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speaker capacitors-----leave alone or does it open pandora's box ?

opened up my speakers and noticed that they use Audyn capacitors.        while the speakers sound good, are there better capacitors out there ? and if yes, could these be changed out and if they were, what effect does it have on the sound 


wondering also could  better drivers be bought  for the speakers ?
toyo18
erik_squires
16,726 posts
 
@rwdawson - 

For parallels in cars, you cannot take a Yugo, put fancy tires on it and make it a Maserati, but there are certainly a number of performance tweaks available for most cars. 

There's also an issue of component cost to retail price. Using normal distribution chains, you need to charge 10x your component costs to make money. Adding $100 in capacitors needs to translate into $1,000 or more to be worthwhile making. 

I don't believe every speaker benefits from new caps, nor every tube preamp, nor do I necessarily believe all caps are worth their cost. I do however think that there's an interesting place for the careful listener to tweak.

If you are truly interested, I encourage you to consider building your own speaker kit. There's a number of them available from Parts Express, Madisound and others. You can learn a great deal, and tweak to your heart's content. 


Best,

E
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chumsusi's avatar
chumsusi
26 posts
 
+1 vote erik_squires and grannyring,

From my experience, the improvement from swapping the right caps is greater than rolling tubes (Of course, I roll tubes, too). Please be aware that the process of testing different caps can be very fun, and at times painful and costly.

I have tried caps of many different brands (a few names like Mundorf, Jantzen, Solen, Audyn, Jupiter, Obbligato...) and series (from their entry caps to top caps). Now, I have all Jupiter Copper Foil caps in my amp and speakers. For speakers, I use bypass and for amp, I use direct. I also have tried different resistors in my speaker. And now, the Path Audio resistors are in my speakers. I am very happy with my system and have stopped wondering "what else..." for a while if you know what I mean.

The Audyn True Copper Max is my favorite, too. Note that Audyn has True Copper and True Copper Max. The manufacture suggests that the Copper is for speakers, and the Copper Max for both speakers and amps. I would suggest trying an Audyn True Copper 0.1uF as bypass as erik_squires suggests.

Lastly, people have different tastes, experiences and beliefs. I am speaking from my own experience. 

Have fun!
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