What Caps are these?

[Y-3]

What kind of cap are the yellowish gold ones on the left (16 of them)?



going to change the audio capacitors on my soundcard and is still wondering which one to get.

the stock ones on the soundcard = Jamicon 22uf 16v

should i get Blackgate standard 22uf 16v or these gold ones or just short them?
read about it that no caps on audio path would be best, it may not be stable however.

can someone exprienced with modding soundcard give me some advise?

thanks

[tazwegion]

Re: What Caps are these?

Hmmmm... Blackgate are highly regarded (and expensive) components, you do of course realise changing said capacitors will forever alter the sound reproduction of the card?

AFAIK Elna also make reasonable sound card quality capacitors

[Y-3]

Re: What Caps are these?

woh thanks Taz. elna "audio capacitors"
the sil II has 22uf 16v ones. gonna find out how much they are 1st.

anyone happen to know which are the power supply capacitors for the opamp on this card?

[shadow]

Re: What Caps are these?

Bright yellow caps always remind me of Fuhjyyu which is known as a bad cap manufacturer. However that does not say that there are Fuhjyyu's unless you can read that on the side of them.

You should check out Logistics posts in the audio equipment section on this forum. He posted some stuff about recapping Sound Blasters and performing various other tweaks to them.

[Logistics]

Re: What Caps are these?

Looks like a modded X-Fi with alternative output opamps. Did you find that on the Head-Fi forums?

The trouble with cards like this is there simply isn't room to be throwing in appropriately sized film caps on every channel. The card becomes a compromise. There is a huge difference between the best electrolytic cap you can use for audio and the best cap you can use for audio. Due to the cards multi-channel nature, space becomes a huge concern so it's reasonable to just use the best electrolytic you can. However, each of the electrolytics in the signal path should still be bypassed with a .1uF film. This will result in better high frequency characteristics, though the electrolytic will still crud up the sound quite a bit.

As far as removing the decoupling caps from the signal path and just shorting the traces, yes, in some situations this is technically better. However, if you are using headphones directly off the card, you don't want to do this as it can damage your headphones. If you're outputting to an external piece of equipment like powered speakers or an amplifier, they will likely have their own decoupling caps on their input stage so it won't matter. Not all opamps are designed to run this way, however. I know on my Live! it was not possible to directly couple the DAC and output opamp.

[Y-3]

Re: What Caps are these?

thanks logistics