An Interview with Chris VenHaus of VH Audio.

Speaker drivers are characterized by material composition, sensitivity, sizes, measurements, matching options, and other parameters. We as audiophiles have a good idea of what the drivers do in terms of response to music reproduction, the role of a crossover, the capacitors’ role in the crossover, a speaker’s efficiency, and more. As speaker drivers have advanced, so has the resolution. However, the drivers are not the only reason we are hearing improvements. Hidden in the speaker crossovers are capacitors.

Capacitors are the parts used in the crossover network separating and rolling the transition from woofer to midrange and midrange to tweeter, so our ribbon tweeter is not trying to put out bass guitar notes, and a triangle strike at once. That is a woofer’s job.

The capacitors are probably the least understood part of the equation in speakers, amps, preamps, and other electronics utilizing capacitors in power supplies and signal paths. Their ability to store and release stored energy in an electronic circuit also has a profound effect on the sound due to the various materials used as a dielectric and conductor. The conductive part of a capacitor may contain diverse percentages of gold, silver, copper, tinfoil conductors, various films, electrolytes, oils, beeswax, metals, and other materials used as the dielectric material. The long ingredient list means that the “audio chef” has more flavors to choose from and can combine flavors to achieve their design goals.

Some audio companies manufacture their own capacitors. Other companies buy off-the-shelf capacitors; while some manufacturers have capacitors made to a specification.

The high-end speakers and electronics we buy are composed of many parts including numerous capacitors. The capacitors in key locations of an audio circuit or speaker crossover can be very influential on the overall sound and assist in the final voicing of a product before release. Some of these capacitors may have been sourced from numerous available private companies. These capacitors are made to specific design parameters with fanatical attention to detail at cost points that can be astronomical in comparison to traditional sources. For example, a Solen 0.22 μF, 630V capacitor is under $5.00 each at Tube Depot. A Fluoropolymer Film (aka Teflon) with the same value can be up to $150.00. Thus, they are used only where the biggest benefit will be gained. Some manufacturers offer Fluoropolymer Film caps as an upgrade path, or they are included in premium models. The Fluoropolymer Film has identical electrical properties to the same sourced from DuPont (and then licensed).

There are many internet threads with capacitor shootouts, Holy Grail claims, and other discussions.

With the underground nature of this part of the capacitor world, we have an interview with a capacitor designer, Chris VenHaus of VH Audio, who sells high-end end-capacitors to both consumers and manufacturers.

JW- Greetings Mr. Chris VenHaus,

I want to thank you for taking the time to be interviewed by Secrets of Home Theater and High-Fidelity magazine.

-How long have you been an audiophile and musician?

CVH- I’ve been obsessed with music since spinning little 45s of Led Zep’s ‘Immigrant Song’ on one of those little suitcase record players since age 5. I’ve been keenly into the quality of sound since I bought my first quality audio system with paper route money at age 12. It’s been over 30 years since the purchase of my first ‘legit’ audiophile equipment which included a pair of Lumley M120 monobloc amps and Klipsch CF-4 speakers. I started playing drums at 14, and electric guitar in my 20’s,

JW- How many different instruments do you play, and how do you decide which one you will play on a given night?

CVH- I play drums and electric guitar. I mostly play guitar now because it’s an instrument that I feel I have the most room to grow on, and I also love building ‘partscasters’ which allows me the ability to tweak the sound, as well as playability of the guitars in my collection.

JW- Do you think being a musician has made you a better designer of audio components over the years?

CVH- Absolutely. Aside from being generally ‘OCD’ as it relates to ‘improving things’ since I was a kid… I learned very early on how small tweaks to drums, and even the act of tuning a drum yielded very significant variations which I could tailor to suit the sound I wanted in my head.

JW- What motivated you to start building and designing capacitors?

CVH- I wanted better parts for my own system than are currently available on the market.

JW- When did you have the awareness that your original V-cap TFTF (having now achieved audiophile cult status) was doing what you wanted, and had product viability?

CVH- After I installed them into my Lumley monoblocs and heard such a profound difference.

JW- There are several dielectric options with capacitors from polypropylene, Teflon (PTFE), Fluoropolymer, Polystyrene, Beeswax, Oil, Metallized Polypropylene, Electrolytics, and others. How did you arrive at FP as your final choice? Listening, measurements, or both?

CVH- I had extensive experience with PTFE, PFA, and FEP with my cable building, and concluded early in that the electrical properties of Teflon (more specifically – fluoropolymers) were a ‘holy grail’ dielectric. This was found after empirical measurements, as well as a long history of listening to various dielectrics in my cable and wire design prototypes.

It is a very difficult material to work with physically/mechanically and is also extremely expensive.

JW- On the topic of dielectric and construction, you recently developed a new oil capacitor, the ODAM, which has garnered rave reviews from many DIY fans and others. What were your goals with this capacitor and what can you tell us about it while not revealing any of the protected intellectual property in their construction?

CVH- One of my primary goals was to mitigate the mechanical plate movement that occurs when AC is being passed through the capacitor but do it without diminishing the electrical properties. This is easier said than done. Other companies have tried, but in doing so, the electrical parameters have been compromised.

JW- Do users frequently use a bypass capacitor and which one is commonly used?

CVH- It depends on the component and user preference. I typically don’t recommend bypasses unless the value is over 1 uF, and even then, only after the customer has allowed the primary capacitor to break-in. If, after break-in, they feel they need more ‘air/sparkle’ to open highs a bit further, a bypass may be used, but I don’t like to go any more than 1 to 5% of the primary cap’s value.

JW- How do you calculate the value in a bypass capacitor? Some in the DIY world recommend caution when trying to use a bypass capacitor with a ribbon tweeter. What has been your experience regarding this?

CVH- This is very listener dependent. But as a rule of thumb, I like to stay in the area of 1-5% of the primary cap value. Power supply bypasses are an exception, where I like to go in 10% increments in a cascade. Not a perfect analogy, but bypassing is like envisioning a near full-range speaker driver that you need to add another HF speaker to get that last bit of frequency extension… In this analogy, the goal is to select a ‘tweeter’ that doesn’t overlap too much with the primary driver, because that overlap can create discontinuities. Same thing with a bypass cap. You are only trying to augment the primary capacitor where it becomes less efficient.

JW- What advantages does the ODAM have structurally, and sonically, and where can they be used? Are they heat sensitive as some of the Beeswax designs are, or other oil capacitors prohibiting use in a power supply?

CVH- The ODAM’s have a higher heat rating than typical metalized capacitors due to the advanced properties of the film and metallization process. I rate the ODAMs to be safely used up to 105 degrees C. I’ll leave the sonics assessment up to others since I am biased 😊

JW- This capacitor has a spinoff, the “Tone capacitor” which is directed at the instrument market, specifically the Fender series of electric guitars. I understand you are a very big fan of Fender guitars. How did this product, the Tone Capacitor get welcomed into the marketplace?

CVH- My inspiration for this series was my dear friend, Brian Kelly- who is a retired jazz guitar player at the epicenter of the burgeoning rock guitar scene in the early to late 60’s in Cincinnati, and then Nashville. He was a session player in Cincinnati before he was 18 years old, and had worked with people like James Brown, and Tommy Bolin, and was once called by Lonnie Mack as the best young guitarist in Cincinnati. Brian is also my mentor on all things guitar-related. During one of our conversations, he mentioned how in the ’60s, he and his buddy ‘Seymour’ would go to old radio/TV repair stores and sift through their dumpsters to cut out capacitors from old radios, for use in their guitar tone controls. Brian initially cut out the ones that looked ‘new’ and still good… but Seymour said that those are “not the ones to get… but rather the ‘leaky’, nasty-looking ones”. Having already gone through the R&D of both the OIMP and ODAM series, this struck me as unusual, so I had to find out why they’d want to use those old, leaky PIO caps for guitar tone controls. My goal wasn’t to reverse engineer something similar, but rather find the mechanism that would result in such desirable sound in a guitar and see if I could meld that with all the knowledge I had acquired over the last 20 years making capacitors for the audiophile market. Lastly, the ‘Seymour’ I am referencing was a young Seymour Duncan, of Seymour Duncan pickups.

JW- How was the initial response since many musicians do not want to change a thing when they enjoy the sound they have now (the opposite of an audiophile)?

CVH- During beta testing, I knew I had a ‘winner’ because the testers (all of whom were very experienced musicians who had run the gamut with caps on the market) were all making the same comments about how much more usable range their tone controls had before getting ‘muddy’. Also, when the tone control wasn’t engaged, how much more of the guitar’s ‘unplugged’ character came through. One misconception is that a tone capacitor does not affect the sound if the tone control isn’t engaged. That simply isn’t the case. The aforementioned ‘Brian’ said his original ’51 Telecaster had a very special sound to it that wasn’t the same when he pulled the original cap out and put in the ‘new’ caps that were available in the ’60s.

JW- Was there some resistance to evaluating your “new” caps as established caps in the famous revered guitars today which sound very good and have very loyal fans?

CVH- No. I am fortunate enough to have worked with so many wonderful people who trust that I am not going to waste their time 😊

JW- Conventional thought is the presence of an “audiophile market” and a “musician market” which now seem to be converging. What can you tell us about this phenomenon, and some of the musician feedback from use in guitars?

CVH- I’m not sure I really see this as a new ‘convergence’. There has always been a segment of the audiophile market that contains musicians. It’s natural for many musicians to also really dig quality sound but crossing that threshold into full-blown ‘audiophile-land’ requires a certain type of musician who puts a premium on the quality of recording playback, listening for pleasure… versus creating music, and coveting their own ‘tone’.

JW- How has the reception been going from a common instrument “Orange Drop” capacitor to an “audiophile grade” capacitor?

CVH- For those who really put a premium on their tone, and have the experience with ‘rolling’ caps in their instruments, the reception has been overwhelmingly great. The best ‘endorsement’ is that most replace the caps in all their guitars with the TONE caps, once they hear in one guitar. It’s sort of an ongoing joke amongst guitarists that we can’t own just one or two guitars… Many of my customers own 5-10 or more instruments.

JW- Has the “traditional” sound been cause for concern with some musicians wanting the sound they are familiar with or is there a resolution or “tone” level they embrace and discover “another gear” in their guitar?

CVH- There are a couple of ‘camps’ in the guitar-playing world. Many want to be able to have tones of the guitar heroes they heard when growing up… while others are trying to find their own ‘voice’ or tone that hints at their heroes, but make that sound all their own. The TONE series was developed to give a nod to the ‘old’ while also embracing the ‘new’. It was really my goal to allow for the ‘classic’ tones of those old PIO caps that make guitars sound less ‘electronic’ sounding, and more like how they sound when you play them unplugged, where there is just a ‘vibe/character’ you get that sometimes disappears when plugged-in. In addition, these caps are meant to provide a wider tonal palette as you adjust the tone control.

JW- What are your favorite 3 electric guitars,

CVH- Fender Stratocaster, Fender Telecaster, and Gibson Explorer.

JW- and top 5 guitarists?

CVH- Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, David Gilmour, Ritchie Blackmore, and SRV.

JW- And your top 5 drummers?

CVH- John Bonham, Steve Gadd, Neil Peart, Bernard Purdie, Ian Paice.

JW- -Moving on to your audiophile-grade of caps which are just too big to put in a Fender, how would you describe the break-in process, and the sound one can expect over a $2-$3 capacitor rated at +/- 10%-20% compared with a +/- 1-2% tolerance capacitor

CVH- Capacitor (and cable/wire) break-in is a bit of a dark area. I think we may solve cold fusion before we know exactly why capacitors have a period of break-in. However, I have too much personal experience, as well as 20+ years of anecdotal feedback from customers that it is a real thing and exhibits the same pattern. The capacitors settle-in, within 20-50 hours and sound better than what they replaced. Then, they go through an ‘awkward” period whereby the listener can sometimes experience a ‘two steps forward, one step back’ progression in sound quality before the sound “locks-in” and plateaus. This is usually the 200–300-hour area for most capacitors and wire, and 400-600 hours for anything that has a Teflon dielectric. I’d also mention that break-in may have as much a mechanical element to it as purely electrical, in that the microscopic movements of the materials when AC is moving through it may be helpful to relieve mechanical stresses in the materials as they age. Regarding capacitor tolerances, when dealing with stereo music playback, tightly matched R & L channels will typically result in not only better precision of L/R soundstage, but also soundstage depth, and that overall ‘holographic’ presentation.

JW- Do you have any new capacitors you are planning on releasing in the next 12 months?

CVH- I always have something brewing in the ‘skunkworks’, but I won’t disclose new products (beyond beta testers) until they are ready for ‘primetime’…

JW- Do you anticipate any further improvement in capacitors or is the performance leveling off now, barring a new material discovery?

CVH- Materials and processes always have the potential to push the boundaries, so I think there is always some room to investigate and move the bar forward, even if it just means a different ‘flavor’ for certain types of equipment or listening preferences.

JW- I would like to thank you for your time and for sharing your insights and expertise with this fascinating, evolving area of audio reproduction.

VH Audio