Wasn't gonna post this...

[anthonyTD]

Jez,
I too have comented on this in past threads relating to upgrade fuses.
And I agree with most of what you have written here, the only reason a fuse could posibly have any affect over another is due to its resistance, or posible bottle neck affect to large instantaneous current swings.
Now, as you quite rightly stated; a fuse is designed to be the weakest link in the chain, it is meant to go before anything else; ie; tracks, wiring etc.
My own personal findings with these fuses; to have any affect, is; that they cannot be the same rating as a standard like for like fuse, and therefore have lower resistance, which inturn in some equipment would relate similarly to what Alan [Firebottle] was sugesting, ie; removing the fuse all together, and replacing it temporarily with a thick piece of wire, and I am with alan on this, as I am sure it would have the same desired affect.
Unfortunetly though, in both cases, ie; the upgraded fuse, and the piece of wire, the equipment in question would no longer posses the same level of safety, as it had with the original standard fuse fitted [of this I am certain going on past experience]
I have witnessed this first hand, and have seen with my own eyes the damage these types of fuses can cause in certain types of equipment, when they failed to do their job!
Yes, as with many things Audio, I do believe that such things can have a sonic affect, THIS IS THE PART WHERE Jez and I will mostly always disagree, but we are both grown ups, and I am sure we will always have the respect for each other to agree to disagree on such matters.
All I am saying is; be careful where you fit these things, and if they are in bits of kit that you tend to leave on 24/7, my advice would be ; turn the kit off when not in use!

Ok I'll take the bait.. for now.
First of all I don't believe what your ears tell you... I wouldn't believe it if MY ears told me it neither! Impossible is invariant so "maybe it really does have an effect somehow" is not an option. It doesn't.

What a fuse may or may not do to electricity passing through it is irrelevant. It easy to design a power supply (most fuses are obviously in power supplies) in which even if you deliberately fed 10 Volts of the most manky interference etc into the power supply, less than 1PPM would be measurable at the output of the supply. A fuse is in effect a resistor of very low value, say 0.01R, even 10Amps flowing through this will generate only 0.1V across it. By the time the mains voltage has passed through transformer, rectifiers, smoothing caps, probably RC filtration and then usually a voltage regulator, any variations in the output due to the fuse will be less than the random movement of electrons in a piece of wire!

Graphene is the best conductor known but why would you want the best conductor as a resistor? Unless a fuse is a resistor it cannot dissipate power and cannot blow! This kind of messes with the whole point of having a fuse... If it is graphene, the conductor must be incredibly thin, or mixed with other things, to create resistance...

In the case of a speaker fuse, or one at the output of an amplifier and not within the negative feedback loop, the fuse passes the whole AC signal current and if rated low enough to have any chance of blowing and saving the speaker will vary in resistance over each cycle of low frequency and thereby generate distortion, mainly third harmonic in nature.

[Marco]

Hi Anthony,

Could you expand on this:

My own personal findings with these fuses; to have any affect, is; that they cannot be the same rating as a standard like for like fuse, and therefore have lower resistance

In terms of the bit in bold, why not?

Basically, I don't understand why, say, a 5A 'audiophile fuse' can't be the same rating as a 5A standard fuse? Is it to do with their respective internal constructions or what?

In terms of Gaz's revelations, I can completely relate to what he's experienced, as out with of my Copper amp, all my gear is fitted with 'audiophile fuses', from Hi-Fi Tuning, simply because I heard the same [genuine] sonic improvements he did with the SR Blacks, albeit at less cost.

Whilst engineers like Jez are perfectly entitled to question and/or disagree with the views expressed on threads like this, I think it's very important that it's done in such a way so as not to stifle the desire of people to relate their valid audio experiences to fellow enthusiasts, in the hope that whatever it is they're recommending may be of use to others, as that's fundamentally what hi-fi forums, especially this one, are about: the sharing of experiences.

Therefore, sceptics should always play the ball, not the man, or in other words criticise/attack the opinion expressed, not the person behind it.

Now whether those experiences/opinions being shared align with our own or not, or whether or not they fit with our 'world view' or scientific sensibilities, is moot, as is the requirement of those relating them to 'prove' anything other than, to their ears, differences/sonic gains were heard. No-one here, after all, is submitting a scientific thesis for formal appraisal!

It's simply about telling others in an informal way how you improved the sound of your stereo, and therefore afterwards up to others to decide for themselves whether they consider there's some mileage in what's being recommended or not.

One thing I'll *never* allow here is people being scared to share those experiences for fear of being ridiculed by some blinkered dogmatist, scientific or otherwise, convinced that he or she knows it all and is always right, no matter if the laws of physics appear to be on their side.

Long live the free-thinkers on this earth, with genuinely open and inquisitive minds. *That* will always be the AoS way!

Marco.

[anthonyTD]

Bump.

Jez,
I too have comented on this in past threads relating to upgrade fuses.
And I agree with most of what you have written here, the only reason a fuse could posibly have any affect over another is due to its resistance, or posible bottle neck affect to large instantaneous current swings.
Now, as you quite rightly stated; a fuse is designed to be the weakest link in the chain, it is meant to go before anything else; ie; tracks, wiring etc.
My own personal findings with these fuses; to have any affect, is; that they cannot be the same rating as a standard like for like fuse, and therefore have lower resistance, which inturn in some equipment would relate similarly to what Alan [Firebottle] was sugesting, ie; removing the fuse all together, and replacing it temporarily with a thick piece of wire, and I am with alan on this, as I am sure it would have the same desired affect.
Unfortunetly though, in both cases, ie; the upgraded fuse, and the piece of wire, the equipment in question would no longer posses the same level of safety, as it had with the original standard fuse fitted [of this I am certain going on past experience]
I have witnessed this first hand, and have seen with my own eyes the damage these types of fuses can cause in certain types of equipment, when they failed to do their job!
Yes, as with many things Audio, I do believe that such things can have a sonic affect, THIS IS THE PART WHERE Jez and I will mostly always disagree, but we are both grown ups, and I am sure we will always have the respect for each other to agree to disagree on such matters.
All I am saying is; be careful where you fit these things, and if they are in bits of kit that you tend to leave on 24/7, my advice would be ; turn the kit off when not in use!

[Macca]

I will of course say that a fuse can have no effect and this is a complete waste of time and money... and no I don't "trust anyone's ears" on this... ".

Would you trust your own ears, then? I'm as sceptical as you are but if Gaz is saying there is a big difference then I'm inclined to think something is going on. I'd be happier if I knew for certain that he has not changed anything else that may be a more rational reason for an improvement.

The fact is that if the fuse alone affects sound quality all bets are off about pretty much everything and that is just a little bit scary.

[Gazjam]

Know a guy over on the Wam who trusts his ears less than what he can measure.
Has actually said it sounds better to him but doesn't want it, as it measures worse!
Different strokes I guess..and thats ok.

Martin,
Literally, only thing I'd changed was the fuse.

Not a believer in foo personally, (gave it up with the green pen on CDs!) but there seemed to be sound scientific reasons for at least the POSSIBILITY of something here with these fuses?
(The hundreds of extremely positive comments and the 30 day trial didn't do any harm either.)

I dont really do Dogma of any kind, so try to keep an open mind but always always need to near things for myself.
i cant explain it rationally either, it just gave my Transporter a huge kick up the arse and I've never heard my digital sound anywhere near as good as this before.

One coming for the preamp too.

Would you trust your own ears, then? I'm as sceptical as you are but if Gaz is saying there is a big difference then I'm inclined to think something is going on. I'd be happier if I knew for certain that he has not changed anything else that may be a more rational reason for an improvement.

The fact is that if the fuse alone affects sound quality all bets are off about pretty much everything and that is just a little bit scary.

[Arkless Electronics]

Would you trust your own ears, then? I'm as sceptical as you are but if Gaz is saying there is a big difference then I'm inclined to think something is going on. I'd be happier if I knew for certain that he has not changed anything else that may be a more rational reason for an improvement.

The fact is that if the fuse alone affects sound quality all bets are off about pretty much everything and that is just a little bit scary.

It's a big IF... and I say that even if 1000 people say they hear a huge difference they are still all imagining it and that the power of expectation bias is responsible for SO much of what people "hear" in hi fi..... but yes, all bets would be off about pretty much everything and it would be fucking scary!!!

However, I don't believe for one second that after mankind harnessing the power of electricity for over 150 years, inventing radio, TV, the computers we are using right now, putting man on the moon, the CAT scanner etc etc and all the scientific research that produced all this by some of the best brains ever to exist in the likes of NASA, MIT, Bell Labs, the research depts of companies like Philips, Hitachi, Sony, Lockheed-Martin, BAE etc etc, that there are still matters to do with the simple flow of electricity through a fuse, or mains lead, that have eluded all of mankind's investigative powers for 150 years but which have been discovered by audiophiles...

And on that bombshell... I'll bow out of a certain-to-be-circular argument in which we've "all been there before" Carry on...

[RothwellAudio]

Jez, that's pretty much what I'm saying - I just don't dare put it as bluntly as that

[Arkless Electronics]

Jez, that's pretty much what I'm saying - I just don't dare put it as bluntly as that

It's a dirty job but (especially in this so called "post truth" world) someone has to do it

[Gazjam]

Me too, its definitely noticeable.
That in fact was what got me interested in at least trying one of these SR Fuses. Last week I cleaned up all the stock fuses and holders in my system and noticed the improvement.

So comparing to that, I put the SR fuse in and genuinely taken back with the level of improvement.
It's not subtle.

[Jimbo]

I had some fuses blow on my power amp and replaced them with like for like fuses a while back and I heard a significant Increase in dynamics after. This got me investigating fuses myself as I had personal experience of something happening.

However my journey was a bit short as I discovered that after trying a few specialist fuses the cheap Maplin ones sounded better. The Hi-Fi tuning fuse actually made my system sound flatter! So although I totally agree they can make a difference it maybe not always for the better!