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Direction of aftermarket fuses (only for believers!)

It is with reluctance that I start another thread on this topic with the ONLY GOAL for believers to share their experience about aftermarket fuses.
To others: you can call us snobs, emperors w/o clothes,... etc but I hope you refrain posting just your opinion here. If you did not hear any difference, great, maybe there isn’t.

The main driver for this new post is that I am starting a project to mod my NAD M25 7 ch amp for my home theater. It has 19 fuses (2 per channel, 4 on the power supply board, 1 main AC) and I will try a mix of AMR Gold, SR Black and Audio Magic Platinum (anyway that is the plan, I may try out some other brands/models). As it is reasonably difficult to change them, esp the ones on each channel module that requires complete disassembly, I would like to know what the direction is for these models mentioned and of course, others who HAVE HEARD there is a difference please share your experience on any fuse model you have tried.

Fuses are IME directional:
Isoclean is one of the first to indicate the direction (2008/2009) on their fuses. Users of HiFi Tuning (when the awareness rose quite a bit amongst audiophiles) have mostly heard the difference.

As an IEEE engineer, I was highly skeptical of cabling decades ago (I like the speaker design of John Dunlavy but he said on many occasions that cables nor footers matter at all, WRONG!). Luckily, my curiosity proved me wrong as well. I see the same skepticism that I and many others had about the need for aftermarket cables many, many years ago now on fuses and esp on the direction on fuses.

Another example is the direction of capacitors (I do not mean electrolytic types). Even some manufacturers now and certainly many in the past did not believe it can make a difference sonically. Maybe some do but it takes time in the assembly to sort and put them in the right direction/order (esp as some of the cap manufacturers still do not indicate "polarity") so that maybe is one argument why this is not universally implemented.








128x128jazzonthehudson
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stevecham
3,340 posts
 
With 19 fuses and either direction the choice, if my math still works correctly, I think that would be 2e19 combinations, which would be fun to perform and see what the optimal combination was by listening.  Could be a hobby for lifetime and then some.
nonoise's avatar
nonoise
11,037 posts
 
Somewhere else on another thread about fuses someone asked the manufacturer as to the direction of the signal as it goes its way and he was told "from the inside out". I'm assuming it's from the center (somewhat) to an outer edge.

Good luck and all the best,
Nonoise



geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
"With 19 fuses and either direction the choice, if my math still works correctly, I think that would be 2e19 combinations, which would be fun to perform and see what the optimal combination was by listening. Could be a hobby for lifetime and then some."

The correct way to look at the situation mathematically is that if you replace all existing stock fuses with aftermarket fuses at the same time - without any thought as to each fuse’s orientation - simply by chance approximately 50% of the new fuses will be inserted correctly, let’s say 10 fuses, more or less. So you're already halfway there without doing anything yet. Allow fuses to burn in for say 100 hours to give yourself a better chance of hearing differences in directionality. Then, reverse fuses one at a time and audition the sound after each fuse reversal. You should be able to tell whether the sound improves or degrades each time. If the sound degrades put the fuse back the way it was. It should get easier to decide the correct direction of each subsequent fuse since the sound quality will improve as more and more fuses become correctly inserted. If you're unsure about a particular fuse leave it as it is. You will come back to it later.

After you have completed auditioning all 19 fuses the probability will be much higher that all fuses are now in the correct orientation. It would not be unusual that during the whole auditioning process there was some uncertainty about one or more fuses’ orientation. For that reason the entire auditioning process should be performed again. The second time around, with most fuses inserted correctly already, thus with higher system resolution and sound quality, it should be much easier to ascertain which direction is correct for each fuse.

Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica
no goats, no glory


charles1dad's avatar
charles1dad
10,250 posts
 
Hello Mapman,
The lettering on the Synergistic Research fuse reads the standard left to right direction. In my DAC the fuse holder is orientated L to R.  In my Coincident components the  fuse is inserted into the rear fuse holder in a back to front orientation.  So the lettering is read as first letter begins at the component rear and last letter towards the front of the component.
Charles, 
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