To Fuse or Not to Fuse... That is the question!


Ok.. I think I understand that no fuse is better than a cheap fuse. And a good fuse is better than a cheap fuse. But is no fuse better than the best fuse?

One person on Audiogon said that he achieved better sound by using a Blue fuse over no fuse. I guess my question is... Do these new, high dollar fuses just allow the current to flow better with solid protection or do they actually due to quantum physics or something, actually improve upon the signal by eliminating errant bad electrons and thereby actually improving the music over no fuse at all?

I gots to know!


captaindidactic
I just want to weigh in.  Clearly, everything - totally everything -- degrades sound It starts at X and goes downhill Maybe a little, maybe a lot.  Fact.
Now, i avoided fuses for ages. They were a needless distortion.  And by definition a poor wire (just look at most of them, i have no idea about blue fuses).  but here's what i have learned over the past several years, when i NEEDED fuses,a a designer who put dicey prototype equipment in  very expensive and revealing system.
They are a pretty modest distortion.  Hate to say it, but ditto the wires that i run from my in-series fuse box ( that can portably protect anything).  Is no fuse better? Probably.  definitely in theory. But does it matter nearly as much as 100 things I can do to improve sound from cleaning contacts to tightening connections to providing cleaner AC power?  Not eve close. So worry about the big stuff, and dont fret the small stuff. And fuses just might save you from doing $1000s of damage.
really - its vastly smaller than you may think.
I will consider ceramic fuses (good suggestions whoever made it) which are known to be better in most ways.  But then, i cant get 5 more at the home depot....
Juts for the record, if i cannot repeatably hear it and have another listener corroborate it, i dismiss any result.
G
Well, just for the record, I have replaced all of my fuses to ceramic. Out of the 7 in each of my amps only one in each amp was originally ceramic. The manufacturer, NAD chose as the first fuse inline to be ceramic. All the rest were the even cheaper fuses. One has to ask themselves Why would NAD do this? My conclusion is that upgrading this one fuse made a significant difference in the sound, at a very low cost. Why wouldn't a manufacturer upgrade every single component to make it sound as good as it possibly could? It had to meet a price point. 

I have just started playing my system with 16 new ceramic fuses and so far it sounded better before. I will play it non stop for the next few days. I am currently playing The CD recommended by the book Get Better Sound. I think the CD is called Effacious. Spelled incorrectly I'm sure. I will post back once it all has a chance to burn in. 

Who knows? Maybe George is right! But at least I am trying to find out for myself. 
I switched out the standard cheap fuse and steel plate jumpers from my Magnepan 1.7i speakers for the Mike Powell silver jumpers and the silver tubes in lieu of fuses and have heard obvious improvements in SQ from lows to highs. I did careful before and after comparisons and took notes using the same playlists in an effort to fight conformation or expectation bias. So I think in at least some instances switching out fuses can make a change in SQ.