Ayon cd5-s or Skylla -2 dac. Big improvement

Nice to have protection, but that's way too many fuses for me.

You're definitely right about the bottleneck, I use copper slugs for sound test purposes only (5x20mm OFC rod) McMaster Carr.

I know about the UL safety and all that stuff, give it a try and listen (you can always put the fuses back in)

Thank you for your recommendation. I've tried Supreme fuses before to be vowed by the increased clarity, bass definition and dynamics, but always ended up taking them out somehow, because the sound became more mechanical and the depth of the soundstage diminished. I understand this is very system dependent. I never owned this DAC, but will try it in the future.

Audioman,

I have an audiophile friend who owns a CD-5s and tried Hifi Tuning fuses in his CD-5s and had this to say -

"Regarding the fuses, I recently purchased 12 of the very expensive HiFi-Tuning Supreme fuses, all of them required for Ayon CD Player. Initially when I put 3 of them them in Ayon I was disappointed, bcos it appeared very bright. So I wanted to return them immediately. Then I got the right direction for fuses from Ayon and installed the fuses with correct direction. Now it was much much better. The brightness was totally gone and the background became blacker. The Supreme fuses improved resolution and tighter base, but to my taste was not quite musical bcos the midrange and high frequencies were slightly thinned down a bit, maybe it just removed the hash and had cleaner background. Maybe in some system this would be fantastic, but is not for my taste I think and I might consider selling off the full set of fuses."

Also my Audio Engineer who is one of the top Audio Engineers in the world had this to say in response to my question about upgrading the stock fuses in my CD-5s -

"You know how I'm always saying you should read less and listen more? Well, here's the story: If you put a gold plated fuse into your CD player, it should really go into a gold plated fuseholder and be attached it via a gold plated interconnect to a gold plated power outlet connected by some special gold plated house-wiring to a gold plated fusebox... but then, it would still only be connected via a cadmium plated master fuse to several kilometres of steel cable slung between a bunch of wooden poles.

In other words, it'll make about as much difference to your CD player as a gold plated gearstick knob will make to the top speed of your car. If it makes you feel better (or if you think some doofus on a web forum knows more about it than I do), you're perfectly entitled to fit whatever type of fuses you like but as I think you've figured out by now, I'm only interested in modifications that deliver quantifiable results -- so until someone manages to convince me that their fuses contain some magic Juju that actually does make anything sound better (and preferably someone who isn't making $40 every time one of them blows!) it will remain on the list of things I refuse (no pun intended!) to get involved with."

Further I was discussing the improvements in the CD-5s vs CD-5 and received this reply from Gerhard Hirt -

"Believe me what I am telling you, there is an tiny improvement, not worth to discuss, the CD-5 or CD-5s are on the limit, we can’t make them really better, therefore the main focus were some add features. So not need to be worry about anything. The only thing what you could do is DR version, that’s it.

Enjoy your wonderful sounding CD-player is one of the best sounding player doesn’t matter how much more others costs."

In summary, are the factory fuses really that shabby? My view is that the factory BB op amps present a larger bottleneck imho. But that is another story.

I can only tell ou what I hear, I have used the hifi tuning supreme fuses throughout and in every instance it was an improvement.
I also want to mention I use the Furutech Nano fluid which is a gold Silver
Blend and this coats all the micro pits in the metal and coats the steel
Fuse holders, alo these fuses take a minimum f 50 hours for these
Fuses to settle own and refine 70 hours even better and iris essential
Todo all12 fuses for using for example 3 fuses you are only getting
Partial benefit and still. Leaving 75 percent with all that grunge and hash
We have tested the resistance as well as on a scope steel vs these silver gold models , night and day better conductivity , an many imes less resistance. Everyone that has come over on a regular basis agreed there is more low level musical information and noticably better separation
And clarity. I also wanted to mention vintage rectifier tubes make a nice
Improvement over the Chinese models that loose their composer when th music gets complex even after 1,000 hrs ,the French D getter Mazdas,
And Amperex a a bid improvement some 5 x the money though
And Herbies Titanium Teflon tube dampers clear things up a bit .
Everything counts. I totally stand behind my statement.
If you follow my guidelines Ican't guarantee you will hear the
Improvements in your system. My Electrostatic loudspeakers easilly
Pick up the. Sonic improvements in detail. Try it before knocking it.

Audioman, I don't doubt your findings however I think that most owners would not want to depart too far from the warm, rich house sound of their Ayon component. The f/b I received from my audiophile friend was he felt the HFT fuses thinned out the midrange & highs slightly and he ended up going back to the factory fuses. Btw he fitted just 3 HFT fuses initially, but he later fitted all 12 and allowed 50+hrs run in before forming any view. I'm sure Ayon are well aware of the resistance of the factory fuses & they give the sound Gerhard wanted. As for the rectifiers, they are much less critical than the output tubes, but having said that I upgraded mine to NOS matched Russian rectifiers. I don't think the CD-5s/Skylla 2 need tube dampers if you're using a good isolation rack. They already using a well damped chassis & isolation type feet. Your mods might sound good in a system with tube or tube-like power amps, and with sub-optimal isolation, but in that case I would prefer to run a solid state cdp such as Esoteric. Ps: I run Marten Coltrane speakers which are also easily capable of picking up sonic changes.