Electronic – Which capacitor for DC blocking in audio applications

audiodecoupling-capacitorspeakersvoltage

Which capacitor (electrolytic, film, ceramic) do you use for DC blocking in audio applications? From what I have seen most people use electrolytic capacitors.
But, also from power decoupling theory we know that we need to add a 10uF electrolytic capacitor with a 0.1uF ceramic capacitor for removing the high frequency components.

But, isn't it the same idea for DC blocking applications? Shouldn't we put electrolytic and ceramic capacitor in parallel?

Best Answer

For audio applications (as opposed to decoupling) there really aren't any high frequency transients to deal with, so a capacitor with a self-resonant frequency well above the audio range should be sufficient.

An electrolytic capacitor is of course polarized, and only useful if the DC+signal is always unipolar. Also, an electrolytic capacitor has a shorter lifetime than many other types.

A ceramic capacitor in the high capacitance dielectric types will have significant change in capacitance with applied voltage. This can add distortion in audio applications.

A film capacitor isn't very space efficient, but it is reliable, non-polarized and has very good performance in audio applications.