Audio
Note™ oil filled mylar capacitors
Peter
Qvortrup
Our
specially made mylar/oil caps have an immediacy, life,
colour, lack of harshness and evenness of dynamic behaviour
across the frequency range (or as I prefer to call it,
the harmonic envelope!), which is guaranteed to brighten
up your day! Recommended as replacements in old and
new valve amplifiers alike (and even in the odd transistor
amplifier), and essential for DIY projects.
In
line with the best environmental standards, all Audio
Note™ oil filled mylar capacitors contain only
non-toxic, biodegradable vegetable oil, the mylar dielectric
enhances longevity and sound quality, to ensure optimum
performance all round.
Why
did we move to oil filled mylar you may well ask?
When
truth be told we have been experiencing increasing problems
with the failure rate of our paper in oil capacitors
over the past 3 to 4 years and despite a major research
program into the causes of this increasing break down
rate we have really come up with a blank, which makes
me suspect that the cause has to do with subtle changes
in the chemistry of the paper, the oil or some other
key part of the caps, possibly due to new environmental
requirements imposed on the production of the paper,
who knows? Anyway, when it became obvious that we were
unable to fully establishand rectify the cause, my engineers
and I decided to give mylar a go again as the first
experiments we did with oil imperegnated mylar was not
sonically satisfactory, so this time we changed the
construction to oil filled, the materials sealing the
capacitor and the way we connect the foil ends to the
wires and voila! After some running in, the new mylar/oil
filled capacitors actually sound better in most respects
than the old paper signal caps they replace, only real
drawback in my view is that they take nearly twice as
long to run in and sound quite a bit worse than the
old paper/oil type when they are new, so there you are,
you don’t get something for nothing!
Audio
Note™ Tin Foil Signal Capacitors.
In
all our Level One amplifiers, such as the OTO Phono
Push Pull, we use the green ERO MKP metalized polyester
capacitors, these cheap and cheerful industrial capacitors
have been chosen through extensive listening tests against
practically every commonly available polypropylene,
polycarbonate, polystyrene and polyester capacitor on
the market. They are far from perfect, but from a sonic
standpoint they are purely detractive, meaning that
they lose information rather than add it (which every
polypropylene, Teflon etc. capacitor I have ever heard
does to excess).
We
used to use the Jensen made aluminium foil signal caps
in our Level 2 and Level 3 products, and although I
was never 100% happy with the sound of these (when am
I ever?), they were less flawed and thus far better
than any of the alternatives.
When
we stopped using Tobias Jensen in Denmark to make our
branded custom paper in oil capacitors about 8 years
ago and started our own production of copper foil paper
in oil (now mylar in oil) and silver/mylar signal capacitors,
we decided against reinstating the aluminium foil type
for reasons of sound and instead started exploring other
materials, such as tin foil and various composite foils.
The
resulting dry tin foil signal caps have now been on
the market for a few years, and the move away from the
copper paper in oil prompted us to introduce an oil
filling in the tin foil caps as well, since this then
makes the processes the same across the board for the
tin and the copper foil signal caps, the oil filled
tin caps do offer slightly improved sound compared to
the dry versions.
The
Audio Note™ Silver & Copper Foil Signal Capacitors.
The
new copper and silver foil signal caps are available
in a range that is specifically targetted at the single-ended
triode amplifier market, although most values will also
be usable in other types of valve amplification.
I
think the fact that the new copper foil capacitors are
considerably better sounding than anything, including
the previous Jensen-made copper signal caps, makes them
an excellent sonic value. The improvement is due to
the use of greatly improved materials, better production
methods and tighter production tolerances, plus the
fact that the new caps are encased in copper instead
of aluminium, glass or plastic.
The
silver foil capacitors also use the fine mylar film
instead of a paper in oil dielectric, we have found
this to be the best compromise between sound and reliability,
and those of you who have tried these copper encased
silver foil signal capacitors can confirm the fact that
the new Audio Note™ silver caps are better by
miles than anything else, the only possible improvement
over the Audio Note™ silver signal capacitor is
an interstage transformer, which removes the need for
a coupling cap altogether!
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