Thanks to moomoos I was able to loan 6 units of the Telos speaker caps from C&O to try out at home. I got interested in them after reading moomoos opinion here.

The caps are well machined and gold plated. The base material is copper.



What you do is insert them into a spare pair of speaker posts (in case your speaker has 4 posts and you're only using 2), like so:



I asked for 6 units so that I can cover my fronts and center. Well, I can say that the difference is immediately noticeable. No need for break in whatsoever. With the caps on the background is noticeably quieter. It's like the noise floor has dropped and it's blacker. You can hear subtle sounds better and images were more focused.

However, it was not all good news because the whole sound character became darker. Some of the shimmery highs and air were lost. My wife (who I also roped in to listen) described it as more muted. Pulling out all the caps restored the liveliness to the music. But I did miss the quieter background.

So what to do? I then tried a compromise, just plug the fronts and don't cover the center. For the moment this combination seems acceptable to me. I get a quieter background, without loosing too much of the highs. The quietness is very appealing actually. For example when watching an episode of Lost, one of those scenes in the jungle at night with just 2 people talking - the quietness does allow the speech and some of the subtle jungle noises to be more distinct. Voices are also more focused and warmer.

If I were to relate it to pictures, it would be like turning up the contrast and decreasing a bit of the brightness. Anyway, I'll listen and play around with them a bit more before deciding.

This post has been edited by jchong: Aug 1 2009, 05:06 PM

Yep,i intend to try out 1st the rca cap when my Denon avr-3808 arrives.

Are you getting the Cardas or Telos RCA caps?

I'm using the Cardas RCA caps on my AVR now.

Not sure yet which one to get.

wou.... Bro jchong...
you're welcome.

your write up very familar la....
Its like the sort of stuff we get in BD and hifi magazines review.

bravo, get ready, you'll are enrolled in Head-Hunters list
Haha

This is interesting. My speakers are all bi-wired (with bananas) so I can't use the caps, but I'm curious about the RCA caps. Where & how can I get these? How much?

from C&O ipoh,
list price RM130/box of 10pcs (RCA gold caps)

i got the caps, and ireally dont know how much, they bundle and ask me pay a sum,haha

dont worry will not be expensive.
i heard they sold some 10k+ of those stuffs during the fair.
they demo, and customers just buy

This post has been edited by moomoos: Aug 1 2009, 06:41 PM

Cardas cap at A&L is RM6 per piece. I'm getting some also soon.

Bro, u plug at the audio side only, how about the video side? Wah~~~! Need to buy a lot leh~~~!

not necessary, you plug all is good
if your room is acoustically good,you dont neeed that many,
just tweat a bit will do

According to a fellow member whom I met today, the cardas sounds 'dead' compared to Telos on his system. Ended up with Telos.

finally someone is making sense, and its true,
well its kinda "cheap" oh....i wouldnt say that, its affordable, so you can buy both to compare

Can't comment on this but Telos sure looks much better than the plain looking Cardas. Where to find Telos in Klang Valley?

arrange with C&O to be Master Dealer
Maybe can ask them to courier ...

This post has been edited by moomoos: Aug 1 2009, 11:06 PM

if the gold speaker cap make it like "mute" try the telos platinum speaker cap. sometime its try and error as diferrent system different requirement. also try the rca cap together with the speaker cap. also one thing to mention, when trying out the telos gigs like caps and cable. a piece of advise is "back to the basic" in which take out all the other tweaking giggs you have in your system then add telos giggs one by one. you willl definitely see a vast improvement interm of sound.

ean soong 0195710383. rm110 per 10-piece pack (gold rca caps) during avshow. Platinum was ~ double price.

for Telos wan izzit?

Hmm... maybe need to try the Telos RCA caps next

However, on my system the Cardas caps did restore some liveliness.

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Added on August 2, 2009, 7:43 amOk, maybe it's time to try the Telos Platinum speaker caps next too... However, I'm not sure I'm prepared to pay ~350 for them. I suppose no harm in trying first. If they are really that good then might be worthwhile.

I am back to basics, don't have any other tweaks apart from the RCA caps and speaker caps.

This post has been edited by jchong: Aug 2 2009, 07:43 AM

Thanks bro, this is the Telos?

Will need to get 2 packs I guess, at a glance there could be 2 dozen RCA inputs on my receiver.

When we say input.....does it includes preamp input and video input? Or is it just audio input including coaxial.

My understanding is that it's all inputs, audio and video.

Should be any input bro, without the caps they could act as an RFI antenna and pollute the internal circuit.

But don't use it on the output connectors.

Thanks bro. Not to argue here but has this been proven? Any reading?

only all RCA inputs inclusive co-ax, right?
btw, does telos have speaker cap?

ya, I asked him to demo at my house:

equipment
Amp : Onkyo TX-Sr875
CD Player : Marantz CD5003
Spk cable : Pasar road 12AWG cable
spks : 16 years old pasar road Richard Allen 2.5 way

1. tested with Gold series 10 pieces : sounded warm
2. tested with platinium series 10 pieces : sounded bright

just cover some of the input RCA, he said most important is to cover the Coaxial RCA.
It is for the sound, so all audio input RCA posts if possible.
I prefer GOLD.


also tested to change the original power cord to MK plug with future tech 314 II cable, it sounded clean.

recomend to call this guy.

This post has been edited by ERN2: Aug 3 2009, 12:09 PM

Whoa, God series? Must've cost heavens.

Just kidding. Thanks for the report, appreciates it.

sorry, corrected.

Umm... see my very first post above. I was commenting on the Telos speaker caps

Nope, just my genius head working, it keeps my wallet empty so I please don't fall for it.

Oops, read too fast till I overlooked
btw, i saw there's a piece of gold sheet linking the 2 speaker connectors of the same polarity for each + & -
is there any reason for putting it?

That's just the bi-wire link. If you are not doing bi-wiring then need a link between upper and lower set of speaker posts. This applies to all speakers that are bi-wirable but you're not doing bi-wiring.

If your speaker has bi-wire posts but you're single wiring, you must have the jumper link to get both high and low frequencies.

The link can only be removed if you use bi-wire speaker cables. Low quality jumpers can affect the sound quality, you can replace them if you got extra budget.

Just to add : the improvement is very mild with my cheap set up.

sorry for late reply, but yes, for TELOS... sounds like a lot of telurs haha ...sorry... overacting..

It doesn't matter as long as u satisfied with the difference u heard

anyone bought the telos balanced cap and also the speaker caps? how much are they ? i bought the gold rca, but havent try, will try later when i get back home town

The Telos gold speaker caps are RM200 for 4 pcs. Can nego down a bit.

got such thing one kah? I thought it's ok just leave it like that
btw, can I know where to get this jumper? can buy at any av shop?

The jumpers should already provided with the speakers. But if you wanna replace higher quality ones, can buy online at Russ Andrews, FutureShop, etc. I think local shops also got.

strange, my FCC2 didn't provide at all
anyway, will go to scout at A&L
will ask for the higher quality jumpers as free gifts if jadi deal on the front speakers

How about using generic RCA caps...old AV cables lying around, cut out the cables just use the RCA plugs to cover the exposed input terminals on the amp

This post has been edited by gsdev: Aug 7 2009, 10:55 AM

Your FCC2 should have those jumpers (otherwise you'd be missing half the frequencies). Looks just like those gold sheets in my picture in the 1st post above.

My FCC2 came with those gold sheet jumpers.

Use speaker cable as jumper better than that metal thingy. Ask A&L give u free

My speakers provide jumper cable instead of metal links. Just by looking at the metals I feel uncomfortable already, like my audio signal been left unprotected.

U got elite speakers of course la

You have the KEF iQ9 right? Interesting that they use jumper cable instead of jumper links.

Mine not elite la, compared to a lot of taukeh here, mine middle-tier peasant only.

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Added on August 7, 2009, 5:14 pmYes, both iQ9 and iQ6c used jumper cables with instead of metal links. But still I replaced them with QED XT400 jumpers as I'm using that cable now.

This post has been edited by aiman04: Aug 7 2009, 05:14 PM

can i know how to use cable jumper?
i've never known that u need jumper to link the unused ports
moreover using speaker cable as jumper