Richard Marsh published an article in Audio Magazine in 1980 that detailed the range of parasitic loss factors inherent in capacitors. Dialectric Absorption and Dissipation Factor in films, and Equivalent Series Resistance in electrolytics. He compared mylar, polystyrene and polypropylene and teflon films and found each had a distinct effect on how a circuit sounds. The race was truly on after that. Prior to this publication only Mark Levinson was featuring Wima caps, but soon everyone was going boutique. I think military, aerospace, and medical equipment advances created the market and audio was an accidental beneficiary at first.
