The new Synergistic Research BLUE fuses ....
Hey Frank, Here is one of my all-time favorites for late-night listening: https://www.amazon.com/Plays-Debussy-Jacques-Loussier/dp/B00004Y6SM Fantastic acoustic bass performance IMO and the sound quality is spectacular throughout. A must have. Dave |
Just wanted to add some more comments now I have a good week on my Blue fuses. Further to my first impressions I wanted to expand on what I think the Blues do that is quite distinct and unexpected. This is in the context of using 3 Blues in my pre-amp and power amps, all other fuses are SR Blacks As I previously noted the Blues at first listen seem more reserved, more polite, more laid back then the Blacks. Bass seems less dynamic and treble less crisp. But spend some time and listen in and what you realize is that the frequency range is still there and what is really happening is that the individual notes and sounds are not leaping out and drawing attention to one another as they were before but are much more part of the whole. The Blues seem to excel in an area of reproduction that is getting very important to me — that of “continousness” by which I mean the natural ease in which a vocal line, or violin passage, flows from one note, from one breath, from one bow movement, to the next without interruption or glitch. I’m hearing the same profound change in introducing a step up into my LP system and once you start listening to it it’s something that’s very addictive. As the Blues are the only change on my digital side I have to think they are playing to this aspect of reproduction. Now I’m not able to know why a fuse might do this — maybe it’s removing some minute chokes in the ebb and flow of power — whatever, I just wouldn’t go back. To some extent it’s the antithesis of “hi-fi” (i.e. flashy, attention getting etc) but if this sort of flow (which seems very Csikszentmihalyi) is appealing to you then give the Blues a try — you might learn to love them |
^^^ Agreed. And some of the "better" equipment I’ve owned doesn’t "do" the "continuousness" thing, which can also explain why it IS doing something exquisite for some of us, and not for others. If that’s its strong point, then it’s not going to show up in equipment that can’t do "continuousness." (Fortunately, I have CJ electronics, and they do it exceedingly well). It makes me a little crazy that all the expensive things I bought, including the Brystons, Hegels, Simaudios, and quite a few other expensive electronics, never equalled my Versa/Convergent/Jadis/Avalon setup, circa 1992, in the sense of it sounding like a live broadcast from the Met Opera (even on an inexpensive tuner, you could tell it was being broadcast live, aka "continuous"). The most "continuous" equipment I’ve ever owned were the Jadis electronics, the Avalons, and then the we’re-not-related-but-I-can-fool-some-of-the-people-some-of-the-time Avalon sound-alines, the Sound Dynamics RTS-3s, which do continuousness in a way that eludes nearly everything I ever reviewed with the exception of the Manger speakers (they were genuinely breathtaking). It is audio’s shame that they (Mangers) never got a foothold in the US of A. There is an ancient review I did of the Genesis 6.1s on ultraaudio.com, and I remember thinking that the Genesis were great speakers, but still did not do what the Avalons, Sound Dynamics - or even the barely-functioning Mangers did: continuousness. The Mangers did this phenomenally well - better than even the Avalons, and I would have written a review of them except that, since the speaker had a cracked edge, I had to listen to see if it was broken before I could contact Manger to tell them to file a claim with UPS. I carefully hooked them up, although I could hear something rattling around, and with whatever luck Heaven was providing, I got to hear them, and they were to die for. But not for long: the moment I went to move the damaged speaker (the one that had arrived in the crushed box), the entire upper frequency disappeared, and that was the end of my listening. I called Manger and told them the bad news. They weren’t willing to send a second pair for me to review. I would have LOVED to have owned this speaker. It surpassed Avalons and pretty much everything else I’d heard. I forget the technology, but I think it was a type of ribbon speaker. And continuous as HELL!! Even my brother, far from being remotely interested in equipment, said that this was the first speaker he heard in the house that sounded like someone was actually playing a live instrument in the room. The whole "continuous" thing is also something that Conrad Johnson electronics do extremely well. As I recall, Jonathan Valin mentioned once, upon reviewing CJ after many years of not listening to them, that the CJs had NO grain and exceeded any equipment he had heard. The less grain, the more - other issues aside - it sounds like the Real Thing. Continuousness. The Blues do this better than previous SR generations of fuses, but I have found it depends on what they are installed in, as you yourself have found. I can see why fuses make for disagreements on these forums : they are not a one-size-fits-all (equipment) scenario. And that could make anyone wonder if we’ve been drinking or snorting or inhaling something. This used to happen even in TAS, when one reviewer would like something less than another. It was less apparent when it was just HP, Donleycott, Coolidge and Art Dudley doing the reviewing, but once a host of other reviewers arrived (around ’82) , one had only to read the magazine regularly to see that with the wider array of equipment in use in say, 10 reviewers’ systems, instead of just the 4 original reviewers, the OBJECTIVE conclusions were similar, but the reactions (the "subjective" part)? THAT was what varied. I think Synergistic is being VERY smart with their 30-day guarantee: nobody gets burned. It does up the ante in your system? Return it. You’re out the postage, but that’s it. And there are VERY few companies willing to allow the buyer that luxury. It’s smart business. Very smart. I’d wonder why nobody else does it, except it’s clear: SR has more resources than smaller companies and they can take the hit if someone returns the fuse (although I don’t think they do this for ALL their products (also smart)). I do, however, understand that if one bought the Blacks and SR hadn’t bothered to announce - 2 or 3 months ahead of the new release - that they WERE releasing a new fuse, some people being rightfully pissed. But then, don’t their distributors know this? It gets complicated at that point, unless SR is willing to take back the old inventory and supply the distributor with new inventory without financial loss. That part? Not so good for the distributor, unless their profit margin is high. Be that as it may, the fuse is WORTH trying, and that’s the only point I care to make. Myself, I’m noticing a SLIGHT loss of liquidity since I put the Audio Horizon into the PS Audio (which I didn’t notice initially, dazzled as I was with the richer tone (well, richer than the SR Red in the PS Audio, anyway), and part of me dreads buying another Blue fuse to see if that liquidity - AND, I think, some low level detail as well - will return (since liquidity usually goes hand-in-hand with continuousness, logically speaking, that SHOULD happen. But it’s not a guarantee, no matter how good the Blue is elsewhere). And then I have to actually say to myself, "You dummy: if it doesn’t improve the performance, you can return the fuse." It’s a "Duh" moment, but as I get older, I’m finding I have more of those. So, guarantee: Good. Fear: Bad. |
+1 on the flow/seamlessness/continuousness. I am hearing a nice improvement in this area after changing out the black for a blue in my amp. Interestingly, I also hear improvements in this area when I get the absolute polarity right for a particular recording. Question for those hearing improvements in this area, is your system tube, SS, or a combo of both? Mine is tube. |
