It’s been my experience that there are some folks you don’t want getting involved.
Synergistic Red Fuse ...
I installed a SR RED Quantum fuse in my ARC REF-3 preamp a few days ago, replacing an older high end fuse. Uhh ... for a hundred bucks, this little baby is well worth the cost. There was an immediate improvement upon installation, but now that its broken in (yes, no kidding), its quite remarkable. A tightening of the focus, a more solid image, and most important of all for my tastes, a deeper appreciation for the organic sound of the instruments. Damn! ... cellos sound great! Much improved attack on pianos. More humanistic on vocals. Bowed bass goes down forever. Next move? .... I'm doing the entire system with these fuses. One at a time though just to gauge the improvement in each piece of equipment. The REF-75se comes next. I'll report the results as the progression takes place. Stay tuned ...
Any comments from anyone else who has tried these fuses?
Any comments from anyone else who has tried these fuses?
Showing 50 responses by geoffkait
Just to point out that in the twenty or so years since aftermarket fuses first hit the scene, you know Iso Clean and HiFi Tuning, to name two, most likely the first two, there has never been a single documented case where a failure of one of those persnickety little things caused a house to burn down. Are the trolls out of ammo? What’s the next silly claim - that they cause cancer? |
That’s weird. I thought SR didn’t believe in fuse directionality. Ergo, the lettering direction would be irrelevant. The lettering direction would help figure out which way to flip the fuse when listening for proper direction, preventing the fuse from looking symmetrical. But the direction of the lettering would not be consistent from fuse to fuse if one were hoping the direction of letters was the tipoff. |
Sorry to chime in again. The fuses should be evaluated one at a time. Trying to evaluate all fuses in the same direction according to the lettering, then reversing all of them at the same time is not effective, at least not unless the fuse directionality is predetermined at the factory. It’s like trying to solve three simultaneous equations in five unknowns. Since SR is correct that all fuses are directional if only 50% are in the right direction the overall sound will still be less than ideal, I.e., when all fuses are in the correct direction, which is different from saying the lettering of fuses always goes in the same direction for best sound. Repeat the entire process, one fuse at a time, you know, just in case you were unsure of the direction of one or more fuses the first time around. At the risk of alienating anyone I will repeat for the umpty umpth time fuses are directional because wire is directional. |
jmcgrogan2 You did it now Larry (lak), you have awakened the barking chihuahuas. They are barking up a storm and nipping at your heels. Hahaha! People always underestimate chihuahuas. In their native country they are bred as hunting dogs and have been known to bring down a 200 lb man who had a 20 yard head start. |
Unfortunately what we have here is just another situation where some folks just can’t hear the difference. It happens all the time. It happens with many tweaks, especially the more controversial or preposterous tweaks, you know the ones I’m talking about. Things like Mpingo disc, green pen, holographic foil, intelligent chip, tiny bowl resonators, you know, things that either don’t APPEAR to be in the audio path OR actually AREN'T IN THE AUDIO PATH. It's frequently a pretty obvious case of the Backfire Effect, I.e., the more you try to convince someone he’s wrong the more convinced he is that he’s right. Moreover, some folks have invested a lot of energy defending their position, years. Is that a self fulfilling prophecy or what? |
georgehifi wrote, "What WAS said was the SYSTEM sounds out of phase with the fuse installed in the improper direction. Now I’ve heard everything, total snake oil voodoo. These guys must be turning in their graves, at the stuff being spoken here. Laws of electronics were discovered by Georg Ohm, Charles Augustin de Coulomb and Gustav Kirchhoff and are known as Ohms law, Coulomb’s Law and Kirchhoff’s laws." Chill, honey bear. No laws of electronics or physics have been broken. Even James Maxwell can rest easy in his grave. If anything, the directional nature of fuses and wire in general is supported by the laws of electronics and physics, inasmuch as photons traveling along copper or other metal wire, anything with a deformed crystal structure, favor one direction over the other. Kind of like water running off a porcupine’s back. In fact, the measured differences in resistance/conductivity of fuses that appear on HiFi Tuning’s data sheets bear this out. Hel-loo! |
Expectation bias gets a bad rap. 😃 There are many reasons why audiophiles sometimes get bad results with certain devices or tweaks especially the more controversial ones. One of the more controversial tweaks the Tice Clock was one of those controversial tweaks that inspired all sorts of comments and user results, not unlike the those we see with aftermarket fuses and such. In response to letter to Stereophile magazine from a disgruntled customer who was apparently not totally satisfied with his Tice Clock George Tice responded with a letter of his own to Stereophile in which he described the four reasons folks sometimes don't get the results they expected. To whit, 1. There is one or more problems in the system used to test the device/tweak. 2. The customer's hearing or listening skills is not all that's it's cracked up to be. 3. There was a failure to follow instructions or to execute them properly. 4. The system used for the test is not sufficiently resolving to reveal the effects of the device or tweak. |
georgehifi Someone wrote: Paul McGowan of PS Audio has articles on their site that states since the fuse is the bottleneck of the entire. and Georgehifi responded, So are all the fine circuit board tracks that lead to and from the fuse and every thing else. why not rip them out too and turn them around the other way, and cryo them while your at it. Whoa! What! That would actually not be such a bad observation except for one small detail. The fine circuit board tracks are not drawn through a die like wire, including the wire in fuses. Therefore they ARE NOT directional. On the other hand all the internal wring in electronics, in capacitors, transformers and speakers and wire in cables IS directional and should be oriented accordingly. |
mar14lee mar14lee3 posts03-04-2017 2:11amZORRO Thanks for your reply . I also been placed fuses with arrow point down and the wadia as well . sound very good so far . I just bought another SR black for Mcintosh C50 preamp , do you have any idea with arrow point LEFT or Right ? I currently place fuse with arrow to RIGHT ! ( from front view of C50 i flip 180 degree from right to left , bottom of C50 face up then I set fuse into it with arrow to RIGHT , dont know and not sure it is right or wrong ! ) Best regards ! *** Up to date after test the Synergistic SR Black fuse in my Mcintosh C50 preamp .... the correct direction is arrow to the LEFT *** . I had 4 SR black fuses in my system .... sound fantastic !!!! Hope this posted a hint to some one has the same preamp. Cheers . I suppose the take-away here is that the fuse is directional and that it should be tried both directions to see which way sounds best. 😛 |
Nyame I have the greatest respect for people like Mapman who tried a red fuse and decided it did not help his system. But he never ridiculed those who were able to enjoy the benefits of the fuses. Well, actually he did. He was one of the most constant thorn in the sides of the fuse afficiandos. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Speaking of Mapman, has anyone seen hide or hair of him? He seems to disappeared off the face of the earth. Mapman, come back! Mapman! |
georgehifi Someone wrote: "The fuse element is made of zinc, copper, silver, aluminium, or alloys to provide stable and predictable characteristics. The fuse ideally would carry its rated current indefinitely, and melt quickly on a small excess. The element must not be damaged by minor harmless surges of current, and must not oxidise or change its behaviour after possibly years of service." to which George responded, 'Re-read that last sentence: A fuse can age with inrush currents ect, I believe the fuse mongers are praying on that. Nice Freudian slip. Let us pray. Then George wrote, Just change your old fuse for the same 10c new one, instead of paying >$100 for a voodoo fuse, that can be a danger if overrated . Not bad advice but you forgot to mention trying the fuse both ways to see way sounds better. |
Shadorne wrote, "The power supply is supposed to be designed to entirely isolate the interference of slight differences in power input from the audio signal. If a mere fuse makes a difference then pretty much anything will make your setup sound different. A system that can’t handle such minute differences will never sound the same from minute to minute, day to day. Power is varying ALL the time - a fact of life given that stuff in your house and street go on and off all day long." Whoa! What?! Hey, that’s the best Strawman argument I’ve seen all month. No one ever said aftermarket fuses sound better than stock fuses because they better handle varying differences in power input. Where did you ever come up with that? I hate to judge before all the facts are in but this is probably just a case of over-thinking. ALL fuses exhibit slight variation in power one direction to the other. They're ALL directional. Besides how would you explain that aftermarket fuses work in high end electronics as well as Mid Fi electronics? Surely high end power supplies are designed properly, no? |
Geoff or Nyame, No Strawman ( or are you claiming the fuse is not integral to the point where power comes in). No Sadness from me only the reality that in some crazy threads here ( fortunately the minority) there is clearly a complete lack of common sense and the emperor has no clothes. Please note that ad hominem attacks simply mean you are at a loss for a counter argument as to why you would support equipment that magnifies the fuse sound? These are not ad hominem attacks. They’re attacks on your misunderstanding of how fuses can be bad for the sound and why they are a potential lightning rod for vibration and RFI/EMI. And why aftermarket fuses are superior to stock fuses, you know, because they address those issues as well as provide superior conductivity. And why wire directionality dictates the sound quality. Maybe take a day off from the action and review the thread from the very beginning, hmmm? have a nice day |
I guess the take away from all this is that things CAN never be what they actually seem to be in the mind of the skeptic. Especially in the minds of backsliding mossback uber skeptics who are COMPELLED to continue the charade. If an uber skeptic looks hard enough he can always come up with some brand new convoluted bizarre explanation that substitutes for a real rebuttal, a rebuttal based on physical reality. If the old fuse holder explanation doesn’t stick then maybe the aging fuse element will stick. Time will tell. As for me I'll stick to the age old audiophile axiom, if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's a duck. |
"It’s just as disappointing to see the unaware spend hard-earned money on such an upgrade. This type of thing happens across all industries. It’s the nature of capitalism and consumerism. Fortunately, we are in the golden age of the Internet, where people can freely publish opinions about products without any trouble." Yeah, right. People are free to publish opinions about products such as the unenlightened screed in quotes above. Why is it always everybody else who’s unaware? 😄 |
Don’t forget everybody, when changing your inexpensive stock fuse with another inexpensive stock fuse be sure to try both directions. Even better, save yourself 2 bucks and try reversing the existing fuse to see if it was in the wrong direction the whole time. What are the odds? I’m guessing 2:1. No goats, no glory. |
I don’t think it’s correct to say it’s an open forum per se. Most other audio forums don’t allow politics, religion or other hot topics on audio forums but instead have a place where people can go and bash away at each other. It's usually called Outside or Everything Else or whatever. Not everyone is so cordial and objective when discussing politics. :-) Of course you could just wait and see if the mods step in. They might not care, who the heck knows? Besides, isn't audio controversial enough? |
If it weren’t for backsliders, mossbacks, anti-audiophiles, tweakaphobes and those with learning disorders and/or reading comprehension issues this thread would almost certainly have ended long ago. But getting back to the topic just for a sec, has anyone tried the aftermarket fuse from Parts Connection? It’s got a ceramic body fuse with nano material wire and gold and rhodium plated end caps. Mmmmmmm. And It’s only $19.95. Hel-loo! http://www.partsconnexion.com/fuse_create_dlux_sml.html |
Excerpt from 6 Moons review of the Deluxe version of the Create Audio fuse. "I’d never previously accorded much weight to tweakers who celebrated after-market fuses because these parts with their two contacts and 15mm of wire seemed too small to warrant anything much audible. I was wrong. But it is important to put changes into perspective. These aren’t fundamental changes as when we swap a component or cabling. Their effect operates on a more subtle level as a finishing touch to our general perception and becomes appreciable during longer listening sessions easiest when we return to the original fuses. With the LAR the sound became nobler. The treble grew sweeter to eliminate any of my subliminal suspicions. Most surprising was the bass. It extended lower with more saturation. These weren’t big changes but in terms of quality (rather than quantity) truly surprising. The bass on the Laurie Anderson disc didn’t gain in weight but had better timbre and more articulated dynamics. I thought all this was attributable to improved resolution. These changes were not heard on their own but because everything became better organized and the connective tissue between individual sounds was strengthened. It wasn’t bad before but with the Create Audio fuses separate sonic islands were connected into one cohesive archipelago." |
Now all you cheap skeptics ain’t got no excuse. Deluxe Create Audio Nano fuses direct from China $9 each. Select your own rating. eBay to the rescue! Packet delivery from China $2. Cannot beat with stick. Tell all your friends. At that price even Wolfman will be able to hear them. Well, let’s not push it. sidebar to Wolfie: it figures that the term sweeter treble is not in your vocabulary. What do they teach you at audio engineer school, anyway? |