The Capacitor Abyss-yes, can it get any better?

So instead of breaking in to my opinion it is more a question of settling in, apparantly the new caps need some time to get properly adjusted to the circuit they are in.

It is the brain that settles in. If you claim the capacitor's properties are changing enough to be audible, that is about 1 dB. Maybe 0.25 dB under certain circumstances. This is easily measurable on a distortion analyzer. No manufacturer of capacitors claims break-in is real. No physicist claims it is real. Only audiophiles. What does that say? It is self-delusion.

But there is something else. If breaking in is an existing phenomenon the time it takes should play a crucial role in the ability of the person listening to determine noticeable differences. From what I have read so far on the topic and also to my own experience the human brain is quite capable of adusting to new situations, also to differences in sound. If changes in sound we are used to are taking place gradually, the brain adapts to it and I think these changes will just not be noticed. That is why personally I have a hard time in believing that breaking in is something that can actually be noticed, except for when the changes are very fast or very large.

The brain rapidly adapts, not the capacitor. That's the issue. If it were a real property it would have been measured and studied, and the capacitor manufacturers would have data on it. The military and aerospace industries would require it. They do not. This break-in phenomenon is not a property of capacitors. It is not real.
 
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"Retrovert said:
Capacitor break-in is audio mythology that has been so oft-repeated that people convince themselves they are hearing it. What they are hearing is the brain adjusting to the new sound. The brain is highly plastic and will adjust over hours or tens of hours to new input as normal. We live in a modern world of science where claims can be verified..."
This here is a typic example of bombastic claims from "engeneers" & other "educated" personel. They only believe in their numbers, their brains do not have the software insatalled to handle abstract tasks. Ignore.

Nobody is entitled to their own personal laws of physics based upon their opinion.

The ad hominem attacks against "educated personnel" are never appropriate.

No, it doesn't work this way. This is science and facts, not opinions.
 
Electrolytic need a little bit of time to form. So when it is brand spanking new, it needs a little time to set. If you want to call this breaking in, I can accept that. But give me a break on resistors, film caps and ceramic caps. It's more psychosomatic in my opinion.

True, but it's even better than you think.

A brand-new electrolytic forms in fractions of a second, far below our ability to hear or even instruments to readily measure. One blip and it's gone. Call up CDE and ask. The nice technical support people there will tell you that the capacitor is ready to go when it is shipped. Testing on the manufacturing line does all the forming that could ever happen.

You are 100% correct that capacitors and other components are not breaking in. That's just the brain.
 
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It used to be about capacitors. Not about what other people think....

Sigh. That is so very, very true, and it is unfortunate.

ConradH and I were last discussing (few pages back) about alterations in capacitance from voltage, temperature, and temperature from a physics and materials basis. He and I have deeply studied these issues and have some sort of appreciation for the physics and materials involved. But that science keeps being drowned out by these "my ears are more accurate than a distortion analyzer" arguments which always devolve into ad hominen attacks on science and engineering.

It should be a law: The magikal claims by the purported audiophile that "golden ears" can detect tiny signal variations which the finest instruments cannot, where such variations notably defy the laws of physics, and the associated unmeasurable and unverifiable access to a secret world, is the source of the audiophile's power over others.

We have access to instruments. Really, really, really good ones! Labs full of them, in fact. With installations all over the world. Yet nobody, not even the adherants of these magikal abilities, has ever produced a break-in plot showing how the capacitor's response somehow so substantially changes over tens of hours that the sound is audible. Which means it has to be at least 0.25 dB. That is because this proof cannot be produced. It does not exist.

It is not incumbent upon the engineers to prove a negative, it is incumbent upon the party asserting a new property of materials to prove it, and do so in an objective, repeatable, and verifiable manner. This is how science, and peer-reviewed publications, work.

If capacitor break-in were real, it would be a new kind of physics. Everyone would be rushing to study this, because it would be Nobel Prize level research. Certainly would get the researcher tenure, and that's the big goal in academia. Nobody studies this purported "break-in" because it isn't real.
 
Nobody is entitled to their own personal laws of physics based upon their opinion.

The ad hominem attacks against "educated personnel" are never appropriate.

No, it doesn't work this way. This is science and facts, not opinions.


Here we go. Could you please tell us how to make perfect sound based on your "sciense"?
 
Here we go. Could you please tell us how to make perfect sound based on your "sciense"?

Not playing. That's a thread hijack. Against the rules. Just like your ad hominem attack on science and engineering.

This is (or was) a technical thread about measurable properties of capacitors. If you have technical data about this mythological and magikal break-in phenomenon, we very much want see it. Otherwise, we return you to your regularly scheduled technical programming.
 
I had to almost laugh at the some of these arguments as most are talking about the same things when referring to acoustic change and cap applications. i.e. when referring to audible change in a non clinical environment? There is no basis without an acoustic or frequency free chamber to make measurements. I worked in these labs environments and even designed a small chamber that modeled NCSU chamber in equivalent frequency correlation. thousands of products are tested in these chambers. Are you making measurements on your home bench? well consider this.. your dmm left on produces frequencies as well as your kmart bedside alarm clock. Can they affect your measurement equipment? Yes.
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Cap break in... okay service caps? virtually instant or in minutes. Hmmm Elna simicII's engineering papers say there is a break in period. Why would they publish that if it wasn't true?
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Human hearing; The human ear is probably the worst on the planet by lobe design. When you get a hearing test they don't place you in front of a set of speakers, they put head phones on. (left and right are different) So you have to admit that aside from power amps... amps equipped with basic tone and bass pots were designed in for a specific purpose; adjustment. doh! Isn't it amazing that these adjustment affect the speakers... geez how frigging unusual is that. Then throw in room design acoustics... call in the guy with the room db/hz analyzer.

Have a nice day boyz and try not to argue?
 
Here we go. Could you please tell us how to make perfect sound based on your "sciense"?

You can't ask that unless you are prepared to define exactly what is meant by 'perfect sound' in technical terms, in a way that is universally accepted.

And it would be helpful if you could cite examples of this for our understanding, the more the better.

My apologies, this request is just as ridiculous as your request. ;)
 
Cap break in... okay service caps? virtually instant or in minutes. Hmmm Elna simicII's engineering papers say there is a break in period. Why would they publish that if it wasn't true?

Where is this "engineering" paper? Link?

As far as I can tell no such paper was ever published and it does not exist.

Here's the datasheet:
http://www.elna.co.jp/en/capacitor/alumi/catalog/pdf/rfs_e.pdf
http://www.elna.co.jp/en/capacitor/alumi/catalog/pdf/rfs_e.pdf
NO reference to break-in.

And the promotional materials:
http://www.elna.co.jp/en/capacitor/onkyou/silmic.html

NO reference to break-in.

Here are all the pages on the Elna's website that I could find:
https://www.google.com/#q=Elna+silmic+capacitor+site:elna.co.jp

NO reference to break-in.

I see no reference to break-in anywhere and I searched for that term and related terms.

Where is the published proof by Elna where it asserts break in for its products?
 
If capacitor break-in were real, it would be a new kind of physics. Everyone would be rushing to study this, because it would be Nobel Prize level research. Certainly would get the researcher tenure, and that's the big goal in academia. Nobody studies this purported "break-in" because it isn't real.

Hmmm Elna simicII's engineering papers say there is a break in period. Why would they publish that if it wasn't true?

http://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/elna-silmic-break-in-patience-has-its-reward.734283/
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Hyperion....
groucho marx: "You go down to the viaduct and.."
chico: "vhy a duck? vhy not a chicken or a horse?"
 
I've just had a good look around, and the only references to Electrolytic Capacitor break in/burn in that I can find, do not appear on manufacturers sites - but on audio forums all over the place. :) (unless Google is lying to me).
 
Elna simicII's engineering papers say there is a break in period. Why would they publish that if it wasn't true?

Where is this "engineering" paper? Link?
As far as I can tell no such paper was ever published and it does not exist. [...]
Where is the published proof by Elna where it asserts break in for its products?


That's not a paper published by Elna.

That's a bunch of audiophile claims of magik which is unsupported by scientific evidence.

So the claimed paper by Elna doesn't exist? What a surprise!

Of course it doesn't exist!

Because the break-in phenomenon is yet another mass hallucination by audiophiles.
 
http://www.elna.co.jp/en/capacitor/alumi/catalog/pdf/rfs_e.pdf

test period 1000hrs. percent of change +/-20 percent. Note reversed polarity under test. (learn quality control perhaps)

I've read the change of these at 20-30 hours is aural noticed on the forums, too. Too many users to claim aural change than can be ignored.

I guess google likes me more than you. :D

The thousand hour test was for "SHELF LIFE". It says "Endurance (85℃)". That's for LEAKAGE CURRENT. It specifies FAILURE rates.

Not changes in capacitance because of break-in.

Where are the charts from equipment? Where are the measurements?

They don't exist because there were no changes. Ears are subjective and flawed.

This is just silly.
 
Well, I guess thread activity is good, but this is really a place for measurements and technical discussion. Lots of other threads on perceived sonic differences, or start a new one.

eCaps- On forming in use, I can show curves for some new parts where the leakage current comes down to a couple uA or so within seconds. Ditto parts that have been in use. I have the common gray Elna pulls from 30+ year old Sansuis that are as good or better than any new cap. OTOH, parts on the shelf too long can take up to a couple hours before the leakage comes down to a stable value, and it may never get as low as new ones. Still, they're all better than the data sheet worst case values.
 
another rebuttal of retrovert's post which since it is not showing, neither is my response anymore.
 
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Say, what?

Instead of the ad hominem attacks try to stick to the issue at hand: does a capacitor's properties change with break-in, i.e. a period of use after which the capacitor still retains its nominal value and properties but which somehow has different properties that cannot be measured.

A failed capacitor doesn't count anymore than pointing to a melted tube and saying, properties changed during break-in. Yep, sure did. Got a whooooole lot worse. Call the supply house, Clancy, and order a slew of replacements, 'cause they're a pumpin' mud.

You need to explain what these properties are and some empirical proof of existance so this can be verified.

Your position, if I correctly understand it, is that your ears are so magical they can hear the difference in distortion between (a) a newly installed capacitor and (b) one that was "broken-in" with 40 hours of use, that one of them thar new-fangled distortion analyzers can't detect because those sonic properties are detectable with the human ear but are somehow not measurable with an instrument thousands of times more sensitive, accurate, and repeatable than the human ear?

Is that correct?

This is one instance of a cap change that made a big sonic difference. You would have heard it, too. I don't understand why you are attacking me for my claim about a sonic difference I heard? Can you not accept that? Why not? That is a personal attack on my reporting and it leads me to discount your discussion as close-minded.

Since this is a past event and the cap is in service, I can't duplicate the occurrence. I didn't measure the unit, I listened to it. I heard the differences. I know what I heard. Why can you not believe that? It was so bad sounding anyone here would have heard it. It cleared up over time. This could have simply been a forming of the capacitor a well known fact for caps not used in some time.

Retrovert said:

Capacitor break-in is audio mythology that has been so oft-repeated that people convince themselves they are hearing it. What they are hearing is the brain adjusting to the new sound. The brain is highly plastic and will adjust over hours or tens of hours to new input as normal.

We live in a modern world of science where claims can be verified..."

unfairlane said:
This here is a typic example of bombastic claims from "engeneers" & other "educated" personel. They only believe in their numbers, their brains do not have the software insatalled to handle abstract tasks. Ignore.

I like this comment because based on profiles Retrovert is an Artist, Writer & Photographer. I'm an engineer. Retrovert commented that he was educated as an engineer. So much for my comments.
 
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This is one instance of a cap change that made a big sonic difference. You would have heard it, too. I don't understand why you are attacking me for my claim about a sonic difference I heard? Can you not accept that? Why not? That is a personal attack on my reporting and it leads me to discount your discussion as close-minded.

No, it is saying you have one example of something you claim to have heard. This sounds exactly like a failure in the dielectric, a well-known manufacturing defect. Certain types of these defects will self-heal. It's in the literature. It's well known. It's not interesting and it is unrelated to the issue of break-in.

It is NOT a general phenomenon.

Where is the data from capacitor manufacturers showing this break-in phenomenon is real? Answer: there isn't any for good reason. It simply does not exist.

Let's see some data. It is incumbent on those claiming a new property of materials and components to prove it exists and provide details so others can replicate it.

I like this comment because based on profiles Retrovert is an Artist, Writer & Photographer. I'm an engineer.

Dude, I was trained as an engineer, went to graduate school in it, have published in peer-reviewed engineering journals, and have US and foreign patents. I've laid out silicon and built piles of equipment at two famous industrial labs. So what? Who cares? That has NO BEARING on the discussion at hand. I don't do that work anymore for a variety of reasons, business and personal, none of which are relevant to this discussion.

This is yet another ad hominem attack. My qualifications do not matter. Neither do yours. This is a fallacious argument.

What matters in science is what data one has, not who one is.

There is no data on the break-in phenomenon, only anecdotal claims and nonsense.

Where is the proof that break-in happens? Where are the papers from capacitor manufacturers? All we have is anecdotal claims by audiophiles. That's not science, that's pseudo-science.
 
I'm going to accept that many here can not hear what others can hear and not go there anymore since this is the Capacitor Abyss and we should keep to a technical discussion for some reason.

I'm going to accept that we can't measure everything. Conrad mentioned 14 nanometer stuff in a recent post. Well an electron is 5 femtometers in diameter, which is 6 orders of magnitude SMALLER, plenty of room for those valuable electrons to move around in different ways due to many different reasons.

I hope others can accept that folks hear differently. Just like sight some need correction some don't.

Now back to the Abyss.
 
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Did you not see where I said we can't measure everything? If you believe we can you are obviously not scientifically knowledgeable enough to make the claim that the ears can't be trusted and we must show instrumented evidence of what we hear. We can't measure that, yet, in many cases. Instruments are not set up to do that and we in many cases don't know what to measure. If you are set in your ways that everything can be measured, I'm sorry for your lack of expected improvements in man finding out about his world.

If it can't be measured I need to see a credible argument as to why. I have not.

No non-audiophile capacitor manufacturer makes any claim about break-in. Not one. Provide me with some papers from one. Show me something. I called a bunch to collect data to debunk this. All of them told me there isn't a shred of data in support of break-in, and the capacitor's properties are fully formed in the first few microseconds of testing.

This is not science, it is a combination of pseudo-science, pathological science, wishful thinking, and a desire to have secret and magickal knowledge that others do not.

I'll stick with physics and engineering. It's worked out pretty well for the entirety of civilization.

I'm sorry you can't hear what others hear, that won't happen but don't call those folks liars simply because they don't provide yet to be invented instrument results to prove their point. You are not the ultimate authority on what folks can hear and neither are instruments. Sorry but until you use the other persons experiences your claims of it isn't true cause you didn't provide instrumented data are just technobabble.

More ad hominem attacks.

Science and engineering do not work this way. We need evidence and reproducible experiments to verify the claims, not anecdotal and unsubstantiated claims about purported properties which even the manufacturers say are not real.
 
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