The next best Tweak ???

This is really going to show my naïveté so I hope I'm shown mercy from the membership here but the 1000uf capacitors I found at various e-tailers and retailers have varying voltages. I've seen 1000µF 6.3V caps all the way to 1000uF 50V caps. Does the voltage of the capacitor matter in this tweak? I realize caps are cheap and I should probably just try different caps but I really want to minimize the trial and error. The Radio Shack one is 35V so I may give that a try first but the other caps would have to be ordered and the shipping rates I'm being charged is taking the fun out of this tweak. Thanks

This tweak definitely reminded me of Elizabeth's tweak with the pigtail wire and ferrite core. I've had good results with that tweak. I might give this one a shot as well as it requires no soldering. Any specific brand of wire or capacitor to use? Wire wise I only have some old extensions cords readily available that I can use. I got rid of my excess speaker wire some time ago.

Thanks Ozzy and Elizabeth for sharing. I went to Radioshack today because it is right near my office. They did have 1000uf 50V caps for $2.79 but I decided to just opt for the 35V 1000uf caps along with the 6V alkaline lantern batteries. I couldn't tell which end of the caps was positive or negative because they weren't marked. I just saw arrows pointing from left to right on the Nichicon caps so I put the arrow tip on the positive terminal and the rear on the negative terminal. I did manage to find some 16 AWG speaker wire to use.

When I was about to hook up the Unclestu/Ozzy tweak up to my speakers I saw I had Elizabeth's copper wire and ferrite core pigtail tweak still in place. I then decided to merge the 2 tweaks. So I've got the battery and cap on 1 end of a 16 AWG speaker wire. On the other side of that wire I have the 10AWG wire with ferrite cores on the bottom. It is quite the site.

Now regarding sound improvements I don't know if this tweak did anything. I'm not sure if I heard a difference. I was employing this tweak in my HT/multi channel music set-up. I think with certain recordings I heard a little more treble and even a bit more brightness but with movies I think I heard more clarity in dialogue and sound fx. I'm going to spend more time with this tweak in place to hear if I can pick up any more improvements in sound. If not I have 2 spare batteries for my emergency flashlights. My HT set-up is solid state gear from Oppo, Outlaw Audio and Emotiva.

Ozzy. With the 6V battery/capacitor tweak did you have to have it charge up like the IC tweak you did? If so how long did it need to charge up?

Thanks

Hi Ozzy

It turns out I did misread the capacitor ends. (I feel like a dumbarse for getting it wrong.) When I was done listening to music with the battery tweak in place I removed the whole tweak and hooked them up to the negative terminals on a small Class D amp. I think it is supposed to put out 15 watts/channel max. I thought the set-up needed to be charged up from reading your posts so I ended up feeding as much power as the little amp could to the battery/capacitors. I left it on for the whole night and day and when I got home I found the caps had leaked all over the batteries. Oh well. The batteries are still good though.

I went back to Radioshack and got the 50V rated 1000uf caps because they had no more 35V rated caps. I re-did everything properly this time and will try to evaluate if this tweak will make a difference in my mostly solid state systems.

Thanks again

Hi Ozzy

I got the polarity correct this time and didn't blow up the caps. I'm still evaluating the tweak though. I need to do more listening with it in place and haven't been able to carve out the time.

Hi Pixelphoto

I learned what you stated the hard way after I had blown the original caps I had purchased. When I got the new 50V rated caps I took a look at the leads and saw the differences in length. Then I recognized the arrow pointing to the negative side. I feel dumb about what happened but hopefully this will help any novice.

Finally I'm able to give an update. Over the long weekend I spent time listening to a system that had the capacitor battery tweak in place on the speakers. I too found an improvement in dynamics. On 1 of my favorite concert Blu Rays I was able to turn up the volume a couple of notches and not get any listener fatigue. Everything was loud and clear. I got a small improvement in bass.

On another system where I installed this tweak on the speaker end I believe I got the same performance as an Enacom Harmonix speaker filter. I'm contemplating now if I should just part with the Enacoms. I'll do more comparisons before I sell the Enacoms.

I may now try this capacitor battery tweak on the amplifier side and put Elizabeth's pigtail wire tweak on the speaker end.

I'm getting very good dynamics along with clean/clear details with the 6V battery/capacitor tweak on the amp side and Elizabeth's ferrite core wire tweak on the speaker side in my secondary system. This was a fun and inexpensive tweak to put in place. I may try the 10K caps at a later date.

Hi Ozzy

To recap. You've got 2 sets of 6V Lantern Batteries with 10K Caps at the negative speaker ends of your bi-wireable speakers. You also have 6V Lantern Batteries with 10K Caps on your amp end. Then you have the 9V batteries and 10K caps on your ICs from source to preamp and preamp to amp?

I'm just trying to get a sense of how much is needed to get the results you have. So far I just have 6V Lantern Batteries with 1000uf 50V caps on my amp side. On the speaker end I have wire and ferrite choke cores. My results have been good to my ears. I may try more of the 6 Volt batteries with higher value caps later.