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

Are you getting the Cardas or Telos RCA caps?

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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