Determining current flow to install "audiophile" fuses.

Once again, Geoff,

Your excluding shielded designs from the discussion is a bit of a strawman, since the vast majority of cables are shielded and therefore have directionality "mandated" by the shield connection, which I’d hazard a guess has a random relationship with the orientation of the signal wire’s directionality in cables from most manufacturers.

Of course, one can reverse the connection of shielded cables with (electrical) impunity.

Assuming a 50% chance of randomly assembled wire being oriented consistently with the shield’s gounding scheme, one is still faced with the choice of experimenting with orientation, and I’d be the last person to stop someone from experimenting.

Fuse directionality?  Knock your socks off.  As implied earlier however, the experiment needs some controls, and one of them I didn't see mentioned was simply removing and reinstalling the fuse in the SAME orientation.  It's entirely possible that the act of removing/installing a fuse slightly alters the contact pressure and this is what people are reporting.

I already covered my risk tolerance with respect to these fuses in another thread, but suffice it to say, Roger Modjewski's comments carry some weight with me and support my approach - irrespective of whether they're being used in an AC or DC application.

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier Design

Hi gdnrbob,

IF fuses are directional, AND manufacturers know this,
Then, Why can't they tell us which way to orient the fuse for most musical reproduction? As I said earlier, Pat as SMc, said to try them one way and reverse them later and see what sounded better. To my feeble mind, if these things are directional, then you must know which way is best without needing to switch things around.

There are too many phase relationships which a manufacturer can't predict:  from your speaker's crossovers (and speaker wire connection) to the number of gain stages in your amplification chain - even # or odd # (phase non-inverted vs. phase inverted).

People hear what they hear for all sorts of reasons that are out of the manufacturer's control.

If this concerns you enough, then you should experiment. If it doesn't you're one of the fortunate ones who enjoys listening to music playing through your hi-fi :-)

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier Design

Thom wrote,

"Your excluding shielded designs from the discussion is a bit of a strawman, since the vast majority of cables are shielded and therefore have directionality "mandated" by the shield connection, which I’d hazard a guess has a random relationship with the orientation of the signal wire’s directionality in cables from most manufacturers.

Of course, one can reverse the connection of shielded cables with (electrical impunity)."

Actually I didn’t exclude shielded designs from the discussion. So your statement is actually the Strawman. What I said was it’s more difficult to establish what’s going on in a shielded design since the sound is directional for BOTH the shield AND the conductor. You can think of it as trying to solve two simultaneous equations. But since I’m a nice guy here’s what you can do. Measure the voltage drop across the shielded interconnect, first one direction then the other. Just like the measurements of the fuses on the HiFi Tuning data sheets. Since the shield is not connected at one end you will be measuring the voltage drop of the conductor only. The voltage drop will be somewhat less one way than the other. Just like the fuses on the HiFi Tuning data sheets. Thus, you will be able to determine which way the *conductor* should be connected in the system. The only issue then will be, does the correct orientation of the shield agree with the correct orientation of the conductor. If the manufacturer was a clever fellow (or a lucky fellow) it will. Follow?

Thom also wrote,

"Fuse directionality? Knock your socks off. As implied earlier however, the experiment needs some controls, and one of them I didn’t see mentioned was simply removing and reinstalling the fuse in the SAME orientation. It’s entirely possible that the act of removing/installing a fuse slightly alters the contact pressure and this is what people are reporting."

You’re absolutely correct, there is a possibility that the contact pressure is somehow altered, or that some oxidation is scraped off during the experiment, or that it’s the placebo effect or expectation bias or some other variable. But if the experiment is done carefully those other possibilities can be eliminated from consideration. Just like for any experiment.

geoff kait
machina dynamica

Most of sciences can be easily checked and challenged with elementary math equations:
for example:
poor education = strong police and army = lots of wars = lots of dummies that willing to spend money on various type of unnecessary cwap = resisting a free education by all possible means.
Do your math than it's easier to figure out science.

I really don't understand why anybody would bother to say that fuse direction doesn't matter. None of us who do hear a difference care what you think. And you, of course, don't care what we think. For about thirty years I heard this nonsense argument. Enough!!!