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So done with audiophile fuses

The journey started with a medium priced ($50) fuse in my power supply.  A failed rectifier tube blew that one out.  Not a fuse problem.  Next up was a blue fuse in my pre amp.  It blew and was not caused by a pre amp problem.  Apparently they sometimes are more sensitive and it was replaced by an orange fuse two values higher.  Things were going along fine.  I replaced the pre amp with a newer version of the pre amp and it has the same fuse value.  Five months latter (today) I turn on the pre amp and nothing.  it's a five month old pre amp so I suspected that it was the fuse.  Sure enough, I replaced it with a ceramic Littelfuse of the lower correct value it works fine.  No more wasting my money on unstable fuses for me.     
goose
barryaudiophile
57 posts
 
"Fascinating" as Mr. Spock would say.  This is one of the edges of the Audio-World, the precipice of one's great leap of personal faith. 
mitch2
4,090 posts
 
They weren't necessarily engineers at Yamaha but "sound tuning guys" who reportedly believed they heard a difference between different basic (non-audiophile) fuses, when they were auditioning OEM sources for fuses in their AV receivers.  While that is information to ponder, it doesn't rise to the level that would lead me to conclude that expensive audiophile fuses actually "improve" the sound of anything.  The SR site lists the materials used in their fuses on their website and the ceramic body, silica filling, brass nickel plated end cap contacts, and metal filament are all pretty standard stuff.  I guess what makes them stand out are the (flavors du jour) quantum treatment, molecular realignment process, UEF treatment, and Graphene.  I own and use some but really cannot understand what all the fuss is about, except that they cost a lot.  For only $175, you can get the Audio Magic beeswax fuse, which appears to be simply a standard Littelfuse or Cooper Bussmann fuse that is injected with beeswax.
nonoise's avatar
nonoise
10,928 posts
 
Does saying they weren't necessarily provide an escape of sorts from the fact that some of them most likely were? Would you have anyone other than an engineer swapping parts to get to a particular sound? They were voicing the unit when the fuse broke. I thought that engineers did that sort of work.

That, and they heard enough of a difference that they wanted to know what the repair guys did to the unit to make it sound so different compared to what they were working on. A fuse, according to the manual, is just there as a safety device and shouldn't have any effect on the sound. And yet it did.

All the best,
Nonoise
mitch2
4,090 posts
 
A fuse, according to the manual, is just there as a safety device and shouldn't have any effect on the sound. And yet it did.
That, of course, is the perplexing part.  While I don't Know and won’t say that fuses have no effect whatsoever on the sound of a system, I still can’t buy that the magnitude of the effect (or improvement, or whatever) would be great enough to make me want to spend big money on a fuse.
prof
3,479 posts
 

Congratulations!
One more high end monkey off the back ;-)
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