Direction of aftermarket fuses (only for believers!)


It is with reluctance that I start another thread on this topic with the ONLY GOAL for believers to share their experience about aftermarket fuses.
To others: you can call us snobs, emperors w/o clothes,... etc but I hope you refrain posting just your opinion here. If you did not hear any difference, great, maybe there isn’t.

The main driver for this new post is that I am starting a project to mod my NAD M25 7 ch amp for my home theater. It has 19 fuses (2 per channel, 4 on the power supply board, 1 main AC) and I will try a mix of AMR Gold, SR Black and Audio Magic Platinum (anyway that is the plan, I may try out some other brands/models). As it is reasonably difficult to change them, esp the ones on each channel module that requires complete disassembly, I would like to know what the direction is for these models mentioned and of course, others who HAVE HEARD there is a difference please share your experience on any fuse model you have tried.

Fuses are IME directional:
Isoclean is one of the first to indicate the direction (2008/2009) on their fuses. Users of HiFi Tuning (when the awareness rose quite a bit amongst audiophiles) have mostly heard the difference.

As an IEEE engineer, I was highly skeptical of cabling decades ago (I like the speaker design of John Dunlavy but he said on many occasions that cables nor footers matter at all, WRONG!). Luckily, my curiosity proved me wrong as well. I see the same skepticism that I and many others had about the need for aftermarket cables many, many years ago now on fuses and esp on the direction on fuses.

Another example is the direction of capacitors (I do not mean electrolytic types). Even some manufacturers now and certainly many in the past did not believe it can make a difference sonically. Maybe some do but it takes time in the assembly to sort and put them in the right direction/order (esp as some of the cap manufacturers still do not indicate "polarity") so that maybe is one argument why this is not universally implemented.








128x128jazzonthehudson

almarg
6,436 posts
06-08-2016 12:49pm
Some PC w/o shrink sleeves on plugs/IEC and thin threads like NordOst Valhalla can be tested, simply swap the ends. I may try that on my remaining Valhallas.
Although if that is done and a difference is heard, it by no means proves that directionality of the wires is responsible. For example, the act of simply removing and reattaching the connectors would seem to me to have a greater chance of being responsible. Assuming, of course, that care has been taken to eliminate other possible extraneous variables, such as differences in warmup state (many here have asserted that days of warmup may be required for some solid state equipment to achieve optimum performance), or the re-initialization that occurs in some designs (especially those which include digital circuitry) when power is removed and re-applied, or even (as some members here have asserted in other threads) the act of physically manipulating the cord, allegedly necessitating significant time for it to "settle.""

Of course, all of those "extraneous variables" you refer to can be controlled by the careful and thorough experimenter. There’s no reason to jump to conclusions. Looking on the bright side at least there’s no fuse holder to get in the way. Not sure I completely understand all the angst and concern over wire directionality since it rather easy to demonstrate it using stock fuses or unshielded interconnects. I can completely understand why uber skeptics would not wish to carry out these experiments themselves and report results. 

Cheers,

geoff kait
machina dynamica


Post removed 
Ralph, how should I interpret this?
>> ^^ Do you understand how power cords are wired? If you get it wrong, Bad Things happen! 

Al, I appreciate your urge not to jump to conclusion but isn't experimenting that got many further? Of course, one can just leave everything alone as GK alluded to and I do so when I believe there is no or little room for tweaking. 
What's next? The hearing of one differs from day to day, from mood to mood. How do you eliminate these parameters? 
We are not here to proof anything but to share our experiences. 

I do however agree with the settling time, be it electrical or mechanical or magnetical. 

As for cleaning as mentioned many times here on this very thread, I clean every contact regularly which is easy for access but I never claim that these actions have to do with directionality. 
Ralph, how should I interpret this?
>> ^^ Do you understand how power cords are wired? If you get it wrong, Bad Things happen! 

Interpret is as: Don't mess with rewiring power cords unless you understand local code and know what you are doing!

Otherwise the power cord can become deadly as a shock or fire hazard!

auxinput:

What a wonderful summary of your fuse experiments and the sonic results. I absolutely agree that these fuses have a major effect on the sound of a system and one's enjoyment of the music.

Because these fuses do change the sound, finding the optimal fuse for a single component can become time consuming.

If one does not want to do a lot of experimentation , I am suggesting auditioning the Synergistic Research Black fuse. I think it has some of the best sonic qualities available and as importantly comes with a 30 day trial or refund. They have improved both the digital and analog components in my systems.

David Pritchard