"Yes you better move up in amperage as they seem to have a tendency to blow if matching the current fuse in place."
One should try to not change the fuse type nor current handling value (upward).
This is violation of code and design, and will cost you the validity of house insurance, contents, etc. It can open a world of hurt in the legal end of things if something should go awry.
I can say that I understand and believe in the idea and reality of ’audio’ fuses’. Importantly, though... fuses are legally and otherwise, in their certification and use --- wholly sacrosanct.
I’m willing to go as far ...or in most cases, much further down the road for better sound, than the folks reading this. However, I do not screw around with non certified, non tested fusing, nor fuse type or values.
Power rail fuse on a power amp? maybe. But only if the AC power fuse in the amp’s AC inlet....is proper in type and value as to the original specification.
As long as the audio fuses in question are definitely of a known proper certification, and correct amperage and type...then it’s a go, when used for the AC power on the given gear.
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"Anyone tried the fuses filled with bees wax? $175 per fuse."
One cannot legally sell a fuse filled with bees wax, nor modify a fuse to such an extent, in such a way --- that it violates code and original certification specs.
You can put just about anything in a piece of gear, but you can't mess with the fusing nor AC power input systems and hardware. The legal system and the certification boards of the government will come down on that like a ton of bricks, for all the right reasons.
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Buying brand new schurter, littlefuse or cooper/bussman fuses also works in experimenting to see what is going on. . one can get the correct type but also, importantly, change the breaking current to various values. Higher breakage values sound more linear to the ear. Less distorted. For example, you can get a 10 amp time lag fuse that pops at 200A peak, or 400a peak or even over 1000A peak. I think the highest I’ve seen is 1400A peak transient before breakage. Each material in use has different peak transient breakage values, and different aspects of transient linearity. Digikey and Mouser is the place to look.
Each will ’sound’ different. The vast majority of the fuses from the companies mentioned are non-magnetic brass/copper/etc designs.
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I’ve had those kind of fuses explode (image link in above post) when a 25kv transformer shorted and exploded. they were hit with the full HV from the pole (where the shorted transformer was), with unlimited (power source) amperage. the fuses were in a power room. Behind the closed panel, inside the sealed electrical room, at a large car wash/gas station.
The door to the electrical room was closed, and water-tight sealed, as stated..and behind me.
I could swear I caught a flash, when they went. The room was full of smoke when I opened the door, the fuses were almost vapourized, and the panel was hot. From the one single arching and quick burst. Blew the 50hp 600VAC electric motors at the car wash, as well. Now that’s expensive.. Luckily I was not holding onto anything electrical at the time. It Shut down the whole block.
The Japanese audio companies use and have used SOC fuses for many many years. Why? their fuses cost the manufacturers a little more than some of the better Schurter and cooper/littlefuse/bussman fuses, but are better sounding, overall.
You can open up anything audio or video built in Japan from approx 1975 to 2017, and probably find a Japanese made SOC fuse in the fuseholder.
The other thing to do, and I’m only SUGGESTING, not saying do it...is to go to the hobby shop..a complete hobby shop..and obtain some thin wall brass and copper tubing of appropriate diameter. (1/4" or 5mm depending on fuse size) Then cut one down to the right size.
When you try that you will almost literally crap your pants. It will leave all fuses, great and small, $2 to $400 or whatever, all completely in the dust.
You will like the sound so much that mac trucks tied you your body will not be able to drag you away from leaving things that way. ("NNNoOOOoooooooo..." you will be heard whining..as you are forced to put the fuses back in). just leave the brass/copper tubes in there, you will be trying to reason to yourself. It has to be ok, right?
Warning: you can’t. It has to be fused. You’ll have to put the fuse back in. You will refuse. You will balk. It will be one of your most hated moments in the world of audio.
Warning. Once you’ve heard that, there is no turning back. What has been heard, cannot be unheard. You will lament it at every chance. For your entire life of using fused audio gear. There may be lots of drinking and forgetting involved. "I had a perfect relationship, once", you will be found to be sourly muttering...
For some of you, if not most, it will probably be the biggest positive change you’ve ever encountered. It will RUIN you. The perfect perspective on how bad for audio - fuses actually are.
There is hope, though. John Curl advocates this one: re-settable fuses. He tries to spec gear this way, whenever he is involved. They are as close as you can get to the sound of being legal and fuseless.
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I have to come back and cover a slight error I made in my wording. I used the term 're-settable fuses'.
What I really meant was correctly chosen circuit breakers. The kind where you have to go in, in the gear or manually on the back or what not... and re-set it physically and manually.
When carefully chosen.. in John's estimation... they sound better than fuses. This is not a thing that can easily be retrofitted and each designer (when designing a given build) makes the choices they do. Ie, not just any circuit breaker but carefully chosen ones. Tested for their levels of sonic malfeasance.
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Complex organics can sometimes make a better dielectric. Only part of the story at hand.
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The irony is that it is like Andrew Singer of Sound By Singer once said (quote originates elsewhere) "I don’t care what they say about me, as long as they say about me".
In other words, all positive and all negative comments create sales for The Synergistic fuses and other audiophile fuses.
Each time a person posts a negative comment (and the given return post), synergistic sells 2-4-10 more fuses to those who witness the fuse fight club thread, and it’s spread in the under current of the audio world.
Synergistic can’’t reasonably step in and say it, so I’ll say it for them:
"All you negative posters, Synergistic thanks you from the bottom of their heart."
Just the way things work, it is....
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fuses are also a thing that can be slipped past the significant other so they tend to sell fairly well with bringing about 'hidden', out of sight upgrades.
But don't worry, she's got you covered.
That ordinary looking glasses case in her purse has a $600 pair of Armani sunglasses that she puts on when she's driving around and seeing friends.
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Understandable George, we all do what we gotta do. And we are neither less nor more for it. It is the realizations that count, and if we are wise about it, they never stop coming.
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I’ve been hesitant to point his out, but, George, your light sensitivity passive (ish) volume controlling devices..their entire idea in utilization and design..is all about how much better it sounds than a ’regular’ level control or volume pot.
We’re talking about ascribing ’large’ ’heard’ change in the listening domain, with vanishingly small signal differentials. differences so small they partially defy electronic description, or defy the ability of measurement technology to define or elucidate.
So..another component in audio gear that has similar considerations, is somehow, not relevant.
Not only is it similar, but the fuse is known to be an offender, and it can be traced back to how the fuse deals with signal. Specifically in how the fuse works, fundamentally. Electronically, and in historical aspects of how the fuse relates and is connected in the given systems - this is all very clear.
To anyone who is building and designing high end audio gear, this is (the connection to it by and of the fuse) all on the ground floor level of designing knowledge and lore.
I even alluded to the specific points that are considered and known (the basics), in my post about choosing a fuse. The science of fuses and the science of audio and the science of psychoacoustics are all coupled together in a way that makes this all very clear.
No audio engineering group individual is going to share this information with you as it is considered hard won in some cases, and also a gift of being a leg up on any given competition --if it is known. Why show one’s hands in a volatile and competitive market area. Why give it away to neophytes who may try to eat your market share in the future? What would be the point? To make a nay-sayer go away? ’ Craziest business decision ever’, would be the answer.
I could also get into the why of the fuse modifications, what they do, how they work, why they do what they do, how people hear it. I mean in intricate complete connected verifiable scientific detail (in my own words, of course).
Why give all that hard won stuff away? All because a few people on a thread on a forum are not making the connection? I don’t think so.
Importantly, engineering is not science. Science has only theories. Engineering has laws. Engineering is about building, so it has rules, so you don’t experiment with devices and constructions being built for the human world.
Science is about exploration and that is wholly error prone. Since it is error prone, it cannot ever suffer a law, as laws will make it circular and closed off, with no expandable future. When we get to the real exploration in science, we find there is not anything like a fact, either.
The bleeding edge of science, has, for as long as anyone can remember in this idea of organizing research and giving it a language in commonality...ie science...this science has not not one single fact. Zero.
The only ’fact’ in existence in science...is that there are no facts. A paradox. The core philosophical argument of science, right at the core of it... is the same paradox as quantum science --the wave-particle duality. Everything is theory that is subject to change.
When going to a big, or large complete university that does a lot of research and cutting edge work.. some campus with maybe 20-30-40k students, and a huge scientific faculty, you will find not one single prof who teaches scientific law. All of them teach scientific theory. As they know, scientific law are not real. These laws....they are imaginary placeholders for engineers and the engineering branches of the overall human edifice. You can’t have anyone building bridges and cars or whatever, on theories. To keep things stable and to train large amounts of functional engineers and builders in groups, they factualized science into "laws".
If relating to a scientific group of people (again, not engineers!) and you speak of scientific law, they will look at you like you are a fanatic or madman, or at least very poorly informed, misled, even. Possibly even dangerous. (for good reason, scientific law is dogma and has no place in actual ’new’ science)
It might be a bit uncomfortable for some. Some seem to need blanket the reality we face...with laws and systems of hard order. Maybe it helps them sleep at night. I don’t know. Religion helps people sleep at night too. We are human... so we tend to project these into norms foisted upon others. Thus Scientific law sneaks into dogmatic form and pushes as hard as religion, when it actually has not a leg to stand on. Except that of it's intended function..which is to keep a stable system in place when engineering.
For example, no one can tell you want an electron is. They have a description for it, and a sht-ton of mathematical games in relation to everything else... but no one can tell you what one is. (and some say that at the bottom of it all, it’s all electrons) We have a self completed bubble we live in. Right at the edge of science in the micro to macro edges, it’s all unknowns. And the old rules and regulations are subject to change in the face of the new data, whatever that data might be.
If you go the edges of the considered world, from the quantum to the macro..it is still....turtles...all the way down.
Not even remotely a joke.
We exist in a bubble, where we’ve self factualized a reality into a commonality of realization and analysis, but, it is very much a case of nothing more than that bubble of common ramblings.
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And you should be able to express it that simply in an informed atmosphere, but that is not always true. The informed grouping is not unified or on the same page....and never will be.
The projected dogma inherent in the complex ape based vehicle of the human, makes such things difficult. The dogma -as unspoken/unrealized/unconscious ’clan stability’ projections - can make change for individual mindsets difficult and unloved.
The good part is that we are individuals. If we were not individuals and we were all exactly the same, the world would be a very dead thing. A commodity, in some systems of valuation. Thankfully, controlling the human race is like trying to herd cats. What some see as one of our greater flaws when it runs rampant, is the part that saves us.
Each of us gets to deal with some form of a grind, and in the end, it is important that it be there.
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For audio, at least, it’s not about electrons. Electrons have absolutely nothing to do with it. It’s about photons. Hel-loo! What, exactly, is a Photon? As you know...’good luck with that’... ;) |
For audio, at least, it’s not about electrons. Electrons have absolutely nothing to do with it. It’s about photons. Hel-loo!
What, exactly, is a Photon? As you know...’good luck with that’...
Thanks for the excellent example of Newton’s Third Law: For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction.
Speaking of photons and regarding electricity....Interestingly enough, the liquid metal mixture in the Teo Audio cables..just happens to be.... the most wide band high quality reflector known to humanity. As in: 1) widest chunk of the electromagnetic chart/spectrum reflected... and... 2) highest percentage of reflectivity (as in ’best’ among first surface mirrors) Besides truly functioning at the quantum level with kinetics and fluid, hydrodynamics and magnetics. More incomplete and unsolved math, theory, and engineering potential than you can swing a billy goat at. |
Ok, Geoff, in once sentence, then:
For engineers and the average dude, they are laws; for scientists and explorers of such nature, they are theories.
Simple enough, but few folks recognize that --or in their daily lives are even required to do so.
Thus it can build into a problem of projection of ’high predictability in the given theories’ becoming a dogmatic rule enforcement (human clan nature) that curtails potentials and turns exploration into a circular argument that self limits.
This situation arose when the German teaching methodology (1700’s-1800’s) which was so effective in creating functional engineers, became the gold standard in teaching. To get more people doing good engineering work.
After all, one cannot teach that at the core of each ’law’ is actually a box of squirming worms that USUALLY (ridiculously high odds) swim in a known direction, but that the box of squirming worms MIGHT be a problem.
Nothing would ever get built. And if it was built, it might be dangerous,or dubious in use or human mental reach. And so on. Eg, anyone can walk across a bridge, few can build one.
For the questioners, those reaching for the limits and then looking for the new....to teach them that each law is actually a box of squirming worms that MIGHT have different results, but it is very unlikely that it will happen. To remain suspicious of all facts, in the face of observations that do not fit the laws or facts. To investigate and try and fit, but to not fudge, to not fake, to not force or silence contrary data. To leave room for the new, so it can change the old. Otherwise, we’re all dead with no future.
However, with those who were taught scientific laws (and probably they went in that direction due to their mental orientation -or were never aware of this issue) the new thing or data that does not fit MUST be force fit or killed as it cannot be anything but lies, charlatans, freaks and asshats with agendas and ulterior motives.
Humanity is largely dogmatic due to the need for social and cultural systems to be functional. So unconscious projection of norms is a fact of human life as human groupings go.
Thus the school of engineering fact and law enforcement and then the explorer scientific methodology of ’no such thing as facts or scientific laws’.
Most important take away:
you can build things with scientific laws and facts, but you can’t explore the given difficult new thing with scientific laws or facts being in control of the outcome.
Doing so would just be the church, synagogue, mosque,
temple, or imperial edict ---- with another face.
Exploratory science recognizes this. Engineers and the general public are, for the vast part... not even taught or shown that this critical point even exists.
So we get this violence on forums, in the face of the new or the not yet understood.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Something I seemed to have forgotten since the Stereophile forum days, that I’m now being reminded of. That you are a twisty cat, who... well..who knows what.
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I prefer to avoid the personality part but like most... have to deal with it in recognition of what may be going on in the given case. Nor do my comments have meaning in that area, ie subtle jabs or whatnot. Which creates trouble as people sometimes think they are in the text.
But we are talking about music, which generally cannot successfully be done coldly, no matter how one might try. I tend to prefer to not truly aim for scientific coolness, but to be aware. Contradiction? Possibly. Human? Yes.
In related topics, I stopped cold a just opened thread on another forum (a few days back)... a soon to be tidal wave of rants against oddities and 'charlatans' in audio. It would have went on for another 2-20 pages, with you as the opening rants - whipping boy centerpiece. Stopping it was harmful to my personal and company reputation, as some of those might be potential customers. No matter how well I may have posted, someone would (and will) take it negatively, and run with it.
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also, it took me time to build that post, so your prior one which expanded the one just above, seems like it was trashing my earlier points, when the follow up one did steer to a better more involved clarification. My remark was tied to the earlier post. All due to post creation and posting times rearing their head. The twisty bit is about intelligence and complexity, not meant as derogatory.
You mentioned a meme that can come into being, mainly "It’s the photons, stupid."
I mentioned the fluid has these properties when one considers the absorption and reflection of photons. Which may be a clue, or data point... as to what is going on with it. Properties in the area involving photons, that are considerably different than that of wire.
Anyway, this is about fuses and science and hearing, in an area involving emotions and drives. Music.
Depending on the design of the given piece of gear, the fuse in use can make a subtle to gross difference, and specifically in ways that are important to human hearing function, involving capacity to discern.
This happens in a given system whether it is a cheap fuse, an old fuse, a new fuse, or an audiophile tuned fuse, or given different designs utilizing various fuse materials.
We hear this, or we don’t. The rest is an argumentative atmosphere of discussion... unless one chooses to not participate.
An important point is that fuses are a scientifically and in engineering terms and circles...known creation points for non-linear odd harmonic distortions of the given pass-through signal.
As a culmination and cumulative effect, this affects the outcome when dealing with highly dynamic complex music signals.
And our highly evolved but individual intelligence capacity (not all the same!!!!) hearing (one's hear-q) will either hear it or not ...and like it or not.
Depending on on the given item in situ, using the given fuse, you will hear this to a greater or lesser degree. To some the given distortion creation or taming enabled by the use of the given fuse.... will either be pleasant or not really a big deal.
Simple enough.
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I’m sorry if I side-tracked this topic but "human clan nature" kind of sums it up.
Not really, ie, the longer a problem is in existence, the more fundamental the error in the creation of the question. Not perfect, but a good premise when looking at the unsolvable. Which gets right back to the theory vs laws aspects. we be making lots of flippy floppy as humans are on the cusp. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2lxJ4S-2-MYou know..... when asked (about our given projections - which we think are in balance and informed)... "we got both both kinds, country and western.." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS-zEH8YmiM |
ok. Ye olde less is more, is the lesson. Have a good one, see youse folks in some other thread. :)
(one more thing, thanks for the post about outliers in the one thread, it was amusing but the guy is also a very nice person, so a mixed bag.... like life is....)
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Game changer. Yeah, we get it. We also get that it’s not really liquid metal.
Actually it is. By all known forms of definition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiquidWell, ok... by all known popularized forms of definition. |
Then comes the question of what exactly is the origin point, the true meaning... of phase lead and lag?
Not the textbook engineering (incomplete false dead end) answer, but how does it arise - as a complex question in the quantum sciences? That is more the essential question.
As the engineering answers, neither explain or solve any of these issues that the ear hears.
Otherwise this circular merry go round would have died off in the very first two person discussion.
The suggestion is that neither party has a true grip on the issues.
One is willing to admit there is a problem (listeners with ears), and willing to admit they don't know.
The other is not willing to admit that their engineering bible is flawed and full of holes in it's logic edicts.
Those who 'get it' from both sides of the scenario, will never be involved in such discussions, as the answers allow for the making of product or solutions in the scenario, which are also potentials for financial gain.
Some who may not know how it all works, might find themselves manipulating the effects in order to make money off the people who admit they hear something going on.
It is a market that is seemingly at odds with itself from all directions.
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