Large capacitor shoot out

[fatmarley]

2. Tracks are selected that reveal all the required elements of high frequencies, low frequencies, sound stage, clarity, naturalness etc within a short period - maybe a minute or two.

With some capacitors, I've found that you could play a large number of tracks before you notice something wrong. A good track is C2C - Down The Road. Vocals can sound harsh if you get things wrong.

[SW1X]

It may sound bogus to some folks that one passive component makes a difference but that would be hardly surprising if the rest of a system is made of mediocre materials employed by over-engineered circuit designs.
Those who have done a little bit of experimentation know that quantity and complexity of components/features of an audio product can be quite misleading. The amount of components/features does not necessarily improve the quality of sound as we are lead to believe. On the contrary, since there are no perfect components, parts or materials, the complexity and quantity of components/features contributes only to degradation of sound quality. Therefore, the sound of a recording cannot be improved but only degraded by the quantity of components. Hence the only best possible performance can be achieved when fewer and only highest quality components are employed. One can focus on the choice of materials and components, only when the whole circuit becomes simple and elegant. Discriminating between good and bad parts becomes also easier when there are only a few parts in the circuit.

There are no unimportant or negligible aspects- everything matters when it comes to maximum sound quality! Maximising the sound quality of an audio system is a cumulative process. The improvement in one part of a system may seem to be negligible but as a sum of all parts, it becomes more than significant. That is the core of our philosophy at SW1X Audio Design.

[fatmarley]

Hi Slawa,

Just out of curiosity, what will be the rest of the system?

[SW1X]

We have several custom design systems based on 3 performance levels. Each system is based on the same SW1X Audio Design philosophy. In general we employ only the finest components such as tantalum resistors, silver foil, Black Gate & Kaisei capacitors and finest UHiB and Permalloy core transformers wired with fine silver conductors starting from mains, internal wiring, transformers, speaker wiring, etc. The performance level of each system is constrained only by the amount of silver and sophistication of power supplies corresponding to the cost levels. The system, where the voicing takes place is based on SW1X Signature performance level 3 transport, SW1X DAC 2 Signature, SW1X silver wired stepped attenuators based on AN silver tantalum resistors, silver wound Permalloy core transformer based SE 300B mono power amps and SW1X AlNiCo magnet based fully silver wired loudspeakers.

[fatmarley]

Oh I see. A full SW1X Audio system (didn't see any speakers on your website).

[SW1X]

We do offer speakers based on vintage AlNiCo and field coil drivers. However, those designs are all custom orders and not in series production. Eventually one of those designs will find its way into small and limited series production some time in the future. Therefore it does not make any sense to advertise them at the moment. One cannot judge and then buy speakers based on their looks without auditioning them anyway.

[DSJR]

You might hear a supposed difference in the caps when freshly fitted, but there's been enough speak here in the past where fancy-foo caps take a good few hours use to fully bed in - so all you'll be doing is 'comparing' fresh new caps, the fancier of which won't have formed properly. I fear that the preferred item on the day, assuming you think you can hear a difference at all, will be sounding totally different after a few hours' use, where a less favoured one might even be better.

Mind you, the best circuits seem electrolytic cap-proof and try not to use them at all if at all possible...

[SW1X]

You might hear a supposed difference in the caps when freshly fitted, but there's been enough speak here in the past where fancy-foo caps take a good few hours use to fully bed in - so all you'll be doing is 'comparing' fresh new caps, the fancier of which won't have formed properly. I fear that the preferred item on the day, assuming you think you can hear a difference at all, will be sounding totally different after a few hours' use, where a less favoured one might even be better.

Mind you, the best circuits seem electrolytic cap-proof and try not to use them at all if at all possible...

Dear David,

I can see where you coming from. Not all electrolytic caps are created equally. Some electrolytic caps sound better than most metalized foil caps I came across. And in an application with heavy load where noise is critical, capacitance over 1000uF is an absolute minimum. Film caps are not a solution because of the size constraint. Furthermore, you may have missed our statement. It would be ignorant and prejudiced to voice each cap without sufficient run in time. We are controlling for this kind of bias. Please refer to the first post of this thread.

"....All burned in caps (for 96 hours as a minimum) are substituted one by one into a power supply of I/V conversion stage of 2 identical standard SW1X DAC 1s (one DAC 1 could be also Signature version as the reference)..."

[SW1X]

We have 3 people so far who would like to participate in the shoot out.

There are 2 places left

[SW1X]

Just to make it perfectly clear: we are organising a capacitor shoot out. This is not a type of bake off. One and foremost objective is to illustrate of how much one single capacitor in the power supplies can shape the sonic signature of equipment. The other purpose is to gain insight which sound character is more preferable to the audience and to illustrate our approach of designing an audio product.