I will add that the Furutech has a bit more vibrancy to the sound. Also, instruments hit with a bit more authority with the Furutech (more impact/attack muscle).
PADIS vs Furutech fuses
I now have about 260 hours on my PADIS fuse and ready to some listening. The PADIS fuse appears to look exactly like the Furutech fuse. It has the same blue casing with the PF logo on one side. Actually, the only visible difference between the PADIS and Furutech is that the Furutech has “FURUTECH” printed on the opposite side. However, there are actually differences:
My very initial thoughts on the PADIS fuse (in the first few hours) was that the PADIS seemed somewhat dryer sounding than the Furutech. The PADIS did not have the typical “cold / wet /chimey” tones that fresh rhodium plated Furutech components generally have (I’ve tested Furutech rhodium fuses, power cord connectors, interconnect – they all initially contribute this cold/chime character).
I have often stated that Furutech rhodium is painful to burn in. I have burned in many Furutech fuses and it goes through several painful areas. There are days in Furutech rhodium burn-in where I would sit down to listen and the sound would just be so bright / harsh / hard-edged that I said “I can’t listen to this”. At that point, I would just walk away and let it continue to burn in. With the PADIS fuses, it never got that painful. I could hear the burn-in process changes, but it was always listenable. At the 180-200 hour mark, the PADIS did get very bright/hard-edged, but it was still somewhat listenable (I did not have to walk away). At 220 hours it was fully resolved.
Now, for the comparison. I will say that the PADIS is an excellent fuse. For the money, you really cannot beat it, unless you need a warm signature (in which case you need an Isoclean fuse). Both the PADIS and Furutech share the same essential sonic signature. However, there is definitely a difference. The PADIS sounds very good – do not get me wrong, it is an excellent fuse. However, the Furutech really did have an improvement. The tones on the Furutech were just a bit more pure and true sounding. The Furutech had a more “solid” sound to the audio. The Furutech had a bit more punch and meatiness to the bass / midbass. The PADIS, on the other hand, was a bit more loose in the highs, causing the high frequencies to be a bit more messy and rattling. This does cause the PADIS to sound a bit more dry. The PADIS also did not have quite the depth of soundstage when compared to the Furutech.
Now some people might sit down with me and say “I can’t hear a difference” or “your just splitting hairs”. I might be. The difference in sound is VERY subtle, but to me it makes a significant improvement. The differences could also be revealed when listening over a longer period (like 20-30 minutes). The music with the Furutech is just more engaging.
If you have very low resolution or warm equipment, it is possible that you would not hear the difference at all. However, on high resolution stuff, the Furutech could make that equipment “shine” just a little bit better. The PADIS is an excellent buy. For half the cost, you get a whole heck of a lot of performance (almost a no-brainer if you’re still running a stock fuse!). For those who want to bleed out the most amount of performance and resolution – the Furutech is worth the cost.
There are a few possible reasons I can think of that would cause the PADIS/Furutech difference:
- Furutech fuse state a special damping filler inside to reduce electrical resonance. I cannot find an reference to a damping filler for the PADIS fuses. This could be why the PADIS sounds a bit more loose/dry/harsh in the highs
- Furutech does a Cryogenic treatment process. I cannot find any reference that the PADIS fuses get the same treatement.
- Rhodium plating. It is possible that the Furutech fuses are manufactured with a much thicker rhodium plating. I know Furutech likes a thick rhodium plating on their A/C connectors. The PADIS could have put a thin plating on their generic “PADIS” fuses. This could help explain why my burn-in process was not as painful.
Anyways, those are my findings. Maybe next year I’ll do a BLUE vs. Furutech analysis.
Showing 11 responses by auxinput
@nonoise - I have been listening to the PADIS fuse in a transport situation. In addition to the preamp listening, I can say that the PADIS fuse will definitely roll-off high frequency detail when compared to the Furutech fuse. It also does not have the tonal purity of the Furutech fuse. It definitely warms things up. I am going to take back my statement that you "might not hear the difference in a warm system". I think every little bit helps and the Furutech could still definitely improve things in your Marantz. |
so, kosst_amojan, have you actually tried out a Furutech or BLACK fuse in your F5 amp? Question - if a fuse has no impact on a piece of equipment that should be designed well, how come I can hear significant differences between fuses in my $12,000 retail Krell home theater processor, fully linear power supplies, all discrete Class A circuits, etc. etc.? Are you saying that this Krell processor is so badly designed that a fuse makes a big difference? I have no doubt that bias adjustments and distortion balance definitely has a big impact on amplifier results. However, every piece in the chain has an impact on the end result sound. Everything in the signal chain matters. |
That's fine and I respect your belief that fuses do not make a difference. However, we have nothing to prove to anyone because we know for a fact that fuses do make a difference. If you do not want to expend the money to test fuses on your own, that's fine, but describing this subject as "silliness" is just unethical and scientifically incorrect. As I have said before, none of us are interested in making any measurements and I'm sure none of us are interested in investing in the thousands of dollars in lab equipment required to measure the tiny difference in fuses in effort to prove to you that this makes a difference. (such as DC resistance, capacitance, electrical resonance, slew rate, etc.). It's just much easier to test the fuses directly in equipment and make our own decisions based on sound, metallurgy, etc. I have seen others post this exact sheet for you, but I will post it again to show some actual measurements on fuses: http://www.partsconnexion.com/prod_pdf/hft_facts.pdf This shows that Isoclean has a higher DC resistance than the Hi-Fi Tuning fuses. This specific measurement could help explain why the Isoclean sounds warmer and the Hi-Fi Tuning sounds fast/detailed and at times lean. However, that's not the entire story as there are other factors to consider, such as Isoclean is gold-plated versus Hi-Fi Tuning which is silver/gold. There are many other attributes to fuses that apply such as metallurgy, plating material, fuse filler, graphene application, cryogenic treatment, etc. If you were a true scientist, the correct response would be "I haven't proved that this makes a difference". The response that "this is silly because it doesn't make a difference" is more of a belief based on blind faith. If you haven't tested and listened to different fuses, then you really don't have any stance to argue against fuses. One more thing. Trying to compare fuses such as Little Fuse vs Buss Fuse versus some other $5 fuse is not a good example of testing here because all of these fuses will perform very similar and will have substantially lower results than something like an Isoclean or Futurech.. ---- As an addendum, there are many items that I suspect are "snake oil". These are things like speaker cable risers, Synergistic sound dots, Bybee elements, etc. However, I cannot say for sure that they are snake oil or not because I have never heard these elements myself. So, I will not make any brash statements against these items because of my "impossible time believing that they actually do make a difference". |
As the poster of the measurement (which has been posted many times before), I did say that the "measurements could explain why", but I also said that the measurements was not the entire story. Counter-argument. So, the fuse non-believers, can you provide me measurements as proof as to why the Vishay Naked Foil resistors sound so good? I mean, it's just a resistor that measures resistance, right? We all know that it is well made, just like our upgraded fuses are well made. But upgrading a tiny resistor doesn't make any difference to the sound quality. Give me absolute measurable proof that it makes a difference. Not sure why so many disbelievers are so hung up on fighting this fuse argument. :) |
Well, one piece of information is that your Bryston 28B amps do not use fuses. They use circuit breakers instead. So you don’t have to worry about those pieces. As far as testing the waters, I would probably start with your ARC LS 27. It looks like it uses a 3A fuse and it appears (based on the pics) that it uses the large 6.3mm x 32mm size fuse. You don’t have to burn in the fuse on the ARC. You can use an alternate device, such as maybe your MAC CD player? (as long as the physical size is the same). A 3A fuse is somewhat larger that I would put in a solid-state source device, but you could run it in for 10 days before placing it in the ARC. If you liked the results, you can try in your RIAA phono stage and your CD Player or MEN220. For fuse burn-in, you do not have to play audio through the device. You just have to make sure the device is powered on. For fuse selection, we all have our preferences. I personally do not like silver based fuses (Hi-Fi Tuning, Synergistic SR20) because they have a push in the upper mids and sound artificial to me. They very fast and detailed, though. I think the silver does not have the ultra-high frequency “air” that the Furutech fuses have (I think silver actually rolls off the very high frequencies somewhat, we are talking like above 14khz or so). I have read that ARC is very high resolution and resolving for tube gear, so Hi-Fi Tuning or SR20 may not necessarily be the right choice. It highly depends on personal preference. There are some who like Hi-Fi Tuning better than Furutech. There was one user who put a Furutech in his tube amp and had improved sonics. When he replaced the Furutech with a BLUE fuse, he did not hear any difference. This could be limited resolution from the tube amp. Others that have upgraded from Furutech to BLUE indicate a good improvement in sonic quality. Others indicate that BLUE may tend to roll-off high frequencies in comparison to BLACK. However, this could also be that BLACK fuses are very sharp in the high frequency detail. I have not tested BLUE or BLACK personally, so I could not be sure. The BLUE/BLACK are definitely a lot more expensive than Furutech, but they have a 30-day return guarantee.. One thought I had was to ask how attached you are to the MEN220. A quote from the following link: https://www.audioaficionado.org/showthread.php?t=5072&highlight=MEN220+Review&page=31
Since it is a digital signal processor (DSP), it is required to convert the analog signal to digital before doing the equalization/crossover. Then it converts back to analog via a DAC chip. You will lose some of the original analogue sonic signature doing this. Have you ever thought about removing the MEN220 from the signal chain and see how it sounds? If you have an environment which absolutely requires room correction, maybe this isn’t a good idea. Just a thought. |
kosst, if you were close to anyone here, it could be an idea to come over and visit. But since this discussion has dropped into a really negative fight, I don't think any experience with one of us coming to visit would be a good experience at all. It feels like you want us to spend the energy and time to try to prove to a non-believer that fuses make a difference (pretty much a losing argument anyways). Since the cost of a PADIS (about $33 shipped to US) is way to much for you to spend to try something new, I think any effort on us will just be entering into a losing argument. If you are really interested in fuses at all, then $33 should be a slam dunk Then we can start discussion on whether or not you hear differences. Anything further is just conjecture and fighting. I'm content with you having your last words. We can just go on discussing our own thoughts. |