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ORANGE Fuse rejected

So, to bring everyone up to date, my favorite fuse for analog equipment has been Furutech for a long time (I’m really sad that they no longer make the fuse). For digital transport type equipment, the best fuse has been Audiomagic Superfuse (NOT beeswax fuse - in my opinion the beeswax fuses push too hard on the voltage - this is the best I can explain what happens).

So, with the addition of a Farad Super3 linear power supply added for my Pink Faun S/PDIF computer card, I decided to try a Synergistic Orange fuse on this Farad power supply. It has been in the unit for at least 6 weeks constant now (24 hours a day). I recently finalized the burn-in of my last set of digital AES/EBU cables and sat down for critical listening and comparison. While this setup allowed me to differentiate between the digital cables and select which ones sounded the best, there was no cable that really sounded "good". I was really confused at this point because the sound had this harsh edge no matter what digital cable I put in the system.

So, I decided to pull the ORANGE and put back in an Audiomagic Superfuse. Low and behold, all that harshness was gone!! Also, the Audiomagic Superfuse gave me more tones and texture in the bass than the ORANGE fuse did. It sounded much more natural as well (throughout the entire frequency range).

I remember when I first put the ORANGE fuse in, it was like "wow, there’s so much high frequency resolution". But in the end, this was too much and too harsh (like someone turning up the sharpness on the TV way too much!). The ORANGE fuse -might- do well in warm laid back sounding equipment, but I only build my systems with high resolution detailed equipment and the ORANGE is not a good match for this.

Like I said, the Furutech Rhodium has been the best I have used for analog equipment (i.e. preamps / amps). However, it is a bit too slow and colored for digital transports (streamers, transport, bluray players, roku, video processors, etc.). The Audiomagic Superfuse excels in the digital transport area because it is fast and also neutral sounding.

There appears to be another thread here talking about Quantum Science fuses, in which even the Light Blue was an improvement over the Synergistic ORANGE. I may read through that thread and possibly try one of the Light Blue or Yelllow in the future sometime. Maybe it would be a good alternative to Furutech Rhodium.
auxinput
auxinput OP
2,920 posts
 
ORANGE FUSE REVERSED.  Okay, I did reverse the direction on the Orange fuse and did critical listening.  While it did not have as an extreme effect as the original direction, it did still have a somewhat sterile harsh tone.  I even reversed the fuse again back in my original direction just to make sure.  In my opinion, the ORANGE fuse imparts somewhat of a sterile harsh bright character.  The direction of the fuse does impact this as the sterile/harshness was even worse in one direction, but it still carried the same type of signature.

Putting the Audiomagic Superfuse back in, again, removed the problems that the ORANGE fuse was presenting.  I reversed direction on the Audiomagic a couple times and I could not hear any significant difference.  The AM is much better, comes across more relaxed and much more natural sounding, but still presenting the upper mids and highs in a very fast and crystal clean way without any harshness.  Stronger bass with more bass tones and texture.
auxinput OP
2,920 posts
 
Interesting take on the Furatech Rhodium. I tried one in my phono preamp and found it somewhat sterile adding a chromium color to the music.
I have not tested Furutech in a phono preamp.  I'm not a turntable guy, but I have heard some amazing turntable systems.  The Furutech has an extremely long burn-in somewhere between 300-500 hours, so you may have been in that really painful area.  And the rhodium does sometimes add a chromium color, especially when used in a digital transport or with Rhodium XLR/BNC connectors for a digital cable.  Also, in some systems, the Furutech Rhodium was a little bit too mild / laid back, so it is entirely system dependent.
aubreybobb
86 posts
 
The orange fuse worked well for me once I got the directionality sorted.  Diff strokes...
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
I can totally understand someone prefers another fuse to Orange. But to not be able to tell which is the correct direction robs all other observations of any value. It is like, imagine someone says they prefer one speaker over another. Okay. Fine. No problem. But then you learn they aren't sure which way the speaker should even be pointing? Okay. Good luck with that.
blackbag20
442 posts
 
+1 georgehifi

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