I’ve been hesitant to point his out, but, George, your light sensitivity passive (ish) volume controlling devices..their entire idea in utilization and design..is all about how much better it sounds than a ’regular’ level control or volume pot.
We’re talking about ascribing ’large’ ’heard’ change in the listening domain, with vanishingly small signal differentials. differences so small they partially defy electronic description, or defy the ability of measurement technology to define or elucidate.
So..another component in audio gear that has similar considerations, is somehow, not relevant.
Not only is it similar, but the fuse is known to be an offender, and it can be traced back to how the fuse deals with signal. Specifically in how the fuse works, fundamentally. Electronically, and in historical aspects of how the fuse relates and is connected in the given systems - this is all very clear.
To anyone who is building and designing high end audio gear, this is (the connection to it by and of the fuse) all on the ground floor level of designing knowledge and lore.
I even alluded to the specific points that are considered and known (the basics), in my post about choosing a fuse. The science of fuses and the science of audio and the science of psychoacoustics are all coupled together in a way that makes this all very clear.
No audio engineering group individual is going to share this information with you as it is considered hard won in some cases, and also a gift of being a leg up on any given competition --if it is known. Why show one’s hands in a volatile and competitive market area. Why give it away to neophytes who may try to eat your market share in the future? What would be the point? To make a nay-sayer go away? ’ Craziest business decision ever’, would be the answer.
I could also get into the why of the fuse modifications, what they do, how they work, why they do what they do, how people hear it. I mean in intricate complete connected verifiable scientific detail (in my own words, of course).
Why give all that hard won stuff away? All because a few people on a thread on a forum are not making the connection? I don’t think so.
Importantly, engineering is not science. Science has only theories. Engineering has laws. Engineering is about building, so it has rules, so you don’t experiment with devices and constructions being built for the human world.
Science is about exploration and that is wholly error prone. Since it is error prone, it cannot ever suffer a law, as laws will make it circular and closed off, with no expandable future. When we get to the real exploration in science, we find there is not anything like a fact, either.
The bleeding edge of science, has, for as long as anyone can remember in this idea of organizing research and giving it a language in commonality...ie science...this science has not not one single fact. Zero.
The only ’fact’ in existence in science...is that there are no facts. A paradox. The core philosophical argument of science, right at the core of it... is the same paradox as quantum science --the wave-particle duality. Everything is theory that is subject to change.
When going to a big, or large complete university that does a lot of research and cutting edge work.. some campus with maybe 20-30-40k students, and a huge scientific faculty, you will find not one single prof who teaches scientific law. All of them teach scientific theory. As they know, scientific law are not real. These laws....they are imaginary placeholders for engineers and the engineering branches of the overall human edifice. You can’t have anyone building bridges and cars or whatever, on theories. To keep things stable and to train large amounts of functional engineers and builders in groups, they factualized science into "laws".
If relating to a scientific group of people (again, not engineers!) and you speak of scientific law, they will look at you like you are a fanatic or madman, or at least very poorly informed, misled, even. Possibly even dangerous. (for good reason, scientific law is dogma and has no place in actual ’new’ science)
It might be a bit uncomfortable for some. Some seem to need blanket the reality we face...with laws and systems of hard order. Maybe it helps them sleep at night. I don’t know. Religion helps people sleep at night too. We are human... so we tend to project these into norms foisted upon others. Thus Scientific law sneaks into dogmatic form and pushes as hard as religion, when it actually has not a leg to stand on. Except that of it's intended function..which is to keep a stable system in place when engineering.
For example, no one can tell you want an electron is. They have a description for it, and a sht-ton of mathematical games in relation to everything else... but no one can tell you what one is. (and some say that at the bottom of it all, it’s all electrons) We have a self completed bubble we live in. Right at the edge of science in the micro to macro edges, it’s all unknowns. And the old rules and regulations are subject to change in the face of the new data, whatever that data might be.
If you go the edges of the considered world, from the quantum to the macro..it is still....turtles...all the way down.
Not even remotely a joke.
We exist in a bubble, where we’ve self factualized a reality into a commonality of realization and analysis, but, it is very much a case of nothing more than that bubble of common ramblings.