~ What's all this Trapped Charge and Dielectric Compression stuff anyhow? ~

Yes I've
'hi–jacked' the 'what's all this
.  .  .  stuff anyhow' title but hopefully
Y'all already be aware of the articles ~ What's
All This Soakage Stuff, Anyhow? and Understanding
Capacitor soakage to Optimise Analog Systems and What's
All This Capacitor Leakage Stuff, Anyhow? plus What's
All This CR Stuff, Anyhow? and forgive me for the expropriation of the
titles from their author the late Bob Pease

Bob Pease (RAP) focused on an imperfection of
capacitors attributed to Dielectric Absorption which gets shortened to
'DA' and he then refers to as 'Capacitor
Soakage' to suggest that a capacitor dielectric soaks up or
absorbs a charge in addition to that determined by its value and the
voltage across it ~ He also describes the soakage effect as 'fairly linear' without any qualification
apart from presenting a linear multiple capacitor/resistor model for
it

The test circuits RAP used to show capacitor
soakage and his leakage tests only charge the capacitors in one direction
with d.c. ~ No a.c. tests for soakage appear to have been done although
soakage affecting fast settling a.c. amplifiers and filters is mentioned
and the ability of the so called and self proclaimed golden eared ones to
distinguish audible differences between low and high soakage capacitors is
questioned ~ 'and
rightly so'

Leakage ~ Dissipation Factor ~ ESR ~ Polarisation
~ Dielectric Constant Temperature and Voltage Coefficient and some
chemical effects found in electrolytic capacitors are not being questioned
here although I do have concerns about statements like 'ESR
varies with frequency so cannot have a finite value' ~ Perhaps
we should use the term Series Complex Impedance when that is what we
intend

I know I'm not alone looking for a correlation
between the inadequacies of different capacitor types and the perceived
quality of audio reproduction when they are used in audio equipment ~
Could high soakage somehow change the sound of an amplifier as old paper
in oil capacitors or electrolytics appear to do?

All the usual properties of a capacitor to some
extent give defined effects and where possible these have been considered
during my tests ~ Voltage Coefficient and Dielectric Absorption appear to
be a not so well defined by manufacturers or easily measurable in
isolation and for certain types of capacitor may be due to physical
construction and so not easily modelled or otherwise expressed

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I was shocked by Capacitor Soakage ~ Or was I ?

During the 1980s I worked on many high power
radio and TV transmitter sites where we stored large value high voltage
paper in oil capacitors with wire shorting links across the terminals
after testing the dielectric strength with a high voltage meter ~ This I
was told ensured they were fully discharged and could not 'pick–up a
charge' from the radio transmissions

Looking back I question the 'pick–up a charge'
effect because after years of storage with a shorting link some of those
high kV capacitors once unlinked would start to develop a voltage across
their terminals ~ If it were charge pick–up it would require a non linear
or asymmetric effect to produce a d.c. voltage across the terminals

The voltage rising from zero was surely not due
to traditional capacitor soakage because even the longest time constants
of the dielectric absorption model would have fully discharged after such
a long period and how come the voltage starts to rise from zero ? Could a
charge somehow be stored in a capacitor with zero potential across its
plates ?   ↓↓↓

From the results of some d.c.
tests to check for 'Capacitor Soakage' I propose it could be the
physical construction and dielectric compressibility that makes some
capacitors perform differently in sensitive analogue circuits and in RAP's
soakage tests ~ Whether this also makes audio amplifiers 'sound different'
may not be due to soakage or dielectric compression or any of the other
known capacitor attributes alone

After many years of 'tinkering' as RAP once said of me I still
believe that ~ if everything else is kept equal and when used in a good
design ~ poly(styrene) capacitors will sound ~ dare I say it ~ better than
paper in oil and that both sound better than standard electrolytics when
used in the audio signal path ~ Many claim that paper in oil capacitors
sound 'warmer' and 'musical' but why is this?

With paper in oil (PIO) and electrolytics ~
especially the vintage 'new' old stock preferred by some ~ it is most
likely high leakage and other measurable losses like ESR that affect the
audio amplifiers they are fitted in ~ Almost all old paper in oil
capacitors ~ like the Hunts L45 tested below ~ show leakage and may not be
suitable for use in high impedance and high voltage circuits like valve
amplifiers

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Voltage rises across a Capacitor after discharge to 0V

For many years
up to about 1990 I tested high voltage capacitors with an old capacitor
bridge made by Hunts ~ This meter also gave a rough indication of the
insulation voltage or leakage of capacitors by charging them through a
neon bulb ~ When the neon light went off the test voltage could be
increased another step until the neon flashed due to leakage or stayed on
permanently due to insulation failure while safely limiting the
current

I often used
this crude insulation test to slowly re–form high voltage electrolytics
but with many capacitor types the bridge would not read correctly unless
there was zero or very little d.c. across the capacitor and often after
switching from the insulation test to measure the reformed value ~ via a
discharge position ~ the indicated capacitance value would fall slowly for
some time until the d.c. voltage had died away

It looked like the bridge was being upset by the
d.c. voltage ~ and to some extent it was ~ but with some high value
electrolytics the capacitance value appeared to change with little or no
measured d.c. but this was often with very old capacitors that needed more
reforming so I just accepted it and measured them after a long re–form and
very long discharge period to reduce the voltage close to zero

Then I had the crazy notion that in a practical
capacitor ~ because the dielectric material is also used to keep the two
plates a precise distance apart ~ the capacitance could 'actually' change
as a capacitor is charged and discharged ~ If the plates could move when a
voltage was applied across them they would attract due to the opposite
electrostatic charges on each side ~ They also attract as the capacitor is
discharged but in each case the dielectric should eventually relax back
decreasing the C to its nominal value

For any fixed charge { Q } on the
plates of a capacitor the voltage will fall if the plates move together
{ V=Q/C } and will increase if the plates move apart ~ If a
dielectric material can be readily compressed and relax back because it is
made of fibrous paper soaked in oil and or the foil of the plates is
loosely wound then the plates will move together as the capacitor is
charged ~ The value of C will increase and give a greater charge Q for any
applied voltage

After a rapid charge and removal of the supply ~
the voltage across a capacitor can rise beyond the supply voltage which is
most likely due to the compressed dielectric relaxing back to its natural
position and its original value of C ~ After a rapid discharge ~ where the
high current pulls the plates together ~ the remaining low voltage will
rise as the residual charge on the plates is again subjected to decreasing
C as the dielectric relaxes back ~ These effects are easy to measure at
d.c. but not so easy to isolate from other effects like chemical and
molecular changes in the dielectric

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Testing for Dielectric Compression (not soakage) with an a.c.
circuit

On the left is a
frequency sweep of a 6.2mH high Q inductor with 2 x 0.1µF capacitors
connected in series across it to form a parallel resonant circuit at about
9kHz ~ This resonant circuit is then placed between the 50Ω tracking
generator output and the 50Ω input of a Marconi 2382 spectrum analyser

The output from the tracking generator is
–10dBm so there is very little a.c. across the capacitors ~
The following images are of the test circuit with pairs of different types
of 0.1µF capacitors fitted

Hunts L45

On the right a zoomed in view of the bottom of
the notch with 2 x original Hunts L45 0.1µF 350V paper in oil Capacitors
pulled from a QUAD II power amplifier and about 40 years old

The depth of the notch is about 50dB and the 3db
BW is almost 100Hz

In these tests the span is 10Hz per division ~
The Y scale is 0.5dB per division and the analyser is locked to a GPS
reference

Russian K40Y9

On the left the same test circuit with same
analyser span and Y scale used for the L45s but with 2 x new old stock
Russian K40Y9 0.1µF 400V paper in oil capacitors form 1980s

Note the depth of the notch is now about 53dB and
the 3dB BW is also better at about 72Hz

The measured d.c. leakage of the K40Y9s at 400V
is also much better than the L45 leakage at 350V but the Q is only
marginally better

Extended Foil
Polystyrene

Finally the test circuit and analyser set as
above but with 0.1µF 160V potted extended foil polystyrene capacitors made
by RIFA in the 1980s as used in one of my QUAD
II mods

The notch is now 64dB and the 3dB BW is less than
20Hz ! so these capacitors are clearly a much higher Q than the paper in
oil types but do they 'sound' better because of the lower loss and leakage
or is there another reason ?

Comparing
the tests above you would be right to think that all that has been done is
to measure the Q or the losses of some different capacitor types and that
no actual test for dielectric compression or any other measurements have
been made but note the circuit used to test the capacitors also has 2 x
220kΩ resistors which allow a voltage to be applied across both caps
without unduly damping (not dampening as that
may suggest soakage exists) the circuit or introducing stray C
from the voltage source connection

The Full circuit used to
test the 0.1µF capacitors ~ L=6.2mH with 0.59Ω resistance so Q is very
high ~ R=220kΩ to enable connection of a floating d.c. voltage at point A
without affecting the resonant frequency or upsetting the analyser
tracking generator ~ C are the two capacitors of same type under
test

The idea
was to measure any changes of capacitance due to an applied voltage but I
did not have access to test equipment like a sexy C meter that could
measure the very small changes of capacitance of a 0.1µF capacitor due to
about 30V d.c. applied across it

Experiments by others show changes of capacitance
due to applied voltage but not for paper in oil and not when the voltage
is reversed

The change in capacitance could be due to a
Permittivity change or a Piezoelectric effect both of which mainly affect
high k ceramics and have not been ignored here ~ Such non linearity can
often be measured as third and odd harmonic distortion on sine waves when
passed through a simple CR stage but with these capacitors this was not
seen in such tests

A swept notch method was chosen rather than make
an oscillator and measure its frequency because I found it difficult to
make an oscillator or any measurement jig where I could apply a d.c.
voltage to the capacitor(s) under test without affecting the frequency by
stray C or leakage changing the bias or one that did not require other
capacitors in circuit to let it function correctly

The simple parallel LC notch as 'thrown together'
worked very well first time and was not susceptible to the stray C when
connecting and swapping the floating PSU or a battery voltage source ~
Unlike a true bridged T it does not require adjusting or matching of
components ~ Pairs of similar capacitors were simply substituted and the
centre frequency set to the notch with 0V applied and points A joined

The analyser was locked to a GPS reference
because it helped speed up the measurements ~ The Marconi 2382 has very
good ovened oscillator with good phase noise figure but I needed to make
many measurements over a long time without having to account for the
slightest drift and a maximum frequency error when locked to GPS of 10
parts in 1012 I thought could be neglected and was

By connecting a floating power supply across
point A of the test circuit a voltage is applied across the capacitors
without any d.c. current (apart from leakage) flowing through the inductor
or the test equipment and the applied voltage could be VARIED and REVERSED
without any concern that it was affecting the test equipment or the
frequency other than by changing the value of the two Cs

The idea was to test if the applied voltage
changed the notch frequency noticeably thus indicating that the capacitor
value had changed ~ The Q may also change but this was being
simultaneously monitored ~ This simple test is very revealing and showed
the Hunts
L45 pair lowered the notch frequency by 3Hz when 30V d.c. was applied
in EITHER direction

The Q did not appear to change during any of the
tests and the shift in frequency was always measured at the 3dB points on
both slopes of the notch to better discriminate the small changes while
also confirming the BW remained the same ~ The Russian K40Y9 0.1µF 400V
capacitors showed Q slightly better than the L45s and the frequency shift
was less than –1Hz and hard to determine even with the good markers and
resolution of the 2382

The polystyrene capacitors showed no noticeable
shift in frequency and the 3dB BW as seen in the trace above is close to
the theoretical limit of 17.3Hz set by the Q of the inductor and the
loading of the two resistors R which act as a 440kΩ resistor from the
centre of the Cs to the input of the analyser so do not form a true
bridged T because the voltage supply had to be floating ~ The value of R
chosen actually gives slightly better Qs for lossy high ESR Caps and worse
Q for good Caps like the polystyrene RIFAs and so help keep the traces on
the same scale

It was also noticed that the frequency shift of
the L45s and K40Y9s (and some other PIO caps) took much longer to recover
following longer charge periods which is similar to the effect noted by
others and attributed to Dielectric Absorption or Capacitor Soakage as measured by a rise in open terminal voltage after
discharge but in this test the voltage should
not affect the frequency or its measurement

Rather than calculate figures for these test
capacitors and become tied down with small % changes please accept that
for some reason the value of a capacitor appears to increases when a
voltage is applied across (or a current flows through) it ~ This Dielectric Compression effect appears proportional
to the voltage MAGNITUDE and should not be confused with 'momentary
dielectric relaxation' which is another dynamic effect akin to
hysteresis

These tests do not prove that the increase in
capacitance is due to the plates moving together under electrostatic
attraction but other effects and some knowledge of capacitor construction
suggest that it is ~ My other idea of a Captive
Charge is just an untested idea but it appears to explain
additional effects attributed to DA like the very long term storage of
charge in a shorted capacitor which should be dissipated if the soakage
models are correct

If it can be demonstrated that the distortion
produced by those capacitors that have a 'warm sound' or show 'high
soakage' is mainly 2nd and even harmonics ~ due to the plates dynamically
compressing the dielectric at twice the rate of the applied signal voltage
then it looks like some of capacitor soakage effect may actually be due to
the dielectric compressing and perhaps this could be visualised without
the need to measure results scientifically

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Can charge be trapped indefinitely
in a shorted capacitor ?

Dielectric compression ~ where the plates of a
capacitor are free to move may explain some of the stored charge often
attributed to dielectric absorption when measured by
the rise in open terminal voltage after discharge test but often
the voltage will rise higher than the small changes of C ~ that I have
measured ~ would indicate

Measuring a rise in open
terminal voltage after discharge is not measuring stored charge no
matter what mathematics are applied ~ The voltage may be partly due to
some residual charge absorbed by the dielectric ~ but how how long can
this DA or soakage charge be held in a short circuited capacitor ?

I think it is very likely that when the plates of
a capacitor are shorted and kept shorted that some residual charge ~ that
has not converted to heat or radiated as sound or an EM pulse ~ could be
forced to the centre of the dielectric where it will remain held captive ~
Repelled equally by the plates either side which are now at the same
potential

The 'Captive Charge' or the charge trapped in the
dielectric will not be subjected to normal discharge by leakage as it
cannot flow to either plate so it will just sit there between the plates
waiting for someone like Pieter
van Musschenbroek to open the jar and release it or Georg
Christoph Lichtenberg
to 'figure' how we could visualise it ~ 'It's
soakage Jim but not as we know it'

If this 'Captive Charge' exists it should also be
seen even in Vacuum capacitors but it should be more easily measured and
appear as a problem in very high permittivity dielectrics which are after
all intended to 'hold' more charge but these also suffer other problems
like changing permittivity with voltage ~ Low permittivity PTFE or Teflon
is noted for its particularly low DA ~ Maybe even a charge won't stick to
Teflon !

The dielectric of High–K ceramic capacitors
appears to cause problems in say a sample and hold circuit with fast
discharge ~ Once the capacitor is shorted and the plates are at the same
potential there are only a few places the Captive Charge can go ~ Maybe a
compensating bootstrap circuit ensures the plates are never at the same
potential until the desired level of discharge is reached

The findings of RAP that 'The
accuracy of a sample and hold capacitor tends to get better as you go
faster' could well be explained by the physical compliance of
the dielectric material ~ as the frequency increases the rate at which a
dielectric can physically compress and relax will reduce and ~ depending
on the construction ~ the plates may even experience resonance effects

Referring back to another article by RAP where a
Mylar capacitor was heated to 150˚C ~ Did the experimenters really measure
the 'charge that flowed from the
capacitor' ~ or just the voltage attributed to the charge on
what they thought was a stable capacitance value ~ Was their additional
charge actually 'stored on the molecules of the
dielectric' or simply between the capacitors plates which were
being expanded and contracted causing a change of C ?

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Capacitor Construction and Dielectric Compression

RAP showed that 'Silver Mica' capacitors have
high dielectric absorption errors which goes against most electronic
engineers' intuition ~ including my own ~ This could be explained by the
fact that mica can be readily compressed ~ Mica compression capacitors
were once very common for trimming radio circuits

Two types of construction used for fixed
value mica capacitors are silver 'metallised' mica plates and separate
layers of mica and metal foil ~ Both types are normally crimped and held
in place only at the edge terminals ~ Nowadays most are the metallised
type which are very (value) stable but only for single plate
construction

Silver Mica in the RAP soakage tests would
suggest the 'best' type was used but high value silver mica capacitors are
made with many layers and subject to dielectric compression ~ Also the
coating can affect the performance with hard resin impregnated blocks
being more stable than ceramic or resin dipped ~ Until about 1970 mica and
foil types were often just dipped in wax to keep moisture out yet they
were very stable in radio frequency (RF) circuits

Mica is known for its good low loss dielectric
and stable capacitance at RF so why does it perform badly in low frequency
(LF) tests and sample and hold circuits ? ~ Is it because the dielectric
is compressible but at RF and HF the compression effects do not apply
because the plates cannot physically move so fast

The porous paper
spacer holding apart the plates of standard electrolytic capacitors is
soft and very easily compressed ~ as is the waxed or oiled paper used in
PIO capacitors

The picture shows the cores of a standard
electrolytic and a solid Sanyo OScon capacitor ~ The OScon could not be
unwound and is fully embedded in resin ~ It is generally considered to
sound much better than the standard one on the left ~ Other electrolytics
such as Cerafine and Black gate also use incompressible material in the
dielectric and again are considered good for audio amplifiers

When I
first considered the argument for dielectric compression back around 1984
I immediately dismissed it because the effect was more noticeable with
electrolytic capacitors and the dielectric in such capacitors is a thin
layer of aluminium oxide formed on one plate which I considered could not
possibly become compressed ?

However if you compress { Crush it but not too
much to damage it } a standard electrolytic its capacitance will increase
often more than 100% which is most likely due to better coupling between
the electrolyte soaked spacer and the oxide insulated plate ~ The ESR also
gets better and the soakage effect measured by a
rise in open terminal voltage after discharge
is lowered ! along with the breakdown voltage

As electrolytic capacitors 'dry out' the above
effects appear to become more prevalent ~ Even if the capacitance value
measures correct its ESR and Dielectric absorption are greater than when
new ~ I have repaired Hi–Fi power amplifiers and guitar amps by only
changing electrolytics and although the electrolytics replaced were
technically so much better the 'sound' of the amplifiers { according to
the owners } in most cases was changed

Tantalum bead and Solid Aluminium capacitors are
well respected in audio equipment by those who really know and the smaller
~ lower voltage ~ sizes appear to 'sound' better and are cheaper than
large overrated or wet construction types ~ It should be no surprise that
their construction is extremely solid and incompressible in both cases ~
But what about polycaps which according to RAP were not all the
same

Mylar and
many other 'cheap' film capacitors are often loosely wound to prevent the
film tearing during rapid high volume manufacture ~ They are sometimes
wound as hollow cylinders and then flattened after the former is removed
and in this case the centre of the roll is often made very loose ~ Mylar
capacitors like those on the left show the effect of 'High DA error' or
could it be a combination of Captive Charge and Dielectric Compression due
to the loose winding method ?

'Oh No Bob Pease said we have High Soakage !!
We're CRUSHED'

Polystyrene and PTFE capacitors are almost always
made to very close tolerances ~ When making polystyrene capacitors a foil
and polystyrene film are tightly wound to a slightly higher value than
required and with an overwinding of several layers of polystyrene ~ The
already tightly wound part is then heated for a time at about 106˚C to
compress it to the required value ~ further compression or relaxing is
very limited once made

Most
precision and timing capacitors are made by very tight winding and are
often potted to ensure they stay compressed to the correct value ~
Extended foil capacitors made this way are more stable still because the
ends of the foils are soldered over which makes them very rigid as well as
lowering the self inductance giving a very high Q

Pictured is a 100nF 2% 100V RIFA216 potted
extended foil polystyrene capacitor ~ Unfortunately no longer made as they
are an excellent capacitor for audio ~ Note the creases at each end where
the polystyrene has shrunk down and compressed the extended ends of the
tin foils

There is one last true polystyrene manufacture
close to me here in Cardiff Wales who made my QUAD
22 tone control and RIAA PCB capacitors ~ By 'true' I mean they have
stock of very thin uniformly graded polystyrene to make low voltage
extended foil capacitors that are stable because the dielectric cannot
compress any more ~ Many polystyrene capacitors made today are physically
too large with high voltage ratings due to thick commercial grades of
polystyrene

PTFE is very tough and such a good insulator that
it can be made very thin and the capacitor can be made close tolerance and
stable by very tight winding without the PTFE breaking and then
compressing down over time ~ So once again thin dielectric and tight solid
construction appear to give good DA error along with good audio
reproduction

It is clearly established that both PTFE and
Polystyrene are among the lowest recorded DA error capacitors so
empirically I may be correct to assume some of the dielectric absorption
or DA attributed effects may actually be due to Dielectric Compression or
the plates able to move due to internal electrostatic forces while effects
in some discharging circuits may be due to Captive Charge maybe in
conjunction with dielectric compression

PTFE and Polystyrene capacitors have long been
regarded as the best for use in audio circuits ~ Some may argue that their
low tolerance is seen by 'Pseudo quality seekers' as better and in this
becomes 'sounds better' ~ However there is no doubt that both PTFE and
polystyrene caps appear in some of the best audio amplifiers and there is
a strong correlation between low DA and capacitors which are good for
accurate audio reproduction

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Capacitors in Audio circuits
Most tests for
dielectric absorption or capacitor soakage are
'biased' toward d.c. conditions ~ Further tests that I
and others have made to measure distortion produced by capacitors in audio
circuits have not proved conclusive ~ especially when looking for the
generation of clearly audible (>0.1%?) even harmonics to explain why
some caps like paper in oil are preferred by the golden eared due to the
concordant nature of the distortion

An advert in
June 1992 Electronics
World claiming 'proof for the golden ears hypothesis?' showed that
even harmonic distortion can be introduced into a power amplifier already
producing mainly odd harmonics by using back–to–back electrolytics to
de–couple the negative feedback in place of the single capacitor
originally fitted ~ I believe the featured amplifier later sold on eBay
for a mere £350

The same technique using 2
discrete back–to–back electrolytics as opposed to a single bipolar or
tantalum is often used to couple the inputs and outputs of audio
components from makers like TEAC and Sansui where there is 0V across the
caps ~ Many of these 'high end' audio components also have 'discrete'
op—amp elements and multiple parallel DACs which may be 'seen' to sound
better so sound better they do

Some ceramic
capacitors show significant often odd distortion ~ Mainly due to their
dielectric constant not actually being 'constant' with voltage ~ Many
paper in oil or electrolytic capacitors also cause distortion in audio
amplifiers but due to leakage changing the bias of the following stages or
simply due to being very lossy ~ Placing 'poly' caps in series with leaky
old PIO caps can often reveal such problems but may not prove 'revealing'
to the golden eared

It is likely that the leaky or very lossy capacitors found in
vintage audio equipment change the frequency response inside what little
negative feedback loop they have ~ Many current designs getting 'a good
press' feature multiple RC coupling circuits with some 'odd' time
constants coupled with low open loop feedback or no negative
feedback

With push pull
valve amplifiers where the coupling capacitors are leaky (as original
vintage parts will always be to some extent) the distortion can actually
sound pleasant due to the normally cancelled even harmonics becoming
prominent and more concordant ~ especially over time as the amp warms up
and the leakage increases

Unfortunately
the output transformer may also start to saturate making the amp sound
worse ~ I wonder how many audiophooles actually bother to measure changes
in the operating conditions of their equipment before and after swapping
capacitors and valves etc.?

With single
ended audio amplifiers ~ which naturally operate in Class A ~ capacitor
leakage can affect the asymmetric top or bottom clipping which again
increases the even harmonics ~ The 'best' SE amplifiers often produce
enough distortion to be considered 'distorting' by Hi–Fi standards but
generally SE amplifiers have to be very bad (Often due to cheap
transformer construction or valve intolerant design) to actually sound
bad

In the
past many capacitors were made 'physically' tough ~ The paper in oil
capacitors used for the 1940s Williamson and those used in the early LEAK
point one series were very well made as were many old capacitors which
today appear large for their electrical rating due to thicker plates and
dielectric

The picture shows 2,000µF 100V electrolytic
capacitors as used in the 1960s QUAD 303 power amplifier made in the UK by
DALY which were tightly wound and then embedded in tar ~ These 2 were
drying out but 2 others tested OK so were kept in service for a while as
the output couplers ~ New 6,800µF replacements did not sound the same as
the originals which I preferred but which would not last for much longer ~
I did not try new 2,200µF caps maybe they would sound similar to the old
parts?

Audio folklore
shows a strong correlation between close tolerance and well made
capacitors and how they sound in audio equipment ~ I believe as I state
above that this is due to the fact that these capacitors ~ irrespective of
the dielectric type ~ are tightly wound to achieve their specification so
have minimum dielectric compression and they often have extended foils
which reduces the series inductance and further strengthens them against
compression

Well made NOS
Russian Paper in oil capacitors are a good replacement for old leaky
ones in British vintage amplifiers but many of these capacitors are
reported as sounding 'clinical' and more like poly types ~ Russian K40
types are made with individual foils and paper layers ~ The K42 type are
made with metallised paper and are smaller for the same rating ~ both have
extended 'foils' but which type sounds best?

Now in the 21 century it is beneficial for
capacitor manufacturers to make technically good capacitors ~ Many are
very tightly wound with thin plates and dielectric to reduce materials and
many use extended foil because it is easier to machine test and reject
these before fitting expensive copper leads if the capacitor core
fails

There are also still many manufacturers making
cheap capacitors like the 'crushed' Mylar above and these can actually
work well in many audio circuits providing the a.c. and d.c. are kept well
within the rating and they are not required to pass high currents ~ Do
they sound musical because they produce the right type of distortion?

This is probably a bit of a let down because I
have not demonstrated any reasons why certain capacitors are preferred for
audio other than by spectral evidence which suggests a correlation between
capacitor construction and audio reproduction ~ Old leaky PIO can sound
nice and musical and 'in the other corner' tight wound polystyrene and
PTFE caps sound precise and natural ~ So either even harmonics or none at
all

One thing capacitors do ~ or should do when used
for coupling
an audio amplifier ~ is ensure that no d.c. component is present in the
audio analogue ~ d.c. is initially removed at the microphone along with
'low frequencies' that are much 'higher' than many audiophooles would
like

Transients and other features like high
frequencies superimposed on low that make up music ~ whether 'miked' or
from electronic instruments ~ can introduce very low frequency components
and or momentary d.c. offsets which may require long time constants to
reproduce accurately and which may be sufficient to momentarily change the
characteristic of your 50 year old paper in oil capacitors which are
probably already d.c. coupling part of the signal to the following stages
or the output transformer

See Here
for further tests to show that dielectric compression may exist even if it
cannot be shown to produce nice harmonics or other audio changing effects

" Who inspires your
fabled fools ~ That's my claim
to fame "