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HiFi tuning Foo-uses

spartaco said:
simply, well done!
I would play around a bit with the fuses (switch between the 2 types) for a couple of days and then decide. Personally I heard even negative things with the audiophile fuses. "Dynamic" is only one characteristic of sound.
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I had returned the fuses as I find no point keeping them, but I did bought the dealer a really good lunch! :D

If you had read my earlier posting, you will have noticed 1 circuit breaker, 3 switches and 4 fuses along any single power pathway. That is simply insane! As I mentioned, I will be working on an alternative mains arrangement. And of course, I will be discussing this matter with my local certified electrician.
 
naimsg said:
Rather than dismissing the claim in improvement (which are heard by many people), why not investigate the reason.
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There we have the fundamental problem.

Reasons - of which there can be several unrelated to the performance of the actual fuse or the system.

Inquisitiveness is always a good thing but it needs to look at all possibilities including those the enquirer might not like.
 
naimsg said:
I had returned the fuses as I find no point keeping them, but I did bought the dealer a really good lunch! :D

If you had read my earlier posting, you will have noticed 1 circuit breaker, 3 switches and 4 fuses along any single power pathway. That is simply insane! As I mentioned, I will be working on an alternative mains arrangement. And of course, I will be discussing this matter with my local certified electrician.
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or you chill out and listen to some music.
 
Robert said:
Inquisitiveness is always a good thing but it needs to look at all possibilities including those the enquirer might not like.
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Good one.

And so far no one has really mentioned fuseholders which are often are nasty, weedy, weak things promoting poor contact. I have an especial dislike of the pcb-fixed type using a screw end cap and a tiny coil spring to locate the fuse.

Oh, and look at the BS1362 breaking curve - 13A fuses is unlikely to break under 20amps at all (thats 5kVA continuous, minimum delivered power) and may legitimately carry 25A for 10s, and even more for shorter periods. Even a 3A plugtop fuse effectively has a 5-10A continuous minimimum capacity link. It's hard to see how this forms a 'bottleneck' on even the largest domestic amplifiers.
 
All of this fuse talk makes me think I should replace the fuses in my Obelisks. I understand they are 3 amp quick blow - other than that is there anything special about them I need to know about?
 
Vital said:
I thought I read even the nay-sayers (regarding mains fuses) suggest that speaker fuses might benefit from changing/cleaning up? Before you ask I can't find the reference or who!
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Just polish them up with wire wool - and the speaker cable terminations too.

You'll probably need a better pre to hear the difference though, Ahem. Sorry Vital :-S
 
naimsg said:
...... As I mentioned, I will be working on an alternative mains arrangement. And of course, I will be discussing this matter with my local certified electrician
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.....who is unlikely to have any idea of what you'll need, unless he's an avid audiophile. It's you who needs to know what you want and can afford, assuming that you're talking about a dedicated radial circuit installation, that is.

Once you have a few ideas, I'd suggest you approach the fountain of knowledge that is PFM. :)
 
Vital said:
All of this fuse talk makes me think I should replace the fuses in my Obelisks. I understand they are 3 amp quick blow - other than that is there anything special about them I need to know about?
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.

Unless they're active, I didn't know that moving coil speakers had fuses !! My Quads have three per speaker, I believe, and one at least must be for the mains, I guess. I've never thought of fuses in speakers (my eureka moment), but of course all fuses need periodic 'cleaning', I s'pose, though I hardly use them myself.
 
Dan K said:
...and the (possibly more important) DIY NAPSC?
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I spoke to Mark (Witchhat) about this - he has apparently stopped doing them as he was concerned about people using them on Headlines (which they're apparently not suitable for). He has however agreed to sort one out for me when he puts the racing stripes on the HiCap (as long as I promise to only use for the intended purpose :) )

So for the moment it will be with only the HiCap2.
 
Vital said:
All of this fuse talk makes me think I should replace the fuses in my Obelisks. I understand they are 3 amp quick blow - other than that is there anything special about them I need to know about?
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Remove them altogether and bypass them. BIG improvement likely! Majority of speakers have no protection so they won't be any less protected than that!
 
What are the LCR characteristics of a fuse that would be detrimental to sonic performance when placed in a speaker, yet inconsequential when inline with the mains delivery? This is not a snide or sarcastic question, but at least one of the contributors thus far has inside knowledge on fuses and I for one am willing to learn.

BTW I have bypassed fuses in speakers before and agree that the results are all too audible. I have also bypassed chassis mains fuses in other gear and the results were also quite audible. The otherwise toxic Musical Fidelity MVT preamp ended up being somewhat less toxic, but still rather undistinguished.
 
rontoolsie said:
What are the LCR characteristics of a fuse that would be detrimental to sonic performance when placed in a speaker, yet inconsequential when inline with the mains delivery? This is not a snide or sarcastic question, but at least one of the contributors thus far has inside knowledge on fuses and I for one am willing to learn.
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In order to usefully protect the drive unit from excess power, the fuse current rating must be quite low and therefore have a fairly high resistance. This will be higher than a typical amplifier output resistance. It will also vary with music level as the fuse element gets hot, giving some power compression
 
I have heard of one speaker builder using light bulbs as driver protection. As the current goes up the thermal related resistance increases and limits the current to the driver. It would be interesting to see flashing lights coming from the ports.

As far as high resistance in speaker fuses, is it not mainly tweeters that are fused...and tweeters almost always have a resistor pad to lower their sensitivity to that of the mid/bass drivers-typically in the region of 5-10 ohms. So the added resistance of the fuse would really not change a whole lot.
 
Does bypassing fuse in the speaker improve the sound? :)

Btw, AMA in the Naim forum mentioned that sarum cables are used in the kudo titan speakers. Is it worth investigating replacing the cables in the speakers? Maybe there should be another thread on this.
 
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