What direction should Hi Fi tune fuse be installed

Al, hi, yes that's exactly what I mean, that Joe made the statement, not HiFi Tuning or Isoclean.

Frogman wrote,

"Frankly, I have little interest in trying them at this point in time since I have much bigger fish to fry as concerns the tuning of my system."

Now, I'm not trying to start a fight or anything, and I trust you'll forgive me for saying so, but your statement sounds just a teeny bit dismissive, no offense intended. I wish you could have been here to hear my new liquid nano Super Fuse from Audio Magic when I inserted it into my Woo Audio WA6 headphone amp. And I wish you could also have been here to hear it when I reinserted it in the correct direction.

Dismissive? Not at all. I am currently contemplating purchasing a new phono preamp and possibly new speakers; and, God knows, where those roads will take me cabling-wise. So, yes, I think it's a pretty good assumption that those changes will be more significant than new fuses, and since there are only so many hours in the day and I reserve a majority of those hours for music rather than equipment, well, fuses will have to wait? However, I must say that I find it telling that after several paragraphs of brilliant commentary :-) supporting your point of view, you choose to harp on that particular detail. Gray, anyone?

05-13-14: Geoffkait
Al, hi, yes that's exactly what I mean, that Joe made the statement, not HiFi Tuning or Isoclean.

To be precise, it was not Joe who made the statement, it was the paper he referenced.

Regards,
-- Al

05-14-14: Frogman
If we are willing to concede that the tiny impact of "extraneous variables" like changes in contact integrity may be audible and may explain the experience of the believers; if the sound of music is that vulnerable to the effects of such seemingly unimportant physical variables (and I believe it is) then it makes sense to me that the inevitable gray areas in electrical theory would also have an effect. Or are these electrical theories absolutely ironclad; with absolutely no possibility of revision? Al? Logic tells me that they probably are not.

I for one would certainly not exclude the possibility that those theories may require revision or refinement at times. And I would go further, in that I would emphasize that even if those theories should happen to be entirely correct as they presently stand (and I do not assert that they are), those theories are inherently incapable of either predicting or explaining everything about how a system will sound. I have often had occasion to say just that in other threads, this recent thread being a typical example.

More broadly, I think that my feelings about the philosophical questions you raise are summed up pretty well in a post I made a couple of years ago in a thread entitled "Do You Believe In Magic". I'll quote the relevant post in its entirety:

01-22-12: Almarg

:01-21-12 Bryoncunningham
I honestly don't know if I'm a Believer or a Skeptic.

Hi Bryon,

That is a good thing, as I see it, because IMO the positions at both ends of the ideological spectrum are fundamentally flawed in numerous ways (that I won’t belabor here), and go hand-in-hand with dogmatism and closed-mindedness. If I may make a somewhat presumptuous comment, your intellectual sincerity and open-mindedness are both refreshing and commendable.

No, I do not believe in magic (although I do like the John Sebastian song :-)).

But my background in electronic design (unrelated to audio) has taught me that many things can occur in a system that are subtle, counter-intuitive, and inherently unpredictable.

Coupling of electrical noise between circuits that are ostensibly unrelated is a leading example. EMI/RFI effects are another example. While those kinds of effects can often be explained in a general sense, once the design has been implemented they can only be addressed by experimentation and trial-and-error. I don’t see anything that is technically implausible, btw, in the experience you described with the particular tweak.

Concerning the broader philosophical questions you raise, my feeling is that each issue and each tweak should be considered on an individual basis, and broad latitude should be allowed for the possibility that subtle and counter-intuitive phenomena may be at play. But that latitude should remain WITHIN FINITE BOUNDS OF PLAUSIBILITY!! A technical understanding of how the elements of a system work and how they interact, and of the theory behind a specific tweak, if applied with a reasonably open mind, can help assure that perceived effects are being attributed to the correct variable, and to better distinguish between the plausible and the implausible, the reasonable and the outlandish, and between pointless overkill and the possibility of significant benefit.

Rather than a believer or a skeptic, I guess you could call me a pragmatist with a technical background.

Best regards,
-- Al