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Capacitor log Mundorf Silver in Oil

I wished I could find a log with information on caps. I have found many saying tremendous improvement etc. but not a detailed account of what the changes have been. I have had the same speakers for many years so am very familiar with them. (25+ years) The speakers are a set of Klipsch Lascala's. They have Alnico magnets in the mids and ceramic woofers and tweeters. The front end is Linn LP12 and Linn pre amp and amp. The speaker wire is 12 gauge and new wire.

I LOVE these speakers around 1 year ago they started to sound like garbage. As many have said they are VERY sensitive to the components before them. They are also showing what I think is the effect of worn out caps.

There are many out here on these boards I know of that are using the Klipsch (heritage) with cheaper Japanese electronics because the speakers are cheap! (for what they can do) One thing I would recommend is give these speakers the best quality musical sources you can afford. There is a LOT to get out of these speakers. My other speakers are Linn speakers at around 4k new with Linn tri-wire (I think about 1k for that) and the Klipsch DESTROY them in my mind. If you like "live feel" there is nothing like them. In fact it shocks me how little speakers have improved in 30 years (or 60 years in the Khorns instance)

In fact I question Linn's theory (that they have proved many times) that the source is the most important in the Hi-Fi chain. Linn's theory is top notch source with lessor rest of gear including speakers trumps expensive speakers with lessor source. I think is right if all things are equal but Klipsch heritage are NOT equal! They make a sound and feel that most either LOVE or hate. (I am in the LOVE camp and other speakers are boring to me)

So here goes and I hope this helps guys looking at caps in the future. Keep in mind Klipsch (heritage Khorns Belle's and Lascala's especially) are likely to show the effects of crossover changes more then most.

1 The caps are 30 years old and
2 the speakers being horn driven make changes 10x times more apparent.

Someone once told me find speakers and components you like THEN start to tweak if needed. Don't tweak something you not in love with. Makes sense to me.

So sound
Record is Let it Be (Beatles)
The voices are hard almost sounds like a worn out stylus.
Treble is very hard. I Me Mine has hard sounding guitars. Symbals sound awful. Everything has a digital vs. analog comparison x50! Paul's voice not as bad as John's and George's. Voices will crack.

different lp
Trumpets sound awful. Tambourine terrible. Bass is not great seems shy (compared to normal) but the bad caps draw soooooo much attention to the broken up mid range and hard highs that are not bright if anything it seems the highs are not working up to snuff. I have went many times to speaker to make sure tweeters are even working.

All in all they sound like crap except these Klipsch have such fantastic dynamics that even when not right they are exciting!

Makes me wonder about the people who do not like them if they are hearing worn out caps and cheap electronics? Then I can see why they do not like them! If I did not know better from 25+ years of ownership that would make sense.

For the new crossover I have chosen Mundorf Silver in Oil from what I have read and can afford. I want a warm not overly detailed sound as Klipsch already has lots of detail and does not need to be "livened up" they need lush smooth sounding caps. Hope I have made the right choice?

When the crossover is in I will do a initial impression on same lp's. Right now it goes from really bad (on what may be worn vinyl) to not as bad but NOT great on great vinyl. (I know the quality of the vinyl because tested on other speakers Linn)

The new caps are Mundorf Silver in Oil and new copper foil inductors are coming. I will at the same time be rewiring the speakers to 12 guage from the lamp cord that PWK put in. PWK was a master at getting very good sound often with crap by today's standards components.

The choice of speakers would be a toss up now depending on what I am listening to. Klipsch vastly more dynamic but if the breaking up of the sound becomes to much to effect enjoyment the Linn would be a better choice on that Lp. If I could I would switch a button back and forth between speakers depending on song and how bad the break-up sound was bothering me.

volleyguy
jburidan
803 posts
 
I'm going to use 8 x 25uF ClarityCap MR caps in lieu of one 200uF Solen cap in the band-pass filter of my Tannoy 215 DMT ii crossover. I understand that this will result in lower ESR which will be audible as loudness.

Are you stating that many caps in parallel sound better? Or just louder due to lower ESR?
k2_nl
13 posts
 
It sounds better, not louder IME.

The multi parallel cap reveals more detail than the single cap, however without becoming a "detailed" cap like for instance some of the very high cost polypropylene's or the TFT V-Cap. Its sound can in particular be characterized as more natural.

This might be the result of the multi-parallel cap having a more benign resonance character, is less noisy. But if so I don't know which factor is responsible for this: other resonance frequency spectrum, smaller amplitude resonance, even lower resistance/inductance and/or something else...

The bad results with different caps used in a multi parallel cap might indicate that the resonance frequency as a result of the 1) tightness of the winding (probably a relative constant value for a line of caps produced by a manufacturer, so more or less equal with small and bigger caps of that line) and/or 2) the type of the foil is big.

I've read about low value caps having another time behaviour than high value caps and something about different memory-effect. This would result in bad sound when small and big values are combined in a multiple parallel cap. Maybe, but I haven't experienced it. No doubt there will be a (slightly) different time behaviour, but maybe the advantages of the multiple cap are big enough to compensate for this. And of course in order to prevent this one can build the multiple parallel cap up with caps of one single value, like you for instance will do with the 8 x 25 uF.

Frederik of Duelund put some attention to the multi parallel cap having more soldering joints than a single cap. I don't believe this has anything to do with it. First it is a parallel cap and not a series cap, further I know how bad soldering joints in a speaker xover sound like and it is far from natural/detailed. As I wrote earlier I once noticed a xover built by a professional manufacturer with multiple parallel VSF Duelunds. No doubt the effects I've noticed with the Obbligato's will be relevant for the Duelunds as well. Though the Duelunds will have a high dampened character by nature, reducing the resonance even further by multiple parallel caps might be rewarding with Duelunds as well.
undertow
1,033 posts
 
Jburidan
I have to say that’s a pretty ambitious experiment, so you will need 16 total Clarity MR's at 25 uF? Wow, that’s gonna run in the 3000.00 U.S. range, and if you have not seen the size of these your in for one large cabinet to house them! Probably something close to the size of a 18" tall bookshelf speaker size just to fit that many clarity MR's at 25 uF x 8 per speaker and I don't know if you could even jam in the rest of your needed crossover components without a lot more space then that.

I accidentally received some Clarity MR in the 10 uf size once and they were about the size of a small jar of jelly , so I can't imagine how much larger the 25 uF might be. Just as a warning. You might want to see what Duelund offers, maybe you could get 2, 100 uF caps to parallel for the same price, one pair each speaker and save some space, might cost a little more though.
k2_nl
13 posts
 
3000 dollar is pretty ambitious indeed!

In front of the Apogee Scintilla's midrange is a 240 uF cap. Apogee already used multi parallel caps in the mid 80's as they constructed this cap out of 24 x 10 uF polypropylene Sprague caps. The Spragues are nothing special, still the Scintilla's midrange (a 1,5 m tall 2 inch wide pure aluminium foil) is considered by many professional reviewers as one of the best they've ever heard. No doubt the good sound quality is not the result of the Sprague caps, but of the Scintilla's design (ultra-light ribbon, a special magnet array which houses both midrange and tweeters etc.). However, I would not be surprised when it turns out that the relatively cheap Spragues in front of the midribbon don't seem to affect the sound in a disappointing way as the cap is a large multi parallel cap. Maybe when Apogee's had used larger value Spragues (when available), the midrange might have lost some of its quality.

I btw will replace the Spragues by 21 x 10 uF Gold Obbligato's (size: 30x75 mm), the remaining 30 uF will be smaller value Gold Obbligato's.

In my situation size doesn't matter as I've decided to build an external xover which has several advantages (in my situation) as well.

The 10 uF Obbligato's retailprice is 25 dollar and when you order something like 50 pieces, diyhifisupply in Hong Kong will offer a discount of 50 percent. In my case all caps costed me around 700 dollar.

Of course I would have loved to have the Spragues replaced by pure copperfoil PIO caps but for the extra price so many other upgrades in my system could be made. My hope however is that one day the Chinese (Obbligato?) will decide to manufacture pure metal foil PIO's as well...
jburidan
803 posts
 
Undertow:
I got a good price courtesy of David Garretson on a custom set of 16 x 25uF ClarityCap MR caps that are being made now at the factory. I priced-out the Duelund VSF and CAST versions, and found them to be staggeringly more expensive than the MRs. Also, Tannoy chose MRs for its new flagship Kingdom Royal loudspeakers, so I see the experiment as a good bet to sound good. The crossovers will be external in large, double-decker, ebonized, oak bread boxes insie which there will be plenty of room for all the large caps and coils. And I'm using MRs throughout and, yes, they are large.
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