I, like most people here, have looked to these forums and the like for experienced opinions about audio componentry, and their relative comparative qualities in searching for aural happiness, and have come to some conclusions of my own. Most of the esoteric hoity-toity notions regarding the benefits of this rare & hyper-expensive widget or that one, are lost on the level of equipment many (most?) of us can afford. I have done a few of my own "in-house" tests (that I'm sure can be picked apart). It started a few years ago on a friends' system using Reference Series Audio Research tube amps/ preamps, his Audio Research Reference Series CD player, Sonograph turntable (idk which cartridge) and the companion top-of-the-line Magnapan speakers. While he was away and leaving me to babysit his pet, I took the special occation to answer for myself a few nagging questions for myself:
Q: "Can you hear the differences in speaker wire?"
A: I heard none. I replaced his VERY expensive speaker wire (that cost as much as my whole stereo system) with some 14 guage speaker wire I used at home that I bought on a 50 foot spool at Radio Shack for about $15, I think. No sound-quality difference we could perceive regardless of source or music selection.
Q: "Can you hear the differences in inter-connects?"
A: Same scenario. I started with replacing the hyper-expensive unobtanium interconnect between the CD player and the preamp with a $4 RCA cable... Nothing.
...and that is where my doubts began. Sure his system sounds astounding, but it sounds equally astounding with cheap speaker wire and cheap interconnects.
Next is the capacitor "sound quality" questions over which so many of us torture ourselves. My own system is far more modest than my friend's. I have a pair of beautiful Thiel CS3.5's as well as a pair of Polk Audio SDA-2's. I have been using a Yamaha DSP A-1000 integrated amp with the Thiels and a plethora of vintage Yamaha receivers with the Polks. As I just recently began to get back into my old electronics hobby, I decided to try my hand at lightly reconditioning some vintage audio equipment... namely old Yamaha and NAD equipment of my youth. So, I started a couple months ago by recapping a Yamaha R700 (1981) that I purchased non-playing. As I don't have much in the way of test equipment, but I have a pretty sweet Edsyn solder station, I decide to replace all of the aluminum electrolytic capacitors and see what happens. I bought all Nichicon VR and VZ series capacitors to replace the original Matsushita, Rubycon, and ELNA caps and set about replacing all but the two 10,000uf power supply AE caps. Low and behold, that fixed it and it now works! It sounds wonderful with the Polks. Total price for the replacement caps was about $3-4 worth.
Next up, a non-playing Yamaha CR420 (1977) that was given to me by another friend. Same deal, I replaced all the original AE caps with Nichicon VR and VZ series, that fixed it. Sounds very nearly as good as the R700. Total price for replacement caps was about $3-4 too.
Because the CR420 sounded "NEARLY" as good as the R700, it got me thinking...
Q: "What if I changed up? What if I replaced the "cheap" general purpose VR & VZ series caps with "Audio Grade" caps? Would sound quality improve drastically? Would the CR420 sound as good or better than the R700?"
A: No. I orderered a combination of Nichicon mostly KW, KA and a few KT series AE caps, and proceeded to change out sections and listen... change another section and listen, and so on. I "think I might have heard a slight difference when I changed out the old phono input cap I accidentally missed in the original cap swap-out, with a Nichicon KT series cap. I think I "might" have heard a slight improvement from the phono cap but none of the other swaps seemed to make any difference? Total cost for the "Audio Grade" caps was about $17-18 versus about $4 for the general purpose caps.
My conclusion: for mid-level level receievers, pre-amps, amps and the like, a quality name brand general purpose capacitor sounded no different than an "audio grade" capacitor. Stop sweating the minutia. A working unit sounds better than a non-working one, and replacing old worn out AE caps with new general purpose caps improves performance... period. Don't sweat minutea and just enjoy the music.
(Caveat: I haven't tried working with passive crossover circuitry yet, I can believe there could be differences to be had there. That's an arument for another day.)
Q: "Can you hear the differences in speaker wire?"
A: I heard none. I replaced his VERY expensive speaker wire (that cost as much as my whole stereo system) with some 14 guage speaker wire I used at home that I bought on a 50 foot spool at Radio Shack for about $15, I think. No sound-quality difference we could perceive regardless of source or music selection.
Q: "Can you hear the differences in inter-connects?"
A: Same scenario. I started with replacing the hyper-expensive unobtanium interconnect between the CD player and the preamp with a $4 RCA cable... Nothing.
...and that is where my doubts began. Sure his system sounds astounding, but it sounds equally astounding with cheap speaker wire and cheap interconnects.
Next is the capacitor "sound quality" questions over which so many of us torture ourselves. My own system is far more modest than my friend's. I have a pair of beautiful Thiel CS3.5's as well as a pair of Polk Audio SDA-2's. I have been using a Yamaha DSP A-1000 integrated amp with the Thiels and a plethora of vintage Yamaha receivers with the Polks. As I just recently began to get back into my old electronics hobby, I decided to try my hand at lightly reconditioning some vintage audio equipment... namely old Yamaha and NAD equipment of my youth. So, I started a couple months ago by recapping a Yamaha R700 (1981) that I purchased non-playing. As I don't have much in the way of test equipment, but I have a pretty sweet Edsyn solder station, I decide to replace all of the aluminum electrolytic capacitors and see what happens. I bought all Nichicon VR and VZ series capacitors to replace the original Matsushita, Rubycon, and ELNA caps and set about replacing all but the two 10,000uf power supply AE caps. Low and behold, that fixed it and it now works! It sounds wonderful with the Polks. Total price for the replacement caps was about $3-4 worth.
Next up, a non-playing Yamaha CR420 (1977) that was given to me by another friend. Same deal, I replaced all the original AE caps with Nichicon VR and VZ series, that fixed it. Sounds very nearly as good as the R700. Total price for replacement caps was about $3-4 too.
Because the CR420 sounded "NEARLY" as good as the R700, it got me thinking...
Q: "What if I changed up? What if I replaced the "cheap" general purpose VR & VZ series caps with "Audio Grade" caps? Would sound quality improve drastically? Would the CR420 sound as good or better than the R700?"
A: No. I orderered a combination of Nichicon mostly KW, KA and a few KT series AE caps, and proceeded to change out sections and listen... change another section and listen, and so on. I "think I might have heard a slight difference when I changed out the old phono input cap I accidentally missed in the original cap swap-out, with a Nichicon KT series cap. I think I "might" have heard a slight improvement from the phono cap but none of the other swaps seemed to make any difference? Total cost for the "Audio Grade" caps was about $17-18 versus about $4 for the general purpose caps.
My conclusion: for mid-level level receievers, pre-amps, amps and the like, a quality name brand general purpose capacitor sounded no different than an "audio grade" capacitor. Stop sweating the minutia. A working unit sounds better than a non-working one, and replacing old worn out AE caps with new general purpose caps improves performance... period. Don't sweat minutea and just enjoy the music.
(Caveat: I haven't tried working with passive crossover circuitry yet, I can believe there could be differences to be had there. That's an arument for another day.)