Determining current flow to install "audiophile" fuses.

George wrote,

"OK show us a power cord with two wire connection that has directionality advertised in the manufacturers POSTED docs/details. (not just an arrow on the wire.)"

What would be the point? If you’ve made up your mind already, and it looks like you have, nothing I say will change your mind. That’s the beauty of the Backfire Effect. The more evidence is presented and the longer the debate continues the more convinced the skeptic is that’s he’s right. Happens all the time. He just continues to demand proof. Prove it, prove it! All wire is physically asymmetrical due to being pulled through the final die.  That's what make the wire directional sonically.  Make sense? So for stranded cables each tiny little strand is directional, and the entire bundle of strands is also directional. Follow?

Perhaps the following attempt at a summary of the fuse directionality debate would be constructive at his point. Or perhaps it won’t be, but I’ll attempt it anyway. The summary reflects comments that have been made in all three of the fuse threads that are currently ongoing:

1)Three different experienced designers of very well-regarded audio electronics have said, as one of them put it, that the reason fuses are directional is "the vivid imagination of audiophiles."

2)Another experienced designer of very well-regarded audio electronics who has not been participating has been cited as eschewing fuse upgrades altogether.

3)A number of others having extensive experience as musicians, professional sound engineers, and audiophiles have expressed similar viewpoints.

4)One experienced designer of defense electronics (me) has expressed significant skepticism (limited only by respect for perceptions that have been reported by a few members he considers to be particularly credible), and has emphasized that it is very easy in audio to attribute a perceived difference to the wrong variable (with the variable that is actually responsible often being very non-obvious), and has explained why measured data that has been presented in support of directionality is misleading and meaningless.

5)Numerous users of SR and other audiophile-oriented fuses have attested to their directionality.

6)A claim has been made that **all** wire is significantly directional. The aforementioned experienced designer of defense electronics has indicated that if that is so, since cable resistance, inductance, capacitance, skin effect, proximity effect, dielectric absorption, propagation delay, and the degree of pretty much all other cable effects are proportional to length, then the alleged directional effects of the AC wiring in components, and in the windings of the power transformers in those components, and in their AC power cords, and in the AC wiring inside and outside of the house (which are all in a random mix of directions), would totally swamp any alleged directional characteristics of AC mains fuses. So assertions of directionality in AC wiring and AC fuses cannot both be true.

7)As the aforementioned experienced designer of defense electronics stated in the ongoing Littelfuse thread, each individual reading these threads can and will decide about the issue for him or her self.

Regards,
-- Al

I find it ironic the extremes to which admitted subjective audiophiles will go in order to to claim that their perceptions are due to anything but subjectivity. That’s classic -- apparently subjective audiophiles are embarrassed by their subjectivity. Hence the need to concoct exotic harebrained technical explanations in an attempt to justify and explain what they hear.