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how much for a fuse,

No, you're obviously wrong, people say they can hear the difference. They can't all be wrong can they?




















rhetorical question.
/ˈrɛtərɪk/

noun



    • a question asked in order to create a dramatic effect or to make a point rather than to get an answer.
      "the presentation was characterized by impossibly long sentences and a succession of rhetorical questions"

That would be an ecumenical matter.
 
That would be an ecumenical matter.
3600276-down_with_this_sort_of_thing.jpg
 
ISTM that audiophile fuses are at the extreme end of tweaking. I observe that people report hearing differences. I'm not disputing anyone's experience but attributing the experience to some characteristic of the fuse astounds me when there are other more credible attributions (including the essential nature of the human listener).

There seems to be a 100.00...% correlation between those who understand how power supplies work and those who don't accept the idea of the audiophile fuse. Am I wrong? Is there anyone out there who understands how power supplies work and can furnish a credible and complete candidate explanation? One that starts with some characteristic of the fuse and ends with some sufficiently significant change in the audio signal?

I've not seen anything credible. The web pages I have seen never produce a complete story and always end up with a "then a miracle occurs" step in the argument.

However it has to be accepted that the essence of belief is to defy logic. I am sure belief will continue regardless; and those of us who are doubters will continue to be accused of having cloth ears and poor audio kit. So be it.
 
ISTM that audiophile fuses are at the extreme end of tweaking. I observe that people report hearing differences. I'm not disputing anyone's experience but attributing the experience to some characteristic of the fuse astounds me when there are other more credible attributions (including the essential nature of the human listener).

There seems to be a 100.00...% correlation between those who understand how power supplies work and those who don't accept the idea of the audiophile fuse. Am I wrong? Is there anyone out there who understands how power supplies work and can furnish a credible and complete candidate explanation? One that starts with some characteristic of the fuse and ends with some sufficiently significant change in the audio signal?

I've not seen anything credible. The web pages I have seen never produce a complete story and always end up with a "then a miracle occurs" step in the argument.

However it has to be accepted that the essence of belief is to defy logic. I am sure belief will continue regardless; and those of us who are doubters will continue to be accused of having cloth ears and poor audio kit. So be it.
That’s like an evolutionary biologist who believes in creationism. I’m sure they exist!;)
 
However it has to be accepted that the essence of belief is to defy logic.

That needs a bit of thinking about, John, though it sounds good! :) Seems to me that those who are immersed in the belief that established theory is the be all and end all simply cannot accept your philosophical sentence that an alternative yet arcane aspect might just exist. I and friends (one of whom lectures in physics/maths) have heard the immediate and repeatable improvement is s.q. (with commensurate dynamics) by changing case fuses on s/s CDPs and amplification. A long time ago and of course risky, but there's no doubt in my and others' minds about the effects.

Ivor used to preach the message that the source is paramount; a good marketing ploy for his LP12 at the time, but the true source is the electricity supply, i.m.o. Simply cleaning up all the connections of a 13 amp socket and plug can make a difference, as many have found. Okay, that's more about impedance than actual supply but there is a valid connection, i.m.o.
 
Simply cleaning up all the connections of a 13 amp socket and plug can make a difference, as many have found. Okay, that's more about impedance than actual supply but there is a valid connection, i.m.o.

Doing anything and believing, expecting, hoping it will make a difference is just human. See how modern snake oil works – homeopathy is a perfect example of that phenomenon.
There are probably hundreds of switches and connectors between the generator and your end socket. And transformers too.
And why not clean everything in the fuse box too while you’re at it? And don’t forget to tighten up all that together ;)
 
That needs a bit of thinking about, John, though it sounds good! :) Seems to me that those who are immersed in the belief that established theory is the be all and end all simply cannot accept your philosophical sentence that an alternative yet arcane aspect might just exist. I and friends (one of whom lectures in physics/maths) have heard the immediate and repeatable improvement is s.q. (with commensurate dynamics) by changing case fuses on s/s CDPs and amplification. A long time ago and of course risky, but there's no doubt in my and others' minds about the effects.

Ivor used to preach the message that the source is paramount; a good marketing ploy for his LP12 at the time, but the true source is the electricity supply, i.m.o. Simply cleaning up all the connections of a 13 amp socket and plug can make a difference, as many have found. Okay, that's more about impedance than actual supply but there is a valid connection, i.m.o.
I am definitely not trying to knock either experience or belief. Belief in things that are not or cannot be proved is a fundamental part of human existence (and often it is perhaps more politely labelled "philosophy"). If such things contribute to enjoyment of the hobby there's nothing I can validly say.

Michael Faraday once wrote "Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature." And in my time in the R&D lab some of the best things I did were achieved when I didn't know what I was doing was impossible. But in the end they were consistent. So I do maintain a view that there is always some doubt even when what I hear seems impossible.

I have designed power supplies but the complete detail of why I think fuses are at least highly improbable sources of change to audio waveforms is probably too much detail. Suffice it to say for now that a mains fuse's resistance (one of the candidate explanations) and that of a dirty plug/socket are much smaller than other series resistances in the primary circuit of a normal power supply. That includes the mains itself, which for design purposes will have circa 20 times as much series resistance as a fuse and can be higher depending where you are on the distribution network. So the potential impact from the fuse seems rather low.

And beyond what Faraday wrote, there is the possibility that the laws of nature as understood today need modification. Certainly possible, so "established theory is the be all and end all" is not what I am saying. However, in mature technologies the probability seems rather low unless there is reasonable evidence.

I do maintain a proportionate element of doubt about the impossibility of fuses having an impact on audio signals. But that is a small element of doubt, I do look for credible possibilities that what is reported is consistent with laws of nature or indicative of some need for change. But so far there are no possibilities that seem to have a chance.

But even so, as Johnathan Swift wrote: "When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him." Maybe that genius is the modern-day audiophile fuse designer.
 
I'm agnostic on fuses and do struggle to see how they might make a difference, though I'm pretty convinced mains cables make a difference so I'm already a fair way down what to many (including Jez) is a highly dubious route. I don't want to re-hash all that, but a couple of thoughts from me:

Firstly, the act of removing and refitting a fuse will likely remove some crud from the connectors, and it's generally accepted that removing and reconnecting interconnects and cables is beneficial for that reason, so I could see that you might extend that argument further upstream to the fuse. And as Mike Reed says, I have my musings on whether the perceived improvements due to mains cables are down to small reductions in the mains impedance, for which a better fuse connection could play a part.

And secondly, provided the fuse blows at the required level of current, perhaps its performance before that point occurs could have a material effect. So, say, if the 'foo' fuse heats less at permissible levels of current (the thinking, I suspect, behind the beeswax stuff) its overall resistance could be lower, and more linear, than a bog-standard fuse passing the same level of current.

There's probably little argument that any such effects would be small, perhaps infinitesimal, and the question then arises whether they would translate into measurable, or audible, differences in the output, but that's an argument we surely don't need to have again here, do we?
 
I repeat myself: do you intend to tighten up and clean every single contact, starting at the power plant?
Wire your whole home with foo power cable?
Preposterous ideas :)
I bet doing that would not change the sound of your tiny, pathetic amplifier at home. Would it?
 
Perhaps all those interested either way should provide their location via ‘What3Words’ then you could map whether those that believe live closer to power stations than those who do not?
 
I'm agnostic on fuses and do struggle to see how they might make a difference, though I'm pretty convinced mains cables make a difference so I'm already a fair way down what to many (including Jez) is a highly dubious route. I don't want to re-hash all that, but a couple of thoughts from me:

Firstly, the act of removing and refitting a fuse will likely remove some crud from the connectors, and it's generally accepted that removing and reconnecting interconnects and cables is beneficial for that reason, so I could see that you might extend that argument further upstream to the fuse. And as Mike Reed says, I have my musings on whether the perceived improvements due to mains cables are down to small reductions in the mains impedance, for which a better fuse connection could play a part.

And secondly, provided the fuse blows at the required level of current, perhaps its performance before that point occurs could have a material effect. So, say, if the 'foo' fuse heats less at permissible levels of current (the thinking, I suspect, behind the beeswax stuff) its overall resistance could be lower, and more linear, than a bog-standard fuse passing the same level of current.

There's probably little argument that any such effects would be small, perhaps infinitesimal, and the question then arises whether they would translate into measurable, or audible, differences in the output, but that's an argument we surely don't need to have again here, do we?
A circa 7:1 step-down mains transformer for a modest power amplifier will divide primary-side resistance by a factor of 49 by the time the secondary circuit sees it.

A 50-milli-ohm primary-side fuse looks like a rather tiny 1 milli-ohm resistance in the secondary. A mains lead should have circa 20 milli-ohms. I don't know about connector crud but if much more than 10 milli-ohms I would be surprised. All divided by circa 49 as they impact the secondary circuit, working into perhaps 30 milli-ohms of reservoir capacitor ESR.

Then the secondary side has a whacking great non-linearity in the bridge rectifier (it has its own series resistance too), never mind that the UK mains is allowed to have 8% total harmonic distortion by the time it gets to you. So I remain reluctant to see (certainly real) heating/cooling resistance changes in a primary-side fuse as generating significant non-linearity in this context unless I have missed something.
 
I repeat myself: do you intend to tighten up and clean every single contact, starting at the power plant?
Wire your whole home with foo power cable?
Preposterous ideas :)
I bet doing that would not change the sound of your tiny, pathetic amplifier at home. Would it?
I'll assume the 'tiny, pathetic amplifier' bit wasn't intentionally ad-hom and aimed at me personally, so will move on.

There is plenty of anecdotal reporting that improvements at the substation have led to audible improvements to domestic hifi, so when substations were upgraded/enlarged, repaired, or just had key components replaced, eg those enormous capacitors, peolpe have reported that their hifi sounded better. They didn't know why, at the time, and only found out about the work on the substation subsequently. So I wouldn't rule out the idea that tightening up and cleaning every single contact, starting at the power plant, wouldn't or couldn't have a significant and audible effect. So If I were a betting man (I'm not) I'd probably take that bet, though there'd be no way to actually carry it through, of course. :)

But it's things like that which make me ponder over the mains impedance aspect.

And recall that, in the UK at least, we use a ring main system, so until the wall outlet, the cable routes both ways to and from the distribution box. Unless I've misunderstood, that means the impedance of the mains in a ring main configuration is lower than it would be for a single run of cable (a spur?). So if the mains cable from the wall outlet to the equipment is of higher impedance than that in the ring main, it would seem possible that reducing the impedance of the mains cable to the equipment could have an effect.
 
And secondly, provided the fuse blows at the required level of current, perhaps its performance before that point occurs could have a material effect. So, say, if the 'foo' fuse heats less at permissible levels of current (the thinking, I suspect, behind the beeswax stuff) its overall resistance could be lower, and more linear, than a bog-standard fuse passing the same level of current.
That argument might have some merit for signal-carrying fuses (amp output or speaker). Fuses do have non-linear behaviour near the rated current. However, I very much doubt any of the foo fuses are substantially different in this regard.

The idea that a mains fuse could affect the sound is nothing short of ludicrous. Sure, a fuse operating near its current rating might distort the "sine" wave a little. The thing is, typical mains voltage already has far more distortion than a fuse might impart. Power supplies are designed for this. Here's what one cycle of mains voltage typically looks like in my house compared to a pure sine wave:
image.png


Another reason to doubt the efficacy of foo fuses is that the "explanations" offered by the manufacturers are nonsensical and often contradictory. Moreover, if the things they say were true, hardly anything built on the assumption that established science is correct could work, yet here we are, sending robots to Mars and whatnot.
 
What the makers say is one reason why I remain agnostic. But while the sceptics put this down to malign intent, deliberate snake oil sales, etc, I tend to a more prosaic idea: that these people are probably inveterate tweakers and, when messing about with mains fuses, detected or perceived a difference, improvement, in the sound quality. They then construct their own hypothesis about what this cause might be, and pursue a bit of ad-hoc development based on that hypothesis. The development yields results which, for their purposes, supports the hypothesis, which they subsequently put forward as their version of the truth. So, not a deliberate con, more a sincere attempt to get a handle on something everybody struggles to explain.
 
That’s like an evolutionary biologist who believes in creationism. I’m sure they exist!;)

I know a 'creationist' (Vicar's wife & artist, a well educated and intelligent lady) that believes evolution was God's tool for creating all life and views the Bible version as a simplistic explanation written in a simplistic time for mass consumption of people with no understanding or knowledge of science.

As for expensive audiophile fuses, I'll leave that for people with more disposable income, curiosity or whatever it is drives people to try such things.
 
As for expensive audiophile fuses, I'll leave that for people with more disposable income, curiosity or whatever it is drives people to try such things.

Boredom? I've picked up some unusual hobbies during the great mess that was 2020. Never got to fuses or cables though.
 
The review that started this thread was pretty confident on the upgrade to sq achieved by the device, I wonder if we could get a loan device for trial by the forum members similar to the cables floating around. If I was expecting someone to part with £2K for a fuse I would expect to have to provide one for review. I might try it on the TV, I would expect it look like 8K after fitting. If I use it on my back massager would I get a happy ending
 
The review that started this thread was pretty confident on the upgrade to sq achieved by the device, I wonder if we could get a loan device for trial by the forum members similar to the cables floating around. If I was expecting someone to part with £2K for a fuse I would expect to have to provide one for review. I might try it on the TV, I would expect it look like 8K after fitting. If I use it on my back massager would I get a happy ending
I'd use it on my computer while doing some banking. Surely the money spent and more would miraculously materialise into my accounts.
 


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