Just a bit of feedback on this mod. I picked up a couple of pairs of caps from Stan and tried a pair of Capxon (?) ones. I have also made changes to the speakers by putting them on 20kg of slate-effect porcelain floor tiles sandwiched with some blutak, so this is not a fair or scientific comparison.

Initial impressions are that the sound is "grittier" and "raw" but not as unpleasant as those adjectives would make it out to be. The removal of bass resonances with the wooden floor under the carpet by the new positioning of the speakers makes it hard to judge the low end at all. At first I had the fixed level output going through the Audiolab 8000C but after initial testing I went with a variable output direct into the Rotel 1572 power amp. All good.

I did the remove-opamp-board and push caps in version of the mod since I am not really set-up for or confident in my soldering abilities.

This is another pair of changes to my system that I can say help to seperate out good and bad mastering - Rodrigo Y Gabriella's 11:11 track 1 came through as stunning with little fear of the compression that must be there (it's a new loud recording after all) while some older stuff came through muted and muffled by comparison.

Now that I am not constrainted by the Audiolab's groundloop annoyances, when using the Caiman as the preamp, I can more easily leave the lid unscrewed (no ground wire) and then try with and without opamp board and also finally try the AD826s too.