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1. It's not about money 2. What's musicality?

"Comparing a 15.00 russian teflon cap to a 150 "audiophile" cap is nonsensical."

No it isn't. Especially with Soviet era stock. I use 4P1L tubes. They replaced 2a3s, 300bs and 45s which I had previously built with. I bought 150 for around $4 each. Even more true with the Russian teflon caps. Outside of the Soviet system and in other countries they would be substantially more expensive.

So what's "musicality"? Is it "flow", is it "foot tapping".......

It depends what you're listening FOR. I'm a professional musician. Doesn't make me superior in defining musicality than non-musicians, but at least it means I've spent many years trying to make sounds that are musical to my ears. My priorities are instrumental timbre and detail. I want to hear everything, not miss out on low level detail, and I want instruments especially vocals to sound as close as possible to the sounds I'm familiar with in real life. Those are my particular priorities.

I've mostly played with acoustic instruments, classical and jazz. An electronic musician might have other priorities. And that's the thing - priorities. You often hear "bass slam" as a priority. I'm a bass player. An acoustic bass doesn't "slam". That's an electronic artefact. Then we have all the other listeners that talk about "flow" or "foot tapping". Both good things and should be there, but how do you balance these against other priorities? And what about "soundstage"? It's of very little interest to me. I just want to hear the music - I can imagine in my own head where the instrumentalists were placed.

Bottom line - I don't think we can easily define "musicality". Clearly I feel the Russian teflons are musical otherwise I wouldn't use them. But all this is subjective.

You can always do as suggested - A-B test caps in line with the signal. Sure - they should be indistinguishable from no cap in the best of all worlds. But that won't happen, so we're back to subjective choices.



Edits: 02/16/17
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