Subjective survey of audio capacitors

[Barry]

For those DIYers and for those who like to 'fettle' their gear, the following subjective survey of audio capacitors might be of interest:

https://www.humblehomemadehifi.com/Cap.html

[Qwin]

I've used the Humble guide for years. With my admittedly limited experience, I tend to agree with his comments on how caps have sounded, with the 10 or so film caps I've tried. The only thing I couldn't agree with, is his comments on the use of bypass caps, I know some folks swear by them, but not me. I find they just change the sound, but don't improve it overall. There are areas of the frequency range that sound better, but at the expense of other parts of the range IMO. So I would say different, not better.
I found the comments on the Sonicap Gen 1, as not mixing well with other brands was accurate. All Sonicap in a XO sounded great, but introduce other brands and it sounded poor, almost like listening to two set ups at once. Weird!
His comments on the Jantzen Superior Z is spot on, very good top end as a series cap for tweeters, but it's not the most transparent of components. This has to be taken in context of price point, but I just swapped mine for some Mundorf Silver in Oil and the overall transparency of my set up has improved. We tend to hear transparency as an artefact across the whole frequency range, so a lack of it in HF components is heard even in the Bass and vice versa. When listening to music, which contains multiple frequencies simultaneously, our brains just average it out and considers the overall effect.