Fuses that matter.

The Synergistic Research fuses arrived yesterday (but UPS put them in the garage. It's only 20 degrees out, so that shouldn't affect them much, right?? :-(

I put one SR fuse in, replacing a HiFi Supreme fuse (with the WA Quantum fuse on it). I heard differences, but, having had no experience with the SR, I neither responded to the change, nor rejected it. It just didn't change the sound so I could tell.
An hour ago, I put the other SR into the system, this one with the WA Quantum fuse chip on it (and it sticks far better than the HiFi Supreme fuses. Who knew?!), so now both SR fuses have the WA Quantum fuse chip on them, and the fuses are in my Hurricane amps (which show ANY change in the system - unfortunately, because sometimes, I don't like what I hear, but then...dark though they are, they are certainly capable of revealing upstream changes).
This was pretty eye-opening. I was even reading an old issue of TAS when the first notes of Vaughan Williams Sea Symphony blasted into the room. And I DO mean, "blasted." It seemed as thought the system was turbo-charged. So, thought I, must be a trumped up midbass-to-lower-midrange effect. Nope. The upper midrange is equally powerful.
Of course, I may be wrong, but the SRs with the WA Quantum chips are a better combination than sticking the HiFi Supremes with WA Quantum chips. I immediately noticed the inner detail on oboes, male voice is more vivid (baritone) and the soundstage seems closer. Bass is unquestionably more forceful, and interesting, because I sold my Arcam FMJ 23 CD player, but still have the FMJ DVD 27 (which I like less: something about the Ring DAC is just astounding in a way that the Wolfson 8740s (or what model it is) are not. The Wolfson's are a bit hard-sounding and I wasn't like the bass, despite the fact that one of the other TAS reviewers said it had great "brute force." I sure didn't hear it. Well, not until I put in the SR fuses with the Quantum chips. Now I hear it. Now, given that the fuses are in the Hurricanes (which always had extremely powerful midbass, part of what made the image solidity so spectacular to my non-audiophile opera singer former boyfriend), it would seem to be saying that the HiFi Supremes weren't great in the bass, and it WAS something I'd noticed before, but blamed it on the new CJ preamp I had gotten. I thought the CJ just didn't have cojones, but now I see that the HiFi Supremes are responsible for the lightness in the bass, and the lack of soliditt of image. Now, before anyone protests that THEIR HiFi fuses have great image density, very few amps have the solidity of the Hurricanes, and I've had - and reviewed many amps for mags. The Hurricanes allow/project exceedingly solid images, which contributes to that realism HP so loved about them, so this is a matter of the rest of the system as well as the amps. All I can say is the HiFi Supremes remove some mid-bass power, because it's back there in spades as of the second I put that second SR fuse w/WA fuse chip into the amp and turned it on. I purposely ignored the sound, knowing I'd pick up some elements of impreovement immediately, without "trying" to hear them. The noise floor is lower, so the soundstage has a blacker background, which means instruments stand out in bas relief more easily. The one part of the frequency range that hasn't improved (yet)is the treble, but I'll let it sit overnight and listen again in the morning (it's 12:40 a.m. Friday morning, Feb. 22, EST).
I'm impressed and I was prepared to just have a good time experimenting with them for 30 days and then - back to the retailer(meaning, I expected the HiFi Supremes to make mincemeat of them, even though I DO have an SR outlet as well).
Hunh, the joke's on me - so far.
I think I wanna keep 'em, Lucy. I know: I promised I wouldn't have any more affairs with new pieces...of equipment. But I can' help myself, honey. Just this once? Please? Please, honey? You know you're the only woman for me, but those quantum electron thingies...MAMMA MIA!!!!!

Gbmcleod, as another person who has gone through your experiences with the HI Fi Supremes and Syn. Res. Quantums, both with WA Quantum fuse Chips, I am struck with how much I agree with you. The SR Quantums gain substantially from the addition of a WA Quantum Chip and thus become my preferred fuse, at least thus far. I suspect that SR's use of the Tesla coil is responsible.

One thing that I should note is that I found, contrary to SR's statement that they are "tunneled" both directions and thus are not directional, they are. I found that in two instances, the direction is opposite of the of the normal convention that printing runs in the direction of the best direction for the fuse from the wall to the circuit. You might want to check which way sounds best.

Tbg:
Thanks! You are my new (audio) hero!

I'll try turning the SRs around after a few days of listening to them. I just came out of the listening room, and chose Rick James' Greatest Hits. The CD looks as thin as a size 0 model on a runway, but the sonics are rather decent in terms of the body (density) of voice, as well as placement. Also, the background is less hazy, meaning less distortion in the sound, so you can hear hard consonants as well as - and much more important in what used to be called "soul" music, the actual soulfulness of the singers both lead and background. The HiFi Tuning fuses seem to denude voices of their natural passion, making them sound more precise, the way an opera singer would sing it (and I LOVE opera), but not the way a Black singer in the 60s or 70s would sing it: raw, without worrying about the "notes" themselves. Black music is very raw: I sang in the church and, while we paid attention to the notes, it was about "giving it up to God." You can't do that and sound all prim and proper: you gotta "let it GO!" And that's the difference between the HiFi and the Synergistic. Disclosure here: I have have a negative bias against Synergistic. Nothing they've done to me, or any impoliteness on the phone. It's just that they've seemed the Johnny-come-lately, riding on the coattails of others. When they introduced their Galileo line, I was downright disgusted: 14K for an interconnect. And naturally, Nordost could now say, See, we weren't the first to introduce an absurdly-priced interconnect - but now we can do it without looking greedy. So, by assocation, Synergistic entered my world of Sachs, Goldman et al. And this at a time when the economy of the world was in its death thralls. I give you this background, because, let me tell you, if this fuse wasn't "working the show," I woulda been on this site sending them straight to hell...
Five minutes later...
Hell no, MAN. DA-YUM! This is more like Heaven. Black music has all its passion and fire.Aretha opens her mouth and out comes the voice of GOD HIMSELF. So far, the Synergistics are in the lead - and not by a length. But wait! THERE'S MORE!
I got ahold of Darren of AMR and ordered 3 fuses: two for the Hurricanes and one for the PS Audio Power Plant (which currently has a HiFi Supreme fuse in it, so now I'm wondering if THAT'S why the bass still sounds good - but not powerful (the Hales, discontinuous as they are around 250 Hz, have air around the bass instruments and go down to 37Hz before they start having resonances and a bit of blur. Otherwise, they're great (Ken Stevens of Convergent agrees). And they have POWER. So, a huge drum strike, and my 13' x 30' x 9' room shakes. I'm used to that, but more so with the First Sound preamp, which has booty to spare in the bass frequencies, whether Mk I or Mk II (and presumably, MK III).
Back to the AMRs: They'll arrive in 3 days, since I'm in CT, and Darren's company is in Georgia. Even by the post office, that's 3 days tops.
I'm happy and bummed. Bummed?!?! Why would I be bummed? Well, I looked at when I first bought the HiFi fuses. My first batch was December 2011. That means that the problem with the bass (which also affects image solidity) was not a product of the Arcam FMJ 23 (which I used on every type of isolation known to man: Goldmnd Cones, Bright Star, Townsend and thats just the beginning) and I just thought it didn't have the usual 3-D presentation I know it should have. I mean, I heard it in Tom McFawl's room (the Meow-Meow cat commercial jingle writer), which is 33 x 47 and when I came out of the state of shock I was in, I thought, "So, THIS is what this CD player sounds like!" It was alive in a way you wouldn't have believed unless you heard it. The musicians on the recording were sawing away at their instruments as thought someone had said, LITERALLY, you BETTER deliver or you're going home in a body bad. The dynamic kick was astounding. But even in my basement (23 x 40), it wasn't that alive, although it had a realism that surpassed anything I'd had up until then - and I'd had some REAL expensive stuff when I lived in San Francisco. Like the Versa Dynamics 2.3 turntable, for starters.
Anyway, the SRs restore that "life" to the sound, and it's not only on loud music. On some of the ballads on Rick James CD, you can hear him all but begging for this woman to forgive him. The anguish is clear, the softness of the anguish (the pleading please-please-PLEASE-don't-go-ness) is heartbreaking. In other words, the soul is in the music, and above all other parameter that move me to tears, the soul of the music take precedence. But in order for that to happen, the timing must be right (all the hesitations in the singer's voice so they sound frightened, angry, bitter, uncertain, powerful, etc) and the accompanying mood must be right. If the bass slams, great. The treble tinkles? Fly me to Heaven. But if the soul is gone, it's just sound, and this is something not metioned that much in forums. People want "warmth," "better bass," etc. But that's not about music, that's about sound. I'd have to say, unless it's German Lieder, which could never be called "warm," one wants the feeling of the culture producing the music, whatever that culture is (Indian, Chinese, Indonesian). The music should NOT sound American-ized just so we can relate.
I could be wrong, but so far the SRs are doing it. Next up? The African Drummers and then Japanese Gagaku-type music, which stresses breath instead of mathematic intervals.
Whichever fuse does all 3 the best wins the Race! And I'm using only 3 fuses: one for each Hurricane and one for the PS Audio Power Plant. Even Steven, I say.
Let the Fuse Wars Begin!!!

Having gone from HiFi Supremes with the WA chips to AMR golds, I was quite pleased as I've noticed before.
Interesting that Gbmcleod feels that the Supremes may have some bass limiting traits.

Interesting, because on another thread I posted that I found my Steelhead to be a bit thin sounding and was looking for some mods.
Well that was with the Supremes in my amps and in the Manley.

I don't feel that the Steelhead lacks weight since I installed the AMR fuses.
Next is to take the WA chips off the Supremes and apply them to the AMRs in the amps.

As a side note, The Lightspeed Attenuator has also added more flesh to my phono replay.I now alternately play cd and vinyl into it and use the fixed output from the Steelhead eliminating it's volume control.

If the chips further improve my sound, I don't think I have much else to do.

Thanks for the insight, Lacee. I believe that, different though all of our systems are, some things have traits that are inherent in the design. A mini-monitor, for example, will have, of necessity, a lack of lower bass, and nothing can put that back into it. It's not wrong in any way, it just can't reproduce the "authority" of a low bass sound. Law of physics and all that.
I can't wait for the 5 amp fuses that go into the PS Audio Power Plant. Just changing that one fuse should immediately let me know if, indeed the HiFi Tuning devices denude the system of bass, which, again, i hadn't noticed, but mostly due to the several changes that happened in my system at once. Given how strongly the SR fuses (with, again, WA Quantum chips on the fuses) make the presentation come to life, I could no longer say that the Arcam DVD 27 is "hard"-sounding, although it doesn't match the Ring DAC in the '23 model, as well as the delicacy. But this isn't about components.
I will have the AMRs by the end of the week Friday, and I will be absolutely fascinated to see how the sound - and music - changes. But I could survive on the SR fuses, damn it. I mean, I sure didn't want to spend $133 just 14 months after having discovered the HiFi Supremes, but that's what I'm doing. And if the AMRs are even better, well, this will once again be a hobby that doesn't require deep pockets to get significant improvements! And for that alone, I will be grateful!