps can help sometimes.
these caps would have to be metered for exact value, I agree with the comment 10 percent plus /minus will vary the frequency response
Mama is right. It was so close though. definitely won't be wasting money on expensive capacitors. Longevity and reliability seem to the the only worthwhile factors. Thanks for doing this experiment!
Pretty darn interesting comparison. I'm a ham radio operator who happens to love using the old AM mode of radio transmission as opposed to modern Single Sideband (SSB). With AM (amplitude Modulation)... sound differentiation is a big thing among us old hams. It is possible that the longer a charge remains on these capacitors (which are electro static in nature) the more similar they sounded and that relates to slightly different charging time constants. But I'm just guessin here. These are all pretty good caps you used. Thanks for the effort that went into this Prof. Dan. It was informative and illuminating. As a side note: If my dear mother in law were still alive - she wold be my number 1 "go to" for advise as well. It's nice to see a man who reveres his mom-in-law's opinion on things.
Dude! I'm getting into building tube amps and have come to the part of the process where it's time to start ordering components. Good info here and even cooler than you're just up the road from me. 🤘
I would love to have the reveal at the end be that there were only Vishay ceramics in the box and the switches did nothing.
Ive always felt Orange Drops have a hard unmusical top end in tweed amps. I like the Mallorys as they are inexpensive and sound pretty good. Love to hear a paper in oil.
I build and repair amps......... Unless you specifically ask me for any of these "fancy" caps, you're going to get red drops or yellow tubes......... WHY??? They have been very reliable and keep your repair affordable.
Could you explain why no ceramics?
Cool comparison rig! Would really like to see another comparison on an amp with some distortion in it. Nothing crazy, just like a cranked Deluxe Reverb. I think that's where the highs would make their presence(haha) known.
I'm thinking there might have been ever-so-slight variations while the amp was warming, but as the experiment went on, it became difficult for me to notice any significant changes in the different caps. Very interesting video, Dan. Thanks for posting. Fred
I prefer the Mallory's as they bring forth more tone. The others just sounded more choked off. You can always roll off the treble, but you can't get it back, and when it sounds so muted like that, wow. I don't know what the difference in specs the Jupiter Yellow to the Red is, but the Red was certainly the worst. I would rank them like this: A, B, D, C. Thanks for setting this up!
From A to D… more “girth”. My ear likes B. 👍🏻
Same….
I listened to the samples with Sony WH1000XM4 headphones (€400 new) and I could not hear much of a difference in the high res files playing in VLC. But after a few more listenings, and cheating, I have formed an opinion:
A Knowing from other peoples comparisons I now recognize the sharpness of the Orange drops in A.
B is nice and clear, but is also quite sharp.
C I didn't like C which sounded a little muffled.
D sounds nice and mellow.
A and B are very similar, C sucks, and D is just nice.
But after learnimg more, I don’t want to damage my amplifier and drivers so I m going for regular poly caps.
I didn't know capacitors had a sound🤯
Oh my !
Did you measure capacitance and verify they were close in value? Caps have huge uncertainty. If you didn’t check, you are likely just listening to difference in capacitance. Which is interesting, but not repeatable or something someone can expect from buying a given brand. Thanks for the video tho, fun to watch :)
The only way to do this is with a loop so the performance is exactly the same and then do null tests where you invert the polarity of one of the recordings the play them back together to hear ONLY the differences. The plain fact is there is only minimal differences and you’re experiencing the placebo effect. bc you expect a difference you hear a difference. Now go change your speakers if you want your amp to sound different.
It is clear, even on RUclips, A is harsh….you can’t hear that dude? Just wow.
@@chippsterstephens6800 you choose to comment this thinking your opinion on the matter counts more than an actual scientific test. Wow. Just wow.
Other than the fact that there was virtually no difference, I am going to say that I, being a golden ear type of asshole could hear the difference.
There is no difference. The amp sounds great, but the caps? Nope, you are fooling yourselves. I am in fact a mastering guy. There is nothing here that matters at all. We all better start being honest or people will start believing anything......
Oops too late...
Just that the mastering guy knows how to technically measure a signal and find out if what they hear is imagination or real. It`s not called "engineer" for no reason. Audiophiles are very often completely mislead, but the anti-audiophiles are just as bad.
No-one really knows, we did'nt get to see inside the box. Maybe they were just switches wired in series and that may have been what we spent 10 mins listening to? We wanna know whats in the box next time.
I agree with Mother, if it hurts your ears scrap it. Use the ones that make the listener and player happy. More tests please!
RUclips compression ruins it. The volume level you have mic'd isn't coming thru. They sound the same until the sound level tails off to a lower volume. ON the First strum test.
Maybe this is asking too much, but if you have an oscilloscope or quality frequency analyzer, it would be more scientific also, as mentioned, you need to loop the exact same track again & again to be scientific. I could hear the difference on my iPhone 14 phone. Definitely, no question about it. Perhaps orange drop providing more top end “brilliance” is a good thing. I mean, guitars AND amps have tone knobs right?
I would have to change the capacitors in my phone to hear a difference !
There is a huge problem with the analysis. Every amp reproducing this WAV file is going to treat the music differently. So, not only are we listening to a recording from YOUR amp, we are analyzing the results with OUR amp through OUR speakers. There are way too many variables in between to say one capacitor would be better than another. And... everyone's ears hear and interpret things differently. And each of our brains like different things. There is no right or wrong. I think the bottom line is buy the most reliable and cost-effective ones that suit your needs. The Mallory have a nice form factor that fits in a lot of tight places well. And, they do the job nicely.
I'm building a 5e3 and was really wondering about the cap tone difference. Thank you guys for putting in the time for the comparison... that being said, I really cant tell a difference at all...
You will hear a difference if you build the entire amp with different capacitors and crank it up.... for sure. I build a Marshall with Jupiters and it was wrong in sound, way to 'cleanish'. Vishays MKT are my choice for Marshalls, they Sound brilliant and emphasize the roar the old ones did.
Build an AB763 with Jupiters and it sounds fabulous. Cranked it up and was instantly in SRV's region with the help of a Strat. There this cleanish Sound works.
Each brand will slightly emphasize or understate specific frequencies. Cranked this effect gets bigger. Not to mention power supply filter capacitors, which will also color the sound in a way. (Their value and even their brand, trust me)
Ceramic vs. Silver Mica is also audible
Listening through nice headphones I can hear no difference. From now on any boutique amp company touting that caps make a difference is pure snake oil. There are other ways to make an amp sound different. Tubes and speakers.
Suggest using a noise source instead of the variable guitar player. The noise source is repeatable.
I prefer the flux capacitor
There like 1.21 jigawatts.
@@qua7771 what the hell is a jigawatt
@@johnb5258 LOL. Damn, Marty!
Oh, I agree. Those people out on the dance floor just won't put up with that "kind of difference". Come on guys, give it a rest..............
The audio here shows there is zero difference. But playing it in person may reveal subtle differences.
I would love to see some white noise applied and some frequency analysis of the sound without speaker. Maybe you could even do it without a tube amp...
Here's a big tip. Don't use the cheap silver micas for your treble caps. Stick to MODERN ceramic. Way better for the high end...Especially in Fender-like circuits
So true. Stopped using them in my new builds as half of them leak DC. Got scratchy pot and noise in tone stack?-cleaning the pot didn't help-look? look for a failed silver mica and replace with ceramic! Retire that old crappy stuff already...
Or better, take electronics class before making conclusions...😃
There is no difference when playing single notes but it's very different when playing a triad.
Depends on the circuit but caps do make a difference, sometimes its very subtle but i have changed caps and distortion even measured different.
What is B and C?
Might be a small difference on an edge of breakup or clean tone, but once you start applying gain, the difference is not as subtle...try it on a JCM 800
I think I preferred C or D, depending on the content. A was too snappy / bright and B was too scooped. That said, either of those could be used for voicing. Curious what the speaker was (sorry if I missed it) and why you didn't choose a more dynamic and cleaner sounding amp design as the test subject? A Twin Reverb with D130s would show it all.
Great video, I've been wondering about this myself for some time. Appreciate you doing it right! Definitely a small difference, but a difference nonetheless. Didn't like A as much, liked the other 3 fine.
Cool video, soon my tech will build a JCM 800 for me and I currently am searching for what components to use. I'd like to hear the same comparison with some distorted tones.
Have your tech buy whatever quality parts he needs cuz it makes no difference. The minor differences come from nebulous differences in the capacitors like their internal resistance and inductance. If they’d done a null test they’d have found the differences between caps to be so minimal as to be w/in the margins of error. So just buy quality caps from a reputable source and you’ll be fine. You do want to make sure your caps are oriented correctly also. Even non-polar caps have a preferred direction in tube circuits
ruclips.net/video/BnR_DLd1PDI/видео.html
Its called tolerances. If both caps have a 10% tolerance then the two could sound 20% different. If they all had the same capacitance then I'm sure they'll sound the same.
You are not wrong (as a rule) but don't discount the effect different dielectric material can have on two capacitors with the exact same value. ESR also plays a big factor.
@@cgavin1 It's the mostly the difference in ESR we're hearing as well as it's self inductive properties. Large sized caps like Orange Drops are built up of multiple capacitive elements wired together in parallel cutting the total ESR and self induction. The way modern film cap manufacturers compensate for these losses is keeping the physical size of the cap as small as possible, a particularly important point in high frequency applications. To me, the most balanced sounding film caps are WIMAs. They have a good high end content without getting as harsh as Orange Drops in some designs. A good cheat if you want to mimic the high end response of an Orange Drop with a cheap film cap is bypassing it with a small value ceramic cap; ceramic caps have a near zero ESR. It's only a 2-3 picofarad difference but for guitar amp purposes you'd be hard pressed to hear any difference a between a 47p cap and 120p cap.
I found a happy compromise for a Stratocsster tone control; 1x .022uf mullard and a Wima .01 in parallel, the treble is clean and not harsh, rings and sustains and the bass end is tight and clear. I discovered a great tone by accident.
It's hard cause they sound the SAME!. Ever heard of expectation bias or P L A C E B O................
Yes I have, what is your favorite beer? Do you brew your own? Have you tried them all? Keep an opened mind untill you answered yes to both.
@@noel3422Well, I don't drink alcohol. I do have 50+ yrs working on electronics. To keep it short, it's the rating not the material that makes caps produce a diff. tone. I hear diff's of pico farads. that's way within the 5-10% tolerance for even good caps. .022 + 10% & .022 - 10%, will sound diff. No current EVER actually passes thru a cap, AC or DC. Electrons cannot pass thru the dielectric. If ANY current passed thru it's called a shorted cap. Caps charge and dis-charge. How fast determines freq. How much current is stored then released from and into the circuit to which they are connected.
What would be interesting is 1-Hook the capacitors to a bridge and see if tolerances come into play 2-Use a function generator with the capacitor and a resistor in series and see if the roll off varies on frequency.
So you have two different caps , the orange drops which are the same as the old brown dog turd caps found in many amps and the mallory 150 caps and the rebranded same caps for more money.
I believe there are subtle differences in the 4 capacitors. Albeit negligible.
However, I believe that even 4 of the same value and brand of capacitor from different batches will each sound subtly different as well, perhaps even in a similar manner as this. As long as the physical construction and value is correct the brand (or color) is negligible.
Some capacitors are rated with a 20% tolerance. if you test with a capacitor of -20% vs +20%, you will definitely here a difference. there should be no difference if both are exact same value.
I believe those are the differences you are hearing. before doing this sort of test, each capacitor's value must be tested for accuracy otherwise the test is meaningless, "Electronics hobbyist for 50+ years"
I was hearing much more difference during live play than the reamp, and not because different attack with the pick and variations of play, but as much as it seems the reamp was biased like not matching the same output resistor as the guitar pickups high output impedance. Or maybe the quality of converters during reccording, I don't know exactly but it seems to me a lot of details in the sound went out during reamping. Also not playing the same parts like chords versus solo must be in cause. Otherwise the Jupiter red is far superior than the others with much more details in the high end of the spectrum, better dynamics and sounds more open with air. the yellow Jupiter comes close behind but mallory and orange drop are not in the same competition.
I'm listening through HD560S headphone L30 topping amp, fx audio pre-1 ge5654 tubes, d10S dac, realphones at around 115dB SPL peak.
Before this setup I was on my pc headphone amp with the akg K702 and prefered the Jupiter yellow, because it was compensating for too much highs in my system.
I mean one needs to have decent gear to hear subtleties which are not so subtle once at this level of definition.
I react to comments stating all caps sound the same, this is very very wrong.
Maybe .2% of a difference to the overall tone. It may seem bigger in person but by the time it goes through a recording chain and comes out the other end of RUclips the difference is negligible. Put it in a mix with a live band and I doubt anyone could ever tell.
really excellent video! Thanks. I've been debating which capacitors to put in my '67 Bassman, this video helps me exactly on the nose. cheers
Interestingly, in a similar vein to your mother(-in law?)'s ears: my left ear had a muscle twitch which decreased on the chopped intro to "Jingle Bell Rock" on both C and D. It was repeatable. Really cool of you to set up this experiment, and a special thanks to ETSU and some East Tennesseeans, y'all- that's my neck of the woods! Grew up in J.C. and Kingsport.
Why wasn't the test on the amp breaking up/ cranked? Caps do sound different! The guitarist was right...it went from highest to darker sounding...especially with the jingle bell loop!
A useful review as (1) the recording uses a properly placed SM57 Mic. and (2) listening to the downloaded mp3s with headphone allows a real comparison. Also thanks to ProfessorDan for making a realistic "apples to apples" comparison box with the 4 capacitor types.
Clearly the Orange Drop 715/716 are the inferior cap here unless one wants a slightly thinner tone and a strident top end. While I think the Jupiter Round slightly came out on top, the Mallory 150 - at 1/7 the price - is very close and works. The Jupiter yellow being polyester film like the Mallroy150 is good but not quite there.
How the capacitors will sound with more signal cranked into them would have been useful, to hear them with the amp well into clipping.
They sound different but the difference is very subtile. I used good headphones to hear it. Your mother in law is right. A was the most bright. D was the lessest bright. So it really was A, B, C, D from brightest to less brightest sound. But not only less bright, in my ears but also more dynamic. The single notes were more harmonic and better seperated from each other. Esspecially in the christmas song. Is the difference enough to pay x times the price of the orange drop? I dont know.
Maybe you fooled us and only played the same sound each time with same capacitors and look how stupid we are ;)
Hello, i hear a quite bothering "clip" at each start of the picking short loop (8:18). This peaking clip is on B,C,D but not on A. My headphones (sony MDR7506) may be old or too bright, but the clip clearly dissapears on A so the difference should be valid and noticable (?) on any gear, cliping or not cliping.
A bit shame that we don't hear the A position longer on this short loop session, only 1 bar at 8:18 then just 1 bar at the end. Then we are not shure if this clip really dissapears on A or if that is accidentaly due to position switching..
Thank's for sharing experience
Pretty much the end of that argument if momma said…..
Backs up what I have found over the years, like to have had some vintage blue molded caps into that mix, what values are you using? I could lend you some, if round two of this is being done, they are rare and expensive though , so would need them back, no esr or leakage at rated voltage have I ever found on a old blue molded cap, drift is very negligible, they are a special cap, imo, I have messed with clones for awhile now, like 40 plus years, and only blackface Circuits, I found the same a momma, orange drops are harsh, I stopped using them after a few amps, and used Mallory , that lead to using only vintage blue molded caps, after awhile, I build very small volume, that makes that possible, many hours with bode plots, study of wave forms in a daw, listening to what a sound engineer thought, had your mom been around it sure whole have saved me a ton of time…..lol
Love the video man, thank you for posting it.
Hello you Gents have done a great job. At this end the difference is more obvious when you play higher up the neck.Maybe do a similar test on one of the Fender Re-issue amps ? Listen to your Mother , she has super hearing! Thanks.
Its not the sound of a capacitor but how each cap treats the small ac signal passed through it, but now days you can buy 20 different caps that have the same properties and different names, so caps no longer matter, you get a cap use a cap and hope for the best.
I agree, the capacitors should be measured for value to understand any differences there. I have a HP 4274A Multi Frequency LCR meter. Send me the caps and I'll measure them for free for you.
This is really interesting. And I feel like I could hear differences, but! how much are each of our experiences different because of how we are listening? Headphones, bluetooth, speaker, etc. how are the rest of you experiencing it compared to how I am.
Listened on monitors, can't hear much of a difference. Nothing that couldn't be dialed in or out with the amp's eq section or the guitar's tone control IMHO.
interesting..! I hear some suddle diferences in the attack specificly, in tone too, D sounds the most round, and A and B sond more attacky, and C and D sound more rounded off in general. D the most smooth sounding. Thanks for this! It's suddle but it's there
Usually I'm fairly good at these, but here I hear no difference with shure in-ears. Maybe I'll try with monitors or proper headphones.
Did they ever tell what A - D were? I skipped around a bit. I thought A would be the Orange Drops
Great comparison, done about as sciencey as possible. I'm wondering if a higher gain test would show more difference?
I thought the same as your mother in law and generally i dont care if it is from the caps or the speakers, i like some sparkle but dont want earbleed and that was difference in the caps but i just listened to it on my cell. Nice video.
Si può sapere a cosa corrispondono correttamente nelle lettere i condensatori?
Part II!!!!! Awesome job guys! Great info and enjoyable.
Yeah: B is tighter and darker treble; D has a punchy thump with brighter treble. Cool 'science experiment.' Valuable work. Thanks : D
Thanks for watching!
No difference on back to back plays.
where are those capacitors, Tone stack or coupling? it sound like the difference is n tolerances, put some 1 cent no brand Chinese in there too.
C has more high frequency harmonics and D has more reverb - to me
Great comparison! Please use a dirt or fuzz pedal also next time :)
Which cap was which? I liked B the best. I’ve watched the video twice and missed which cap was A, B, C, and D. Unless you guys didn’t mention. Forgive me if I missed it.
They say "a" and "d" around 10:20 but show all of them at 13:20
a) Sprague 716P “Orange Drop” (polypropylene and film)
b) Jupiter Yellow Vintage Tone (polyester and aluminum foil)
c) Jupiter Red Astron (polyester and tin foil)
d) Mallory 150 (metalized polyester)
It is very hard to believe that there is (or could be) any objective difference. The effects introduced by capacitors can be frequency response (if capacitance is different) and non-linear distortion (if the old capacitor does not have soldered contact of foil to terminals). The capacitance is capacitance... And non-linear distortion in capacitors is surely smaller than that of the speaker's. It is great if the seller manages to sell you for $$$$ something placebo that costs $. That is called marketing...
You have a point, it's at the top of the hat you are wearing which is why this conversation keeps regurgitating.
Unfortunately, your test is flawed. May I make a few suggestions.
I have done similar test here over the years and learned, people often have what they think is the best cap, tube, wire, audio tube, transistor/FET etc but here is a definitive test anyone can try.
Firstly, chose a group of at least 4 to 5 people, around the same age in each group. Something someone in their 20's hears may be different than someone in their 50's and higher.
1) have a single source, CD, Tape, but not someone playing live
2) give your participants a sheet of paper and pencil
3) don't let the participants see what you are or are not selecting.
4) make the test simple, no more than 3 caps, tubes, wires etc at a time.
5) play your source through the various test items at least 5 time each.
6) have your participants write down what they THOUGHT they were listening to and ask for comments like, rich, dull, noisy, airy, etc.
7) compare your test results against what the participants claimed were better or worse.
9) repeat the same test with at least 3 groups of people.
I have done this double blind test numerous times and with so called golden ear audiophiles with results all over the spectrum from each person.
I once did this test with a $10k turntable and a $127 table. Both tables were using the same cartridge type, same, preamp amp, wires and speakers. Even repeating the test 3 times with 3 groups of people, the accuracy was ALWAYS below 30% got it right except for different types of "audio cables" vs lamp cord and the results were less than 20% got it right.
Unfortunately, we are all guilty of being biased from what others tell us or what we read in magazines and online is even worse.
I am guilty too of my own biases and would do as bad as those I have tested.
The biggest area of snake oil and BS is in the area of audio. Does not matter if it's guitar amps, HI Fi systems etc.
Having written this, I fully agree a sound system designed well with decent components will sound better than something which is of much lesser quality.
Try this test and amuse yourself and your friends.
As an audio-engineer I find it funny how both audiophiles and "anti-audiophiles" always talk about this stuff as if you couldn`t simply measure it. If you want to know if there is a difference, nulltest it. Simple as that. Yes, there is a lot of BS in the field of audio, but I think the food-industry is way worse. Also, there is also the other way around: the utmost majority of people cannot hear compression, even if you shove them 18dB of gain-reduction in their face. Because, as you said, the human hearing is way too subjective, and it`s not just personaly bias via knowledge, its also because your brain processes sound so hard that literally the colour of the wall you are looking at the time you listen to something will change your perception of what you hear.
So while I agree that your methodical approach of testing is better than that of the video, it still gives no meaningful results. As said, that is what nulltests are for.
there's no difference at all
Very slight difference. Perhaps comparing a Jupiter against a really cheap cap found in consumer electronics would yield a result?
I agree that cheep caps should be compared for anyone considering replacement.
If there's a difference it's negligible
I used a $2k Headphone amp and I liked D - warmer i little bit more meat on the bone -
The other Fender amp may have an entire chain of Orange Drops in its signal path. It would be interesting to hear the polyester 225P series Orange Drops.
Those are the only orange drops people recommend too!
Mallory 150's in mine and far more important in the AB763 signal chain are the low value ceramic coupling caps.
The channel treble and especially the reverb mixer can be smooth as butter ice-pick city. The Phase Inverter coupling cap too. Probably the single most important cap in the entire circuit for filtering frequencies.
@@cgavin1 a blackface does not have ceramic coupling caps…..
Nope…..they are blue molded coupling caps and they are vital to the vintage blackface sound. Filter circuit caps are not coupling caps, you have some things mixed up here.
@@chippsterstephens6800 You are quite right. I was hella drunk when I posted that. You know what I meant tho right? :)
If the VALUES are the same, the caps SOUND the same. You can prove this for yourself. Find caps that are different types but measure to exactly the same value and you'll never hear the difference. Find caps that are the same type but different values, and you WILL hear the difference.
I agree with the lady
That was fun!
I liked B?
No discernible difference. If you switched them blind I challenge anyone to hear the switching...
With the caveat that this it RUclips.
On the other hand most people who do music do it on RUclips these days, so...
Why does the whole thing sound so muffled?
It's taking a while for the hi-res video to process. It should clear up in a little while. You can check out the full resolution audio files at www.dansmusiconline.com/caps.
I got a good set of AKG K712 on and its not muffled at all.
Why r u conducting this test??? Rightly pointed out ,no values mentioned, .Better quality ones r within specied ratings..................in any case there is induced distortion in guitar amps . Even the play back amps don't have any difference unless v bad quality.....
I have headphones on, really good ones and hi end setup and i hear 0000000000000000000000 difference, nothing at all, snake oil.
time to get those ears checked
I have tinnitis and industrial hearing loss and could hear the difference and agree with his mother-in-law.
A is best to me
The capacitance of the alligator clip cables will have changed the values away from stock, but they were a constant throughout the test so there’s still some relevance to the results.
I don’t hear a difference total snake oil
Gotta be giving us the room mic on this sort of stuff dude. A single SM57 .. all we got there is an condenser mic sounds like a condenser mic.
There's a difference. If you can't hear it then you just aren't an engineer and are a guitar player lol.
Great video! I really couldn't tell. Glad you put this on tape. Was that a Harrison board?
The guitar player at least knows what kind of material to use for a cross! Thank you sir for that!!
You would really ned to do a double blind exact volume loop etc no visual i d of any kind. Its not as definitive as you think. I sat here with eyes closed and maybe....maybe heard a difference with this amp