[sdiy] electrolytic coupling capacitors

[blitz]

jeez, $4 each, I'd say that's a little pricey for this project.  I 
will stick with the electrolytics I have, still a bit unsure on the 
polarity though.  I just read something that stated you want the 
greatest impedance to be on the foil side (negative?), is this right?

-Joe

At 1:11 AM -0500 11/1/04, Glen wrote:
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>At 04:12 PM 10/31/04 , blitz wrote:
>
>>I'm building a small mixer with gain and need to couple the the
>>output to remove DC.  From circuit analysis I need a 10uF cap in
>>series on the inputs and output to remove the DC offset.  10uF is
>>pretty large, so the only available caps I have are electrolytic with
>>polarity.  Can I use an electrolyitic in place of a non-polarity
>>coupling capacitor?  How do I know which end the +/- should be
>>connected to?
>
>Just in case you didn't know, you can actually purchase mylar caps in the
>10uF range. They're much larger physically, and they cost more than an
>electrolytic, but you don't have to worry about polarity. Some people also
>say that they sound better. There are supposed to be some quirky nonlinear
>properties involved with electrolytics.
>
>Here's a link for a 10uF Mylar cap, in case you want to pursue that route:
>
>http://mcm.newark.com/NewarkWebCommerce/mcm/en_US/endecaSearch/partDetail.js
>p?SKU=31-0330&N=4
>
>I'm sure you can also find these through other vendors. This is just the
>first reference I found.
>
>You can also get non-polarized electrolytics, but these are really two
>polarized electrolytics wired in series, one "turned around backwards"
>compared to the other one. Since your signal is then going through two
>electrolytics, I would expect possibly more signal corruption than with the
>polarized variety.
>
>Personally, for a "basic" mixer, I would probably go with electrolytics. If
>I wanted to build some really nice preamp, I might experiment with the
>large valued mylar caps.
>
>
>later,
>Glen