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?
mapman 13,567 posts 08-03-2016 10:45am GEoff you are blowing purely hot air at this point. You'd be much better off stopping already, but I doubt you will. Spend more time on reading comprehension.
Really? What don't I comprehend, grasshopper? Share, share....
Just read the thread again if you must ask that. It's all there pilgrim. Turn off whatever it is in you that filters out anything not in line with your agenda.
Geoff
posted..."As much as I would like to take you up on your suggestion to try a DC
fuse in lieu of an AC fuse of the same amp rating I am absolutely the wrong
person for this task as my current system actually contains no fuses, nor any
fuse holders, nor is any such thing necessary as my system is completely
independent of house AC, a couple AA size batteries suffice."
Geoff.
I asked you a while back to elaborate on your sysem.What exactly are you using
at home? Thanks.
mapman 13,569 posts 08-03-2016 10:58am Just read the thread again if you must ask that. It's all there pilgrim. Turn off whatever it is in you that filters out anything not in line with your agenda.
Just as I thought. You're just having another bad hair day.
geoff, I work for an electric utility. There is no consideration given to wire directionality when putting up power lines. Is the assumption that wire directionality matters in some situations, such as fuses and carrying a sound signal, but not others? Just askin. George
jetter 120 posts 08-03-2016 12:56pm geoff, I work for an electric utility. There is no consideration given to wire directionality when putting up power lines. Is the assumption that wire directionality matters in some situations, such as fuses and carrying a sound signal, but not others? Just askin. George
That’s nothing, George. It took 10 years for Marconi to realize that (electromagnetic) radio waves traveled farther a lot farther, when they have shorter wavelengths, not longer ones. Live and learn. I hate to judge before all the facts are in but it appears your electric utility didn’t get the memo regarding wire directionality. That’s nothing very new, by the way, most high end amplifier manufacturers didn’t get the memo, either. C’est la vie. Of course the wire in the wrong direction will work OK. No one said it wouldn’t. It just doesn’t work best for sound quality, that’s all. It’ll sound OK, particularly to the uh, uninitiated.
It's difficult to refuse the fuseless who claim a fusion with fancy fuse users. Oh, and the answer to Geoffkait's list of questions is: All of the above.
aolmrd1241 417 posts 08-03-2016 11:09am Geoff posted..."As much as I would like to take you up on your suggestion to try a DC fuse in lieu of an AC fuse of the same amp rating I am absolutely the wrong person for this task as my current system actually contains no fuses, nor any fuse holders, nor is any such thing necessary as my system is completely independent of house AC, a couple AA size batteries suffice."
To which aolmrd1241 replied,
"Geoff. I asked you a while back to elaborate on your sysem.What exactly are you using at home? Thanks."
I’ll give you some hints. No house AC, no power cords, no Ground, no interconnects, no speaker cables, no fuses, no transformers. No problems.
wolf_garcia 2,554 posts 08-03-2016 1:25pm It's difficult to refuse the fuseless who claim a fusion with fancy fuse users. Oh, and the answer to Geoffkait's list of questions is: All of the above.
The refuseniks get things all mixed up instead of all fixed up.
When you ass-u-me something you make a fool out of me and Uma Thurman.
aolmrd1241 418 posts 08-03-2016 6:13pm Geoffkait:"’ll give you some hints. No house AC, no power cords, no Ground, no interconnects, no speaker cables, no fuses, no transformers. No problems."
To which aolmrd1241 replied,
Since you want me to guess... I guess..... a transistor radio or a Sony wallkman. Am I close?
You’re close. Very close. I have a Sony Walkman with Sony Ultralight headphones, also a Sony Portable Cassette Player, Pro version. Mounted on my new Woody the Woodpecker isolation stand. Tweaked to the max. Even the tweaks are tweaked.
nonoise 2,266 posts 08-03-2016 5:15pm "I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor, and surviving this thread."
"Well, you see Willard . . . In this war, things get confused out there, power, ideals, the old morality, practical military necessity. But out there with these natives, it must be a temptation to be god. Because there’s a conflict in every human heart, between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil."
Atmasphere 5-26-2016 12:31pm edt "I joined this thread recently with some results on testing. Those results are that the directionality appears out of coincidence and that actually greater improvement can be had by rotating the fuse in the holder for best contact. The improvement is measurable and audible; descriptions others have made on this thread of what happens when you get the direction right accurately describe what happens when the contact area is maximized.
Occam’s Razor has something to say here! Given that a fuse has to be used in AC circuits and given that people report differences by reversing the fuse, and also understanding how fuses are inherently incapable of having directionality in any way whatsoever, the explanation that they somehow have an effect by reversing them in the holder is a fairly complex explanation: some sort of unknowable, unmeasurable quality of the fuse itself.
A simpler explanation is that the reversal is improving the contact area because fuse and holder are not dimensionally perfect and the fuse might sit better in the holder in one direction. By rotating the fuse in the holder without reversing it gets the same effect only more profoundly."
With all due respect to Al and Ralph wire directionality is not some new-fangled theory, the directionality of wire including fuses has been known around high end audio circles for almost three decades. Many high end cable manufacturers, including but not limited to Audioquest and Goertz and Anti Cables, have been aware of wire directionality for eons. That’s why their cables - their unshielded cables - are marked with ARROWS, just as many aftermarket fuses are marked with ARROWS. But we’ve covered all this before. The fuse holder theory is what I call a red herring. Now I’m not saying the fuse holder isn’t totally blameless, and perhaps there could be some audible differences, who knows. By using Acme Audio silver plated fuse holder and Quicksilver Gold contact enhancer one can easily eliminate any so-called fuse holder issues. Here’s the summary of the fuse measurement provided on the HiFi Tuning website for those who haven’t seen it.
a. A smaller fuse has always a bigger resistance than a bigger fuse (as well value as size) which is dependent on physics laws. With smaller value fuses, also the current through the fuse decreases. So the total power loss stays more or less the same.
b. A fuse with smaller dimensions always gives better results, than same value fuse with bigger dimensions.
c. High Quality special High End fuses normally give better measurements results than standard fuses.
d. Fuses made in far east sometimes had worse results than standard fuses. Also manufacturing quality different more.
e. The Infinity Power Evolution 500 mA fuse (palladium) had a bad manufacturing quality.
"He's out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. And he's still in the field commanding troops."
Geoff, is it your basic premise that the drawing of the metal through a hole in a die or draw plate to form the wire imparts a directionality to it? Not sure how this works.
Colonel Kurtz: Did they say why, Willard, why they want to terminate my command? Capt. Benjamin Willard: I was sent on a classified mission, sir. Colonel Kurtz: It's no longer classified, is it? Did they tell you? Capt. Benjamin Willard: They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound. Colonel Kurtz: Are my methods unsound? Capt. Benjamin Willard: I don't see any method at all, sir. Colonel Kurtz: I expected someone like you. What did you expect? Are you an assassin? Capt. Benjamin Willard: I'm a soldier....
jetter 121 posts 08-03-2016 7:33pm Geoff, is it your basic premise that the drawing of the metal through a hole in a die or draw plate to form the wire imparts a directionality to it? Not sure how this works.
Yes, that’s the premise, that drawing the wire through the final die imparts a direction of the crystal grains as it were on the surface and below the surface of the wire. It’s because metal has a crystal structure, that is homogeneous in it’s liquid state as well as it's first solid state (no pun) but deformed by a series of cuttings and drawings through dies, including drawing through the final die. The music signal apparently prefers to travel down one direction rather than the other. Perhaps the metal wire is like a porcupine which would prefer to be stroked in the direction of it’s quills rather than against the grain as it were. If I had to guess, I’d imagine the ubiquitous "single crystal wire" is not nearly as directional - if at all - as ordinary wire. This also might explain why carbon wire and Graphene wire and lead wire (!) (not that I’ve heard lead wire) sound so good, inasmuch as those materials are not crystal in nature, but homogeneous.
Me thinks geoffkait is using "bot speak" for some answers, as it's way too out there to be a human being on the other end with some of the voodoo answers it's thinking up.
georgelofi 1,648 posts 08-03-2016 7:58pm Me thinks geoffkait is using "bot speak" for some answers, as it’s way too out there to be a human being on the other end with some of the voodoo answers it’s thinking up.
That would be illogical, Captain. Your feeling snowed by some of my answers just might have something to do with the fact that you were an English Major. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. My design of an interplanetary rocket engine using metal crystal structure bombarded by high-energy ions was almost 50 years ago.
I burned in my Besswax fuse in the pre (260 hours). There is very notable musical enhancement. Of all the sound parameters the most noticable is an organic music that is at the same time shoking and relaxing as if you were assured that this is like the music should be. Organic is the word that comes to mind. Lots of details but all in a coherent and realistic way. There is now a new version of the Beeswax (the SHD) that is said by Peter Hansen (Cable Co) to be a significative step beyond. I will try it soon in my pre. (If someone is interested in a classic little ued Beeswax 6x32 mm 1,5A slow blow at good price please let me know). I also have SR Black in my amps that are near 60 hours now. They are great also. Maybe more spectacular in bass boom and spectacular scene and many other things that have descibed at long in this thread. They still need to burn in until at least 100 hours before judging them definitely. Both products are great and I made the choice of mixing both but it is an arbitrary choice only empirical. An hypothesis that both could combine. Please forgive my english as it is not my native language. JY
barbapapa: Thank you for posting your results using the Audio Magic Beeswax fuse. I do think the Synergistic Research Black fuses and (now with your report) the A.M. Beeswax fuses are the top performing fuses available for audio equipment.
From a practical standpoint the Synergistic Research 30 day return policy allows one to audition what a fuse can do to the sonics of their system with the peace of mind that if they do not like the change they can get their money back.
My systems have been upgraded to all SR Black fuses for many hundreds of hours of listening pleasure. I would not want to go back to the fuses available in 2012 such as the Isoclean or Furutech. And these fuses were a step better than the original stock fuses supplied by the equipment manufacturers.
"From a practical standpoint the Synergistic Research 30 day return policy allows one to audition what a fuse can do to the sonics of their system with the peace of mind that if they do not like the change they can get their money back."
if I recall correctly Audio Magic offers a 60 day return policy. That’s an even more practical standpoint, eh? In fact, and I yes I know we’ve been over this before, everyone and his brother offers a 30 day return policy. So in and of itself that policy you constantly mention is no advantage, you know, per se. when I say you constantly mention, this is what I'm referring to:
"Finally they are one of the few companies that allow and encourage a 30 day trial."
If I haven't compared directly in the same products the SR Black vs the Besswax I compared the SR Red vs the Beeswax (1st generation) in my preamp and the AM is a very clear winner in my system. The Black is another animal.
I wish everyone and his brother and their dealers offered 30 day or 60 day returns on their fuses and A/C wall outlets. Perhaps it is more common than I think, but it is just not universally true. The Cable Company does not allow for fuse returns except for Synergistic Research, if I am reading their fine print about returns correctly.
So for non Synergistic Research companies I suggest getting a return policy approved prior to purchase. Audio Magic does not state their return policy at their web page that I just reviewed or at two of their dealer websites -Jaguar Audio and High End Electronics.
I do think knowing for sure what the return policy is for these products will allow those sitting on the fence to find out for themselves how much fuses and outlets affect the sound of their systems. I hope the untried will take the plunge and audition fuses and outlets. There are many fuses sold that will sound better than the fuse originally sent by the manufacturer of the equipment.
Maybe Audio Magic will post their policy here at this thread. It certainly is an innovative company with a host of products. The owner has been kind enough to invite me to hear his personal system in the past while I attended previous Rocky Mountain Audiofest.
I put those PS audio plugs in years ago as they're great for my antique iron lung collection. And you have to wonder how many people would install good wall plugs and after 29 days would think, "gee, these things just don't cut it"…and friggin' send them back! "Dear PS Audio, these wall plugs simply don't make me happy enough, so GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK"...
I've read in a respected medical journal that the insertion of those PS audio plugs can make a person feel uptight and in severe cases produce an overwhelming compulsion to write inane things on audio boards.
Sorry Papa, I can only assume your check from SR is late and you're grumpy…this thread should continue in it's mindless and unfunny worship of overpriced pseudo tweaks any time now...
I wish everyone and his brother and their dealers offered 30 day or 60 day returns on their fuses and A/C wall outlets. Perhaps it is more common than I think, but it is just not universally true. The Cable Company does not allow for fuse returns except for Synergistic Research, if I am reading their fine print about returns correctly.
I just spoke with Betty At High End Electronics in Apple Valley, CA who assured me there is a 30 day money back guarantee policy for SR and Audio Magic fuses. I also spoke with Roger at Music Direct in Chicago who assured me they have a 60 day return policy for all HiFi Tuning fuses, including their very popular Supreme fuse. AMR Gold Fuse from UK is actually advertised on eBay with, you guessed it, a 30 day money back guarantee.
"I looked but I didn't find anything." - Old audiophile expression
^^^ Competition is a great thing. It makes everyone strive harder to be the best ... and the end consumer is the beneficiary.
Wolfie ...
Living under that troll bridge must be really detrimental to the sound of your system. Try a ten-pack of Synergistic Research's High Frequency Transducers (HFT's) to tame the echo. :-)
^^^ Fine people indeed. Their service is great too. I met Alfred at the Newport show this past June. We had a nice talk. I was hoping to meet Betty too, but she had to stay home to take care of the business.
Audio Horizons Platinum Reference More Than a Fuse
"Free Home Audition We are so persuaded that you will be positively excited by the dramatic improvement the Audio Horizons Platinum Reference More Than a Fuse will make in your sound system, that for qualified customers we will prepay the audition freight to you. To qualify, one must have an Audiogon score of 30. Others in Conus can purchase the fuse on 15 days audition time money back guarantee."
"What Makes the Platinum Reference “More Than a Fuse" So Fine? Without betraying proprietary information, let me note that the More Than a Fuse dramatically increases the impedance from 0.2 ohms to 10 ohms at 10 MHz, thus increasing high frequency noise-rejection fifty fold over that of a conventional fuse. As a result of this increased noise rejection, one can hear delicate extended high frequencies formerly swallowed up in noise.
And because the Platinum Reference “More Than a Fuse” also reduces ultra high frequency noise by up to 46 dB or more, a ratio 200 times that of a typical fuse, high frequency harmonic texture is heard against a dead quiet background with a level of detail and refinement so sweet, delicate, and with such presence and immediacy—well, it will make you smile."
Isoclean and Furutech fuses: yup, you guessed it, 30 day return policy. Have we forgotten anyone? Heck, even the Teleportation Tweak comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. Hel-looo!
Without betraying proprietary information, let me note that the More Than a Fuse dramatically increases the impedance from 0.2 ohms to 10 ohms at 10 MHz, thus increasing high frequency noise-rejection fifty fold over that of a conventional fuse.
While I don’t doubt that the Audio Horizons dealer twosome mentioned above are great people, and for all I know the AH fuses may be the greatest such product ever, I would hope that no one here will take this technical rationale to be anything more than ad copy.
I’ll spare everyone a lengthy discourse on the subject, as well as saving myself a lot of time, but suffice it to say that if the AH fuse provides better sonics in a given application than some other fuse, it will not be because its impedance is 10 ohms at 10 MHz. Also, a far more effective approach to attenuating 10 MHz noise, as well as noise at other similarly high frequencies, would be to put a suitably chosen ferrite clamp costing a few dollars around the power cord, near the IEC connector on the component.
And because the Platinum Reference “More Than a Fuse” also reduces ultra high frequency noise by up to 46 dB or more, a ratio 200 times that of a typical fuse, high frequency harmonic texture is heard against a dead quiet background....
46 db corresponds to a voltage ratio of 200x, so it follows from this statement that a "typical fuse" provides no attenuation of high frequency noise. I don’t doubt the correctness of that implication.
Almarg: Actually Betty and Alfred Kainz own High End Electronics and sell Synergistic Research and Audio Magic fuses, along with many other fine non fuse products. They had nothing to do with the fuse promotion copy you quoted. Audio Horizons is a different company.
Audio Magic beeswax fuses are made to order and are not sold with a money back policy, either by High End Electronics or directly bought from Audio Magic. High End Electronics may in some situations offer store credit to a customer who wishes to return an Audio Magic fuse. This is decided on a case by case situation. Best to discuss this directly with Alfred Kainz prior to placing an Audio Magic Fuse order. Synergistic Research Black fuses are always sold with a 30 money back policy.
I do hope those that have not tried an audio grade fuse will do so. They have certainly improved the sound in the systems I listen to.
Just make sure ahead of time to find out exactly what the return policy is for whatever fuse that is considered from the exact seller you are dealing with.
Vivaldi trio sonatas and the out of print SACD of Willie Nelson's "Stardust" did sound most wonderful tonight.
Ah, Stardust. Great choice. Maybe tomorrow night for me, having been to the theater earlier tonight and not possessing enough bandwidth left for music tonight....
I do think the Stardust is a great treat. At the time a very risky undertaking. Middle aged country singer who's career finally took off in the 70's by embracing the outlaw country movement now sings old standards (that your parents listen to).
Produced by soul great Booker T and recorded at Emmy Lou Harris's L.A .house. Recording equipment was the famous Enactron Mobile Recording Truck.
The vinyl record puts Willie Nelson right there in the room. His "Redheaded Stranger" album isn't too shabby either. By the way, as a harmonica player, Nelson's harmonica player makes me want to throw all of my harmonicas into the trash.
I am glad you like Mickey Raphael's harmonica playing. I am the person who told Mickey to go audition with Willie back in the old days when I lived in Austin. He had just come to Austin and was playing solo gigs at the UT Austin- Student Union tea house. On Stardust, he is playing harmonica while in Emmy Lou's bathroom to get more echo effect. It does not have that digital reverb sound.
Keep the harmonicas - I hear the Harmonicats are holding auditions for their "long awaited" comeback album!
I got a Honda Accord this week. Now if I can just figure out where to install a SR Black fuse in the electrical system the world will be good !
Oregonpapa has mentioned in a few posts how much he likes the Von Gaylord interconnects. I also have a loom of the Von Gaylord interconnects in my system, a mix of the top of the line, 7000s and the next step down( previous totl) Chinchilla. If you'll search the threads, you'll find a few posts I made about the Chinchilla. IMHO, the Chinchilla is the best value in the entire line. Only in a very resolving system and under careful evaluation can you distinguish between the top two interconnects. I have an extra 1M pair of Chinchilla that I would be glad to send you to evaluate in your system. If you like them and want to keep them, I'll work out a great deal for you. If you don't like them, just return them to me. The Chinchillas have large barrels, so you need to have adequate gap between the RCA input/output. The interconnects are arrowed for directionality. As Oregonpapa mentioned, Peter Moncrieff of IAR fame wrote a gloating review about the Chinchillas many years ago declaring them the best interconnects on the planet. It was this review that convinced me to try them. I'm glad that I did.
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