fuses - the $39 ones or the 85 cent ones

Good pont Timrhu. I don't beleive that there are any insurmountable difficulties in setting up a DBT of cables, amplifiers, power cords or whatever; simply a lack of interest by entities that have the resources to fund accurate and probative DBT's (such as pharmaceutical corporations and government agencies). This is in part likely a combination of no financial benefit to the corps and no significant public interest as to the agencies. Furthermore, as to the more ridiculous claims - no one is going to spend the money because there really is no question to be answered .

Magfan, Timrhu, and Pubul57, I will not go through all of the DBT stuff again, but if others do not accept your measure of "sounding better" you can hardly prove anything by using it even were you to use the best experimental procedures. Secondly, no body needs to "prove" anything to you. You are not authorities in the Scam Police. Finally, Magfan in particular seems to react in envy. Just because you cannot yet afford better fuses doesn't mean that you are right that they cannot work or are too expensive for what they do.

Years ago I participated in DBTs at CES, run I think by Stereophile, I had difficulty telling whether our brief listening to an amp was the same amp or a different one. Afterwards, with the amps still hidden I could clearly hear a difference. What would you conclude? One, the brief listening or the same/different task is not the same as what sounds better. Or two, there was no difference in the amps but somehow despite the screen, I was getting clues a to what I preferred. I certainly did not conclude that it didn't matter which amp I bought. If you would embarrass that, fine but don't bother me.

I have consistently found improvement using the IsoClean fuses more so than the Hi-Fi Tuning fuses. Sometimes this is substantial. In my experience I would recommend them to others, but I guarantee nothing. YMMV.

At a recent Stereophile show they had working groups. In one of these, in the first session (early morning), the speaker said that very few folks were able to tell if they were listening to a 30 watt tube amp, or a 200 Watt, 1980s, Denon amp. I'm not sure what that proves, but I found it a bit suprising. In our session, the second session, it did seem that 80% of us were able to tell the which was which almost all the time - it seemed pretty obvious, but that from the bass perfromance, in the midrange it was very, very similar. You would have expected drastic, obvious differences, in the blind test, they were not.

Everyone likes to talk about double blind audio, compared to clinical drug testing. The big difference, the drug effect is tested long term, not one pill one day and another pill the next.

Perhaps the reason Tbg and I are so against DBT is because humans don't work well in an environment of continually changing equipment. That's a poor way to decide about long term enjoyment and it's certainly no way to music.

What if you spent 10 minutes in your local classical music hall in a front row seat, then were moved to dress circle for 10 minutes then to the back of the hall for 10 minutes. How do you think you would describe the content of the performance that day?

Lets forget about this silly DBT stuff, it's outlawed over at Audio Asylum because it's invalid for deciding about music. That's one area where they are clearly superior to Audiogon.

Albert, I don't support outlawing it although I think it is worthless. I think many are really insincere in advocating it, in that they would not pay any attention unless it supported their belief that there are no differences. I am always curious about how these people buy a system. It seems to me that they should only shop at Radio Shack and never make additional purchases.