Actually there IS another way. My old farmhouse has two fuse panels, because the original wasn't large enough to accomodate the additional circuits which were added later. The licensed electrical contractor who performed the add-on installation simply added the 2nd panel in parallel to the original. This was done by (first de-enegrizing the mains at the meter pole) loosening the large screwdown lugs where the mains connect to the original house panel, then adding additional large conductors to those lug connections & running them a very short distance over to the 2nd fuse panel immediately next to it. The two panels are simply adjoined with a short conduit-type pipe connector within which the interconnecting "feeder conductors" are contained. Those #4 awg feeders are protected by the same device which protects the incoming mains, which is the service pole disconnect.
The confusing part for me to understand is that at the meter pole there is a huge *circuit breaker* which protects those incoming feeders, so yes, the power must first flow through that device. Why a smaller ckt. breaker downline (vs. a fuse which reportedly sounds better) makes any difference I do not know. But fuses are arguably better protectors than circuit breakers are, according to what I was taught in a motor-protection course that I once attended. Just to be clear, I never made the (breaker vs. fuse) sonic comparison myself; Redkiwi did perform that test & reported his findings here long ago so I am not arguing that point. My own testing involved comparing a glass fuse with a ceramic fuse, which Redkiwi & some others before me reported ceramic to be the best sounding & I do agree based upon my own results. I have never tried a breaker for comparison sake because of course my panel doesn't accomodate breakers. We suspected that the difference may be due to the fuse comprising one continuous internal path, vs. a breaker's internal switch contact which is of course not continuous, but I do not actually know the reason why. Thus Hdm's above report seems contradictory to that assumption, & so there may obviously be some other contributing factors of which we are unaware.
Within the realm of circuit breakers themselves, there are the standard models & also the GFI models. The ground fault breakers are reported to sound the worse of the two but again I don't know the reason why, I only know of the reported test results.