Aftermarket fuse to tame a bright system?


Been reading all the interesting posts here, I've recently switched over to Audioquest silver interconnects and speaker cables, the improvement is easy to hear over OCC copper - lower noise floor, more clarity, greater transient snap, larger soundstage etc.... BUT.

I would say my system still has body, but the top end is now bright/harsh.  Could an aftermarket fuse tame this, so that I can still retain the clarity and other benefits of silver? I'm concerned that this potential solution may make my system more dynamic, and potentially give it a U or V shape sound profile - which is definitely what I don't want.

gavin1977

Gavin1977

Anti-Cables make great products, I'd give Paul Speltz (founder and highly thought of) a call to discuss your issues and see what he recommends

Cables can take hundreds of hours to break in, I'd wait for 250 hours or so before making a final decision

Fuses - I'm using rather inexpensive fuses, ACME Audio Ceramic silver cryo fuses. The black fuses with CFC coating actually were an improvement, especially for their inexpensive $32 cost. Worth a try especially at that cost.

Funny that they seemed to increase inner detail, but also smoothed out the highs.....and reduced sibilance or brightness. Like I said, cheap to test....but they do take about 100 hours to soften up

Gustard sells a $25 fuse for their dacs, etc.  I don't know if they'd make much difference, but i guess it can't hurt.  I've got one in my dac, but I pretty much popped it in and forgot about it.  Never did any critical listening to see if it helped.

Someone else mentioned to me about the Gustard fuses - apparently they’re darker sounding and useful for tuning.

@gavin1977

Anti-cables Lvel 5.3 XLR Interconnects

"Design Concept:

Typical interconnect cables usually have a signal wire surrounded with a thick plastic dielectric material, which is then surrounded by the ground conductor to shield it from EMI/RFI noise, and then more plastic dielectric material. This typical approach has the usual drawbacks of accumulating a lot of dielectric effect distortion, and an accumulation of shunting capacitance.

The ANTICABLES Analog XLR Interconnects use a different approach. Since air is a near perfect dielectric, no extra insulation dielectric material (beyond the thin white and red coating) is used, and the wires are suspended in free air. Eliminating dielectric effect distortion is what allows these interconnects to sound like music, (not a cable)."

 

@gavin1977

That's interesting.  Definitely not how Gustard describes the resultant sound.  Maybe some day, I'll put the original fuse back in and see if there is any difference.  I'm inclined to think that there won't be much difference.