Electrolytics don't have a burn in time so much as they 'form up'.
That can take a while, until formed the cap will be less efficient. Give it some time.
That can take a while, until formed the cap will be less efficient. Give it some time.
Do electrolytic caps need burn in?
@manthik If the caps needing to form up is what is happening, leaving the caps charged is the best way to do it. Cycling it takes longer- weeks or months instead of days. @jb0194 If new caps in a PSU, will the temporary inefficiency manifest as possibly less responsiveness to peak demands by music at higher listening volumes? In other ways?Yes, and in other ways. We won't even let our stuff out of the shop until it has at least a day on it, because it sounds so 'dead' prior to that. You can measure the form up too- as the caps get more efficient, the voltage on them goes up and they also run at a lower temperature. |
After sorting through all the choices, I finally settled on a huge pair of polypropylene 1000uF caps made for commercial power supply applications (solar power). I found them cheap on ebay. I got them custom mounted. All the highs and the details are there. Very well balanced cap.The value of the part can make a difference. There is more nuance to power supply design than initially meets the eye. If the cap values are too large, the impedance curve of the output of the supply might not be a good bypass at high frequencies even though the overall output impedance might be lower. If too small, bass might not be well bypassed. This can change depending on the performance of the caps used- better caps can often be larger values. But you have to watch your timing constants (as a general rule of thumb, the TC of the power supply should be at least an octave lower than the TC of the audio circuit its supplying, and not much more!) and if you have regulation, many regulators won't be happy with larger values (and might have shorter lifespans too). This is the tip of the iceberg! I would not write off conventional electrolytics though; if used correctly they can perform as well as film caps. If. Used. Correctly. YMMV but IME we've had terrible luck with using more exotic electrolytic capacitors; they don't seem to work as well as more middle-of-the-road parts. Quite often they wind up sounding dark. |