2. tech-talk
  3. 131740-80335

PADIS vs Furutech fuses

I now have about 260 hours on my PADIS fuse and ready to some listening. The PADIS fuse appears to look exactly like the Furutech fuse. It has the same blue casing with the PF logo on one side. Actually, the only visible difference between the PADIS and Furutech is that the Furutech has “FURUTECH” printed on the opposite side. However, there are actually differences:

My very initial thoughts on the PADIS fuse (in the first few hours) was that the PADIS seemed somewhat dryer sounding than the Furutech. The PADIS did not have the typical “cold / wet /chimey” tones that fresh rhodium plated Furutech components generally have (I’ve tested Furutech rhodium fuses, power cord connectors, interconnect – they all initially contribute this cold/chime character).

I have often stated that Furutech rhodium is painful to burn in. I have burned in many Furutech fuses and it goes through several painful areas. There are days in Furutech rhodium burn-in where I would sit down to listen and the sound would just be so bright / harsh / hard-edged that I said “I can’t listen to this”. At that point, I would just walk away and let it continue to burn in. With the PADIS fuses, it never got that painful. I could hear the burn-in process changes, but it was always listenable. At the 180-200 hour mark, the PADIS did get very bright/hard-edged, but it was still somewhat listenable (I did not have to walk away). At 220 hours it was fully resolved.

Now, for the comparison. I will say that the PADIS is an excellent fuse. For the money, you really cannot beat it, unless you need a warm signature (in which case you need an Isoclean fuse). Both the PADIS and Furutech share the same essential sonic signature. However, there is definitely a difference. The PADIS sounds very good – do not get me wrong, it is an excellent fuse. However, the Furutech really did have an improvement. The tones on the Furutech were just a bit more pure and true sounding. The Furutech had a more “solid” sound to the audio. The Furutech had a bit more punch and meatiness to the bass / midbass. The PADIS, on the other hand, was a bit more loose in the highs, causing the high frequencies to be a bit more messy and rattling. This does cause the PADIS to sound a bit more dry. The PADIS also did not have quite the depth of soundstage when compared to the Furutech.

Now some people might sit down with me and say “I can’t hear a difference” or “your just splitting hairs”. I might be. The difference in sound is VERY subtle, but to me it makes a significant improvement. The differences could also be revealed when listening over a longer period (like 20-30 minutes). The music with the Furutech is just more engaging.

If you have very low resolution or warm equipment, it is possible that you would not hear the difference at all. However, on high resolution stuff, the Furutech could make that equipment “shine” just a little bit better. The PADIS is an excellent buy. For half the cost, you get a whole heck of a lot of performance (almost a no-brainer if you’re still running a stock fuse!). For those who want to bleed out the most amount of performance and resolution – the Furutech is worth the cost.

There are a few possible reasons I can think of that would cause the PADIS/Furutech difference:

- Furutech fuse state a special damping filler inside to reduce electrical resonance. I cannot find an reference to a damping filler for the PADIS fuses.  This could be why the PADIS sounds a bit more loose/dry/harsh in the highs

- Furutech does a Cryogenic treatment process. I cannot find any reference that the PADIS fuses get the same treatement.

- Rhodium plating. It is possible that the Furutech fuses are manufactured with a much thicker rhodium plating. I know Furutech likes a thick rhodium plating on their A/C connectors. The PADIS could have put a thin plating on their generic “PADIS” fuses. This could help explain why my burn-in process was not as painful.

Anyways, those are my findings. Maybe next year I’ll do a BLUE vs. Furutech analysis.

auxinput
auxinput OP
2,920 posts
 

That's fine and I respect your belief that fuses do not make a difference.  However, we have nothing to prove to anyone because we know for a fact that fuses do make a difference.  If you do not want to expend the money to test fuses on your own, that's fine, but describing this subject as "silliness" is just unethical and scientifically incorrect. As I have said before, none of us are interested in making any measurements and I'm sure none of us are interested in investing in the thousands of dollars in lab equipment required to measure the tiny difference in fuses in effort to prove to you that this makes a difference. (such as DC resistance, capacitance, electrical resonance, slew rate, etc.).  It's just much easier to test the fuses directly in equipment and make our own decisions based on sound, metallurgy, etc. 

I have seen others post this exact sheet for you, but I will post it again to show some actual measurements on fuses:

http://www.partsconnexion.com/prod_pdf/hft_facts.pdf

This shows that Isoclean has a higher DC resistance than the Hi-Fi Tuning fuses.  This specific measurement could help explain why the Isoclean sounds warmer and the Hi-Fi Tuning sounds fast/detailed and at times lean.  However, that's not the entire story as there are other factors to consider, such as Isoclean is gold-plated versus Hi-Fi Tuning which is silver/gold.  There are many other attributes to fuses that apply such as metallurgy, plating material, fuse filler, graphene application, cryogenic treatment, etc.

If you were a true scientist, the correct response would be "I haven't proved that this makes a difference".  The response that "this is silly because it doesn't make a difference" is more of a belief based on blind faith.  If you haven't tested and listened to different fuses, then you really don't have any stance to argue against fuses.

One more thing.  Trying to compare fuses such as Little Fuse vs Buss Fuse versus some other $5 fuse is not a good example of testing here because all of these fuses will perform very similar and will have substantially lower results than something like an Isoclean or Futurech..

----

As an addendum, there are many items that I suspect are "snake oil".  These are things like speaker cable risers, Synergistic sound dots, Bybee elements, etc.  However, I cannot say for sure that they are snake oil or not because I have never heard these elements myself.  So, I will not make any brash statements against these items because of my "impossible time believing that they actually do make a difference".

Post removed 
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 
Glad to see some actual measurements! Thank you!

Not those again, they're so minuscule (millionth's of ohms) the wind must have changed direction when the measurements were done, that's only been published to convince the naive who can't even make out what they're reading about.

Cheers George 
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
While it’s true the measured differences are small, the differences are consistent. The resistance is consistently lower for audiophile fuses than for stock fuses; the resistance is consistently lower according to which end of the wire came out of the die first; cryo’d fuses have less resisitance than their non cryo’d counterparts. What the naysayers oft overlook is this: the measured results are consistent with listening results - the best sounding direction is the one with the lower resistance.

mitch2
4,007 posts
 
What the naysayers oft overlook is this: the measured results are consistent with listening results - the best sounding direction is the one with the lower resistance.
Where can I find that report, showing "the measured results are consistent with the listening results"?
More to discover