The secret to a great amplifier...

Unicorns and fairies.....what a pertinent analogy, and typical of a naysayer.

These same engineers say that the fuse cannot impact the sound but that correct orientation of the fuse in the holder can affect the sound. Well, which is it? If all it is is a sacrificial device and it's placement in the design of the amp doesn't matter, why does the fuse holder not having that exact grip on the fuse matter? How can a speck or mote of anything on the fuse end cap make a difference if for the same reasons a fuse can't?

I would contend that a fuse made of highly conductive metals, on the order of what you'd find in a cable or trace, would have more effect than the god awful, non conductive metals used in a bog standard fuse, and that that would account for a greater difference in what possibly couldn't affect the sound whereas that speck or mote of dust would. 

Why does using a solid bar of copper result in better sound? Don't do it, but many have tried it and reported back about it for decades. Why do amp designers go to all the trouble of designing a great sounding amp, only to have to add the fuse element afterwards, as an after thought, and find the amp to not sound as good as before?

With all those E.E. degrees comes a lot of conventional wisdom about the role of the fuse, but not the possibility of it's contribution to the sound, since it's role is that of a sacrificial one. To do so in such a blithely ignorant manner without trying it for oneself, to see if a difference can be heard, is an insult to the first and greatest scientific method: direct observation.

All the best,
Nonoise

Right. The signal path is not what we think it is. If it was then power conditioners, and even power supplies, would not matter. Heck even speaker cabinets would be irrelevant. Hard to get more outside the signal path than a speaker cabinet. Then again, maybe not. The room is even further outside the signal path. Yet there are people who say the room is the most important component.

One thing we can say for sure, anyone who says a fuse can’t matter because its outside the signal path, or whatever, when all these other things do, well they have at the very least not given the subject much thought.

Redwood, I like your original idea to make money on these.  I may buy 10000 and market them and resell them for more.  Would you like to go in on the business early before it take off?

@tubebuffer - Let's plug those $160 fuses into some stock Chinese OEM DACs, put a fancy audio brand name on it, market it as the marvelous new "giant-killer" to Thomas & Stereo on YouTube and make some serious $$$.  I've got a decent job as it is right now, but were I more of an entrepeneur and slightly less ethical, i'd be all over it. 

From what I can tell, most engineers would call it confirmation bias, but a they would allow on the off chance that the changing the fuse did anything, that it was a factor of cleaning contacts or reseating the fuse and that is all I have ever seen attributed.

Let's say I have two fuses. One is lower resistance, one is higher resistance. Which of those fuses will result in more high frequency noise and ripple in the power supply?