Upgrading Fuses

Have you ever noticed how the "this______absolutely makes a difference!" or "this________makes a huge difference" crowd never provides substantiated, or independant 3rd party verification, or scientific before-and-after data for any of their improvement gains?

"It really is unbelievably boring and pointless" is my sentiments exactly! It's no different than anyone claiming they can read minds, predict the future, move objects telepathically, etc, etc... If you claim you can hear the difference with fuses, or that a specific fuse direction is audible, back it up with data! It's ahould be an easy thing to measure for those with conventional lab equipment, yet neither of the exotic fuse companies provide a single explanation to the best of my knowledge, nor data to back up their claims. Show me a non-audio related scientific, engineering or accredited university research process that would accept known-unreliable sensory perception to out weigh extensive reserch and measurements. As Jeff stated, they'd pull their degrees and be subjected to endless industry ridicule.

How much engineering does a fuse take?

I rest my case. These guys may have gone to the same engineering school as the cable supervisor who kept claiming my internet problems "can't be your modem. I've measured it twice and my instruments don't lie." Two weeks of labor, complete wire replacement and countless service calls later, guess what the lowly "cable user" insisted they do? Yup. We replaced the modem and suddenly we're getting 30 megabytes per second. Problem fixed. The supervisor's response? "I think it's a conincidence...or my instruments were malfunctioning that day." True story. Engineers who are promoted to to be designers will tell you that there's a difference between theory and practice.

P.S. In addition to being an award-winning editor and journalist, Robert Harley is a respected engineer who has addressed this tired,old debate countless times. John Atkinson provides countless measurements of audiophile products. It doesn't matter because this debate is clearly not about science.

Trust your own ears and don't believe the slander that every hard-working audio enthusiast who invents a way to improve audio reproduction is trying to rip you off or that people who joyfully share their discoveries are deluded.

So, your actual rebuttal is comparing your inept cable supervisor diagnostic story to what? Are you kidding me?

Pick any industry and I can promise you, in many situations, Joe Schmo may have more knowledge about a particual technology than a so-called supervisor. What do you know about being a service technician anyway. I've been doing it for 37 years, in a wide spectrum of electronics. Mistakes get made, or new equipment comes out, and we're not given adequate time or training to learn everything, or for the special test equipment to diagnose said equipment. In that 37 years, and I'm sure fellow tech readers can attest to, there's good ones, and not so good, or just lazy types showing up for a paycheck.

What does this have to do with anyone proving what they claim to hear? Which month's magazine article did RH or JA address this fuse issue will measureable results? These are payed magazine reviewers, correct? And why isn't this debate about science? By that, I can only assume your limited understanding is more along the lines of magic since you lack any plauseable technical explanation? Merely claiming that you hear something, is not evidence that something is audible for various psychological, sociological, and well-understood unreliability of human hearing. And THAT has been discussed to no end except "audiophiles" unwillingness to accept that fact. Back up YOUR claims my friend!