Big caps v Little caps


I'm not an EE guy, so its ok to talk down to me. I'm just curious. I've noticed 'older' amps (Robertson Audio Forty-Ten) and certain brands (eg Hafler) and 'unusual" brands (Pathos) use just a couple of giant capacitors, while most of the mainstream equipment I see, seem to use lots of smaller caps.
I bet someone can explain this to satisfy my curiosity?
lester_ears

Showing 1 response by marakanetz

First of all, the high-voltage filter capacitors have a certain size and in most cases even a low-capacitance/high voltage filter caps are quite large. It will probably require much larger space to mount 10 100uf/300V caps than to mount 2 x 500uf/300V + the price of first ones is technically much higher than in second case.
Higher collector voltage for SS or higher plate B+ voltage for tube amps dictates higher capacitance for filtering larger pulses and certainly higher energy storage to supply the output stage during peaks.