We Need A Separate Forum for Fuses

Ouch, and, touche.

To further support douglas schoeder's point, I have experienced scenarios where the quality of components directly affects the ability to "hear" the real signal.  This was very apparent when I was comparing two different DACs.  Using somewhat lower quality interconnect cables, we could not really hear any differences between the two DACs.  However, when we upgraded to highly superior cables (i.e. solid-core OCC silver), it was made very apparent that there were significant differences in sound quality between the two DACs.

@douglas_schroeder "A fine HiFi component should readily reveal any such changes."

That's an excellent point.  I've found that better tube amplifiers possess more ability to reflect the tubes used in them than lesser tube amplifiers

One of the goals of a good designer will be to minimize the sensitivity of the performance of his or her design to extraneous factors, such as the vagaries of incoming power, expectable differences in the characteristics of other system components that may be used in conjunction with the design, and, yes, fuses. However, based on a very substantial body of empirical and anecdotal evidence it seems clear that as a practical matter that goal generally falls well short of being fully realized.

On the other hand, though, IMO it is also true that the correlation between sensitivity to extraneous hardware-related factors and the sonic quality and musical resolution of a design also falls well short of being perfect. To cite just one obvious example to illustrate that point, among countless other examples that could be cited:

Everything else being equal, a speaker having low impedance, and/or an impedance which varies widely over the frequency range, will be more resolving of differences between amplifiers and speaker cables than a speaker having high impedance and/or an impedance which doesn’t vary greatly over the frequency range. Would one conclude from that fact that the high impedance speaker is necessarily inferior in terms of sonic quality and resolution of musical detail? Or going even further that the high impedance speaker is "junk" and "horrid design"?

So just as maximizing the sonic quality and musical resolution of a design may have a tendency to work in the direction of increasing sensitivity to extraneous hardware-related factors, intelligent circuit design may have a tendency to work in the opposite direction. And generally speaking, IMO, the net result of those competing tendencies will be a correlation between sonic quality and resolution of musical detail on the one hand, and resolution of hardware differences on the other hand, that while being significantly greater than zero is also significantly less than perfect. So I would have to respectfully but emphatically disagree with Doug’s blanket characterization of insensitivity to fuse differences as signifying "junk" and "horrid design." And I believe that most experienced electronics designers would agree with me.

Regards,
-- Al

Tubes contain enough components in their makeup to display tonal differences in a somewhat obvious, and generally explainable way…fuses, even with all of the back and forth conversation including  accolades for the "magic" high end versions, claims of sonic differences between these things, and hyperbolic exaggeration from "fusers" claiming amazement at the resulting sonic nirvana provided by fuse replacement, have left one item off the plate in this entire dialog: Why do expensive "audiophile" replacement fuses, when used with any component anywhere, do anything other than act as a fuse? What makes them "more fusey?" Do they provide more fusage? Is it likely they're tiny fund generators for businesses recognizing that subjective opinion is trashed when expectation bias creeps into the brain from the bank account? People claiming to hear things is not new, and people who claim to not hear things in the face of ridicule from others is also not new. But people designing things without any attempt at noting how and why they may work is somewhat unethical, and simply appeals to the desperate tweaker who seems to need something to imagine.