Fuses that matter.

Al, I agree - It doesn't make any sens. 5A slow fuse (3AG Littelfuse) has about 0.02 ohm.

Let assume that another fuse is 0.01 ohm - twice better (hard to believe). The difference of 0.01 ohm is equivalent to about 3 feet of gauge 12 (1.6mohm/ft) house wiring (counting both ways). It would mean that 3' power cord would sound significantly better than 6' cord not to mention differences between rooms or houses that would be huge.

09-08-12: Audioman58
The main reason why a aftermarket fuse makes it oundstaging better is a easy explanation .a stock Steel fuse has 7-8 Times the resistance of Silver

I don't think I have ever seen steel used for the element in a fuse.

But, who knows how many different types of metals it has been through before reaching our home? Then you have all of the various types of metals in the homes electrical system.

A lot of various metals are used in the component and its parts too, before its outputs. If every metal has its own sound, who knows where to begin trying to figure all of this out, since it traveled through all of the different metals?

Trying to describe all of the changes in sound after traveling through all of these metals taken into consideration sounds impossible. And just the one little fuse is supposed to make a fairly noticeable difference, even makes it sound more impossible to make any sense.

The after market fuses I installed made a clear difference and at a low cost. One of the best tweak/upgrades to date.

Al,
Silver vs steel - could there be some other explanation such as susceptibility to noise, audiophile fuses could be better constructed, merely changing the fuses will wipe/clean the contact points and reduce resistance.
An old trick is to replace the fuse with a hardwired, ie soldered, fuse wire so there are no mechanical connections.

Hi Dover,

I'd imagine that improved contact integrity resulting from merely changing the fuse is the explanation is some cases, but not in many others.

I can't see how noise pickup could be an explanation, considering the short length that is involved, the much greater length of the associated wiring (both internally and externally to the component), the considerable amounts of noise that are presumably present on the incoming AC, the noise rejection provided by the power supply, and the noise rejection resulting from the power supply rejection ratio of the circuit stages in the component.

Better materials and construction are often cited as an explanation, but IMO that is a non-explanation, because it doesn't explain (in a quantitative manner, if at all) why the supposedly inferior materials and construction of the standard fuses would degrade the sound.

As you may have seen earlier in this thread, e.g. in the first of my posts dated 5-14-12, and also in the post by Rogermod (the distinguished amplifier designer Roger Modjeski) dated 5-11-12, pretty much all of the other commonly offered explanations do not stand up when analyzed quantitatively, at least for AC line fuse applications.

A point I made earlier in the thread is that all of the comparisons that are reported seem to be between the stock fuse and one or more expensive fuses. But without a good understanding of the reasons for the sonic differences that are claimed, how do we know that a thorough comparison between a variety of ordinary fuses wouldn't result in comparable differences? Perhaps sonic differences would even be found between multiple examples of supposedly identical fuses.

Best regards,
-- Al