I’ve read of views on whether amp fuses impart any sound quality or coloring. I had a recent experience that has made me re-think my views (fuses do not affect sound) and wondered if others had a similar experience. I have a Line Magnetic integrated amp. After heavy regular use for over 5 years, one day it just wouldn’t power up. After checking the power supply, I assumed it must be a blown fuse. I recalled that Line Magnetic sent with the amp two replacement fuses of the same type/quality that was pre-installed. I dug out one of them from storage, replaced the fuse and the amp powered up normally.
What surprised and delighted me was the change in sound with the replacement fuse. Fuller bass, more detail and more warmth. I have rolled the tubes several times in the amp, and am attuned to the subtle changes that can make. Popping in a fresh fuse seems to have had a similar affect. And these appear to be cheap fuses, available for a few dollars at most. I don’t think I understand any of this.
Albert Einstein formulated the " cosmological constant " and yet today we know that not only is it expanding but it is also expanding at a faster rate rather than slowing down , something that defies physics as we know it !
So when one asks for help or an opinion about our hobby it is disappointing that the discussions seem to expand into back and forth childish behavior .
You either hear a difference or you don't period ! Say so and move on .
I am more of a Tesla guy. Modern Astronomy.... Let’s not even go there :) But yes, people that think all Fuses are the same, shouldn't insult others that have found that not to be the case. Commander Locke: Damnit, Morpheus, not everyone believes what you believe. Morpheus: My beliefs don’t require them to. Matrix.
@MC, when you selected the Path resistors had you made any comparisons
with the likes of Duelund or Mundorf? I have tried some different ones
and settled on Powertron by Vishay. Rated at 3W or 30W when mounted on a
small heatsink. Clean, detailed and very dynamic but have not compared
them to the 3 mentioned above. It seems even experienced DIYers seldom
bother with resistors which I find surprising.
I looked at those but no direct comparison experience. My crossover components were selected the same as all my other components: search around and sift through reviews and user comments for the best values.
I learned from experience a very long time ago the difference these things make. So I was kind of surprised when some people told me resistors and inductors aren't so important. For some reason virtually all audiophiles fixate on caps. Kind of like they fixate on tubes. So it was pretty easy for me to disregard anyone like that and give just as much attention to resistors and inductors as caps.
While I went off reviews and didn't compare myself, just the other day a local audiobud Brandon doing a similar XO upgrade on his Tekton Pendragon XL did. He heard a huge difference between the standard coil inductor and foil. Just like I thought there would be based on reading.
So yeah it is kind of surprising experienced audiophiles don't see the value. Then again considering the way some of them think about fuses maybe not so surprising after all. Oh well. This is how we get to have systems they can only dream of.
Hey mitch, I will look into that as soon as I get a little time to think. Right now we have 4 or 5 days dry weather ahead so wife and I are trying to finish off some house repairs before the cold wet stuff really sets in. I bought a leaky old Irish cottage which is playing hell with my audio life and the damp has wrecked 2 power amps.
I have compared Path to Duelund, Mundorf and Mills MRA. The Path are the best as they are the quietest and most neutral. They have an uncanny sense of ease to them. The Duelund resistors are good, but compared to Path can sound a tad too brilliant in the upper mids and highs. Same for the Mundorf which I did not really care for. The Mills MRA are second best behind the Path. They are pretty neutral and much lower cost if that is a consideration.
I'm just curious why the Purple Quantum Fuses really? post was removed? Nothing offensive in my opinion. The fuser supporters hadn't even had a chance to respond... I think it should be reinstated. Sincerely, Doug
Tammy (Audiogon) Oct 17, 2021, 8:23 AM EDT I believe it was removed because of this. Threads are closed if they are repetitive. Tammy
fiesta75 Okay, thank you. In my opinion, 3 responses total is not what I would call repetitive. The post was up for a very short time.
Tammy (Audiogon) Oct 17, 2021, 3:33 PM EDT I'm talking about the subject of the post not the comments.
Lately, we are getting multiple threads posted about Fuses. We are just trying to close some where the topic has been covered in another previous thread. Tammy
Then get a better system. It’s no fun having to listen to a hunk of junk.
My system can resolve waiters dropping off drinks to customers on Live Recorded Jazz albums (glasses clanking on tables, footsteps, small talk in the audience). Every little detail comes through with perfect clarity. Any changes in the audio chain stand out immediately. It didn’t start out that way, took a couple of years of tuning to get to this level.
I’d say by the lack of resolution of whatever cheapo stuff you are listening to, you have your work cut out for yourself.
Time to leave the toys behind, and graduate onto the big boy leagues.
@grannyring, that's exactly the info I was looking for.
They have an uncanny sense of ease to them
I then do not need the Duelund's influence going by what you said. I use Mills a lot as I find them a 'safe' resistor to use but as always, looking for and hoping for something great but at a lower price
which lead me to the Powertron.
The Path are twice the price but my XO only uses 2 per side. I have long tried to reduce the number of components in my XO designs by eschewing the industries fixation on a flat frequency response which inevitably impacts on other more important areas, and when you add the room's response then the life-sapping extra components are pointless, except if you need your creation to pander to the measurement brigade. When I have managed to find driver sensitivities that match and allow me to forego any resistors, I have found the result to be more 'comfortable' and more immersive.
Oh, and to keep this on topic, I do not use FUSES in my crossovers 😎
Quick question,
what is your guy's experience
with bypassing caps? Does it add anything to sound? or just smear it, and cause coherency issues? Say Duelund bypass caps, .01uf Silver foil, bypassing bigger caps on a tweeter, or even mids. Thanks.
Quick question, what is your guy’s experience with bypassing caps? Does it add anything to sound? or just smear it, and cause coherency issues?
By-passing powersupply or voltage rail caps is a good idea, but it’s not a good idea to bypass caps that are in the signal path as they will have different time constants, and smear at frequencies where they are both doing work. Alway use the best quality "single cap" in the signal path.
Oregonpapa's forum is closed so I am contributing here. In my system, the SR blue fuses and outlets sound warm and inviting. I tried an SR orange fuse and found it to be more open, possibly more dynamic but stuck with the blue. The black fuse and outlet have a grainy sound, less dynamic, clear and warm compared to the blue. So, skipping the orange, the purple is touted as superior (in all ways?) to the orange. That would be a great accomplishment at $199.
The other complaint concerning the black fuse is that it took literally 72 hours prior to sounding listenable/good. The blue fuses sounded superior from the time I stuck it in compared to 1000+ hours on black fuses. I hope that the purple fuses sound better as soon as they are installed and not suffer through 50 to 100 hours prior to sounding great. I just don't have the patience and don't like wasting tubes.
Thank you. @georgehifi You just saved me some money, much appreciated.
Also
I am making some fuses with Gold Plated OCC Copper wire from Neotech (3x).1mm strands, and some OCC Copper fuses .2mm strand. Each coming out to about 7.5-8 amps. Quick question, again if anyone knows, are there any commercial fuses that have this wire construction? Gold plated copper wire.
Hi Fi Tuning Supreme fuses apparently use a silver, copper, gold mix solder, but a solid copper melt wire. They have gold end caps, ceramic body, and are cryogenically treated. I have not heard of any fuses that use the gold-plated Neotech wire you asked about (or the silver-gold Mundorf wire) as melt wire inside of the fuse...unless SR is using something special. I cannot find a description of the melt wire used in the SR fuses, although they list all the other pieces and parts....i.e., Orange:
Ceramic Body, Silica Filled, Brass Nickel Plated Contacts,1,000,000 volt multi-stage, high-frequency conditioning process, 2nd Stage Rev. 2.0 Molecular realignment process, Directional UEF Compound first developed for Galileo SX PowerCellGraphene
I have considered filling a conventional fuse with beeswax (just for fun and curiosity) by drilling a small hole and using a syringe to inject warm beeswax, but have not considered making fuses with filament wire of my choice. I am curious how you achieve the correct break values when using your own wire, do you test them?
After trying a variety of HiFi Tuning and SR fuses, and not hearing anything that makes me want to spend the money, my go-to has been to use mostly ceramic-body fuses with, Teflon tape wrapped around the body for damping, contact treatment on the ends, and small orthodontic rubber bands to provide tension on board-mounted fuse holders. For $20, I will consider ordering the ACME fuses to replace older fuses, as I have used their silver-plated outlets.
Solid copper has specific Wire Fusing Current ratings in air. So I am doing basic calculations to figure out what the rating of my fuses would be and adding on another 10% based on the SiO2/Mineral oil mix I am using inside the cylinder for filament heat management and dampening.
I am all for going DIY, 250 dollars for a fuse is kind of outrageous, multiply that by 10 for the total number of fuses used in my system, and that adds up very very quickly. I should have the wire this week, and will make sure to report back on how it all goes.
"250 dollars for a fuse is kind of outrageous,..." Totally agree people that buy into this to me is just ridiculous YMMV. And yes I've experienced many fuses and can hear a change in sound but it's a change not better just different.
"250 dollars for a fuse is kind of outrageous,..."
Ditto, it’s fuse wire, if not then it’s a hoax and could be dangerouse, all that's needed, is to make sure the fuse and holder are in good condition.
AGEING FUSE MAINTENANCE: 1: “Just re-new your fuse with the same amperage if it’s old and has seen many turn on cycles, with a quality one like Bussman or Littlefuse.
2: And clean the cradle fuse contacts and maybe squeeze them in a little for a tighter fit. And definitely don’t be sucked into any $$$ boutique hifi fuses
3: Just change the fuse if old for a quality brand EE industry standard 50c fuse, as fuses (even the $$$ boutique ones) also age after many turn on cycle surges.” 4: And there is definitely no such thing as direction with an AC mains fuse.
This is what happens to all fuses, even the $$$ ones, when the’ve seen many turn on cycles
I have found fuses to be directional, wrongly installed fuses can sound etched and tilted up in the treble (I didn’t find directionality in cheap glass fuses for whatever reason). The metals used to build the end caps and filament make an audible difference in the timbre of instruments and voices, to where I can pick them out very reliably in A/B tests.
The filament Dampening has the biggest influence on the resolution of the fuse. I have tried two of the same fuses, back to back, one that is in it’s stock form (filled with sand) and another filled with the SiO2 oil mixture, and they sound nothing alike. The fuse with the mix has a higher resolution, lower distortion, and has micro details that create an audio image with a bigger deeper soundstage. It’s not a small difference by any means.
I don’t think you need exotic waxes or other super tunneling treatments to make a fuse sound better, you can get the same results with a little bit of at home experimentation.
The AC mains fuse is supplying mains voltage to a transformer, which then supplies lower AC voltage to the AC to DC recifcation diodes, this DC is then is sent to the voltage storage capacitor banks. And the amplifer then draws it’s DC power to work with from that storage bank of capacitors, which if designed right don’t ever run out of storage.
EG: Try to look at it this way. Your using you home water tap (amplifer) from a dam (Capacitor storage banks) of water which never runs dry. Your home tap does’nt give a ratz, if the clouds that supply the rain to the river that fills the dam, is raining or not, so long as the dam has water in it, the tap is doing it’s best an happy.
You can believe whatever you want, it’s a free country (I think). I am just reporting what I am hearing. Dam/ water/ whatever else, I have all these fuses on hand, and it takes less than 30 seconds to swap them out on my DAC. I am hearing what I am hearing, and it has been confirmed by all my friends that have come over to listen to my system as well. I don’t pretend to understand the physics behind any of this, and honestly.... I am not all that concerned about it either. I have a few theories, sure, but I can’t conclusively prove anything.
I thought a fuse was a sacrificial safety device that melts during an overcurrent condition to protect an electrical circuit. So isn’t the role of a fuse to melt if there is too much current in order to protect an electrical circuit/device?
And power cables just bring AC to your equipment, and conditioners are just useless junk....... we can do this all day :) Try bypassing your fuse for 5 minutes and see if the sound coming out of your speakers changes. (try a 26/28 gauge of copper
wire) It’s a very quick easy experiment.
@yuviarora I don’t disagree with you at all. My comment was directed to the post that assumes we don’t understand what a fuse does. To me it’s obvious that since the fuse is taking all the voltage then changing it would affect the component.
I honestly don’t understand the damn reference in relation to the fuse. The fuse isn’t holding back anything.
I thought a fuse was a sacrificial safety device that melts during an
overcurrent condition to protect an electrical circuit. So isn’t the
role of a fuse to melt if there is too much current in order to protect
an electrical circuit/device?
Correct. And you must have missed my earlier post explaining this. Ordinary fuses are designed to one spec, the current rating at which they melt and blow. They are not designed to perform perfectly linear or in any way at all really, at anything less than this. They are made to blow and nothing else.
All wires, the more current the hotter they get. The hotter they get the more resistance increases. This is in effect a volume control, one where every dynamic peak increases current draw, which increases resistance, which turns down the volume. Ordinary fuses are in effect turning down the volume on transient peaks all the time. When you hear people saying the audiophile fuse sounds cleaner clearer more extended and dynamic this is all very easy to understand once you know about wires and resistance.
Because unlike cheap fuses designed only to blow audiophile fuses are designed to perform with high sound quality all the way up to blowing.
Okay sorry, we were posting at the same time. You are right. The one who says many of us don't understand, he is in fact the one who doesn't understand. Anything, I am tempted to say. But won't.
Current draw only comes from the power supply caps. That is why they are located at that place in an electronic circuit. The heating/cooling cycle of a fuse has zero effect on the ability of the PS caps to deliver current. A fuse is not a volume control!
@millercarbon yes 100%. Thermal stress on the filament has a very direct effect on sound.
wax, oil, graphene, and nano copper that these companies are using probably act as a heatsink. Your explanation makes quite a bit of sense.
jasonbourne521,165 posts10-20-2021 12:40pmCurrent draw only comes from the power supply caps. That is why they are located at that place in an electronic circuit. The heating/cooling cycle of a fuse has zero effect on the ability of the PS caps to deliver current. A fuse is not a volume control! Report thisjasonbourne521,165 posts10-20-2021 12:45pmYou fusers are drinking too much moonshine or smoking too much ganja!
+1 on that jason, if they can't see the reference to the dam (pp caps) water tap (amp) they are just lost to voodoo and snake oil.
@georgehifi I am not selling these fuses to myself....I am making my own. How are my findings snake oil? No one is making a profit in this transaction.... there is no transaction.
Lordy Lord, why are some people always hell bent to render a perfectly civil discussion useless by resorting to dogma and insults? The assumption that everybody else are idiots tends to exclude the one idiot in the plot from consideration….
georgehifi thank you for the info! I was -just- about to ask someone with electrical circuit engineering/design formal knowledge to explain how a fuse in audio equipment works, is used, and what/how it could flavor the sonic quality of the other components in the piece of kit.
I grasp and have experience with how items like capacitors or resistors in crossovers can dramatically change the tonal character of speakers, as well as how the items in the path of the audio signal in an amp or pre-amp can also color the audio tonality = cheap/expensive or very basic/higher engineering and careful crafting and materials components.Is there a difference to items that simply supply power vs those that are carry the audio signal?
It's interesting how something can measure/function work exactly the same (one watt=one watt), but can dramatically change how something sounds. Just like food I would imagine--a steak from bargain market doesn't compare to steak from purpose raised organic ranch.
In my experience parts in the signal chain affect sound just as much as parts in the power chain. There is no difference between the two, we think there is, but the reality is much different. Power cables, fuses, capacitors make pretty remarkable differences in tonality, resolution, soundstage, transparency, treble/bass balance. At least this what I have found to be the case.
P.S. one of the biggest changes to the sound of my amplifiers (i rebuilt them with all boutique parts) came not from changing the capacitors in the signal path, but from swapping out the safety capacitors after the fuses. I tried 3 different capacitors and finally settled on the mundorf supremes. Go figure.
amtprod12 posts georgehifi thank you for the info! I was -just- about to ask someone with electrical circuit engineering/design formal knowledge to explain how a fuse in audio equipment works, is used, and what/how it could flavor the sonic quality of the other components in the piece of kit.
Yes things do change the sound "IN" a piece of kit on the dc side of things. But an ac mains fuse is not "IN" the piece of kit it’s in the ac mains supply just like like the fuse in your fuse box. If you truly believe that a $$$$$ ac mains fuse of your amp can be better than a standard one, then no fuse at all would be the best, correct??? Then use one of these in place of your fuse for just a test instead of spending $$$ on snake oil fuses, and see what it sounds like compared to the normal fuse, as it’s solid brass fuse buss bar just like no fuse at all for tech testing. https://ibb.co/KqV3hNb
George you are an ideologue. You are talking to people that have already done all the experiments. The best fuse is no fuse, we already know this, but most equipment does not allow for the installation of breakers (and breakers also have their issues) There are space constraints, it’s much easier to just use a treated fuse, that gets you nearly all the way to the benefits of a bypass.
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