[sdiy] Hand-matching capacitors for filter stages

[cheater cheater]

Tom,
good question regarding the tolerance vs material. I'll be thrilled to
find out what is going on there.


Regarding hand matching capacitors: Is your time worth the price difference?

D.

On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 15:59, Tom Wiltshire <tom at electricdruid.net> wrote:
> It seems to me that some people spend quite a lot of time matching
> transistors for a fairly marginal benefit, given the quality of modern
> transistors. You may be a dedicated transistor-matcher and disagree with me.
> Fair enough - I admire your dedication.
>
> However, capacitors are a different story. I often use polystyrene
> capacitors for filters, since these are widely regarded as the best, and
> breadboard experiments I've done do tend to support this. What I'm wondering
> is how much of this improvement is due to the material (e.g. polystyrene)
> and how much of it is down to the fact that the expensive capacitors are 1%
> tolerance rather than 5%, 10%, or worse. Improving the matching between
> filter stages is important for the filter response and sound of the filter,
> and given that l use 1% metal film resistors in these circuits, the
> capacitor component tolerance has to be one of the largest variations
> between stages.
>
> So the question is - does anyone match capacitors for filters? Could I get
> some cheaper-but-still-quite-decent capacitors (like a 5% polypropylene film
> cap, WIMA FKP2 for example) and then hand match them to get 1% tolerance (or
> even better)? Does anyone have any experience to share?
>
> Thanks,
> Tom
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