Fuses that matter.

Hi Al- Sorry I missed your comments. I've found this thread WAY too tedious, to try to follow. Unless I've missed something, since my time at Case Institute; no one has yet actually observed electrons on the quantum level. That leaves Electrical Theory, still theory. No one has yet seen electrons tranverse the chevron shaped crystal barriers in drawn metals, or- if there is a noticeable/quantifiable effect, with regards to their direction. No one yet knows how/what to measure, with regards to the very complex musical signals our equipment is manipulating, and obtaining the best reproduction of ambient info, sound stage(depth/width/height), image specificity, etc. Of course, we do know; the cleaner(blacker) the background- the better the resolution. Nothing I've found has resulted in greater returns, in this regard, than tweaking power supplies(over 30yrs now). It's been my experience, that the better everything before and after these fuses(ie: fast/soft recovery rectifiers/high filter capacity/dedicated 4AWG circuits/carefully selected PCs/decent power purifier for lower current draw components): the more obvious the benefits of these special fuses. BTW: I'm of the camp that holds the power supply as being directly in the signal path. To me; any gain device(transistor or tube, that is) is a switch(or valve), turned on/off(controlled) by the incoming signal and modulating the voltage/current from the power supply, to the following gain stage or speakers. Just my way of thinking($0.02) Best regards- Al

OOPS: Make that, "transverse."

Rodman99999, Power supply is in the output stage to some degree. When power supply has no load regulation and amplifier has zero feedback then performance of the power supply (including inductance and ESR of big caps, resistance of the fuses etc.) plays part. Amp's negative feedback of 40dB would reduce this effect 100 times while regulated power supply would make it at least another 100 times better, and that's what is inside of my amp - at least 10,000 times reduction of power supply effects. As Al stated - don't look for any scientific explanation of the fuses. It is sort of "audio magic" thing. We don't even know if 3A Hi-Fi fuse is not really 3.5 or 4A standard fuse since AFAIK there is no test or approval of any agency. I wonder if datasheet, showing performance curves is available. I doubt that silver has lowest resistance times melting temperature factor since fuse companies developed special alloys (often lead&tin sometimes with cadmium and small amounts of bismuth and silver). I also don't know how gold plating improves things, since gold is relatively poor conductor. Another thing is directionality of resistance. Somebody suggested that direction that wire was drawn is causing it. I conducted test, a while ago, on spool of about 4000' of wire and resistance was identical, as far as I could measure with 6 digit Multimeter.

Has anyone here observed a clear difference in sound by reversing fuse directions back and forth immediately after initial installation?? It seems possible that after being conditioned by a load in one direction for a while and then reversing so the load is now going against the ‘conditioning’ or ‘break-in’ - the resulting effect sounds better to many. This matches my experience with the Supreme fuses since I didn’t hear any directional difference on day one, but did after reversing the preamp fuse a couple weeks later.

Kijanki,

I hope for the benefit of the custom fuse owners that the makers of these care as much about making sure the fuses serve their primary function properly as a prerequisite to whatever specific they might do to make them "sound better", but there is little or nothing to indicate they do. That alone disqualifies fancy fuses to me. I'll seek to invest my money in power tweaks elsewhere thanks.

I would not use a fuse marketed exclusively under the premise of better sound for this reason even if someone gave them to me for free and I actually thought they might sound better.