2. cables
  3. 124345-1776

Direction of aftermarket fuses (only for believers!)

It is with reluctance that I start another thread on this topic with the ONLY GOAL for believers to share their experience about aftermarket fuses.
To others: you can call us snobs, emperors w/o clothes,... etc but I hope you refrain posting just your opinion here. If you did not hear any difference, great, maybe there isn’t.

The main driver for this new post is that I am starting a project to mod my NAD M25 7 ch amp for my home theater. It has 19 fuses (2 per channel, 4 on the power supply board, 1 main AC) and I will try a mix of AMR Gold, SR Black and Audio Magic Platinum (anyway that is the plan, I may try out some other brands/models). As it is reasonably difficult to change them, esp the ones on each channel module that requires complete disassembly, I would like to know what the direction is for these models mentioned and of course, others who HAVE HEARD there is a difference please share your experience on any fuse model you have tried.

Fuses are IME directional:
Isoclean is one of the first to indicate the direction (2008/2009) on their fuses. Users of HiFi Tuning (when the awareness rose quite a bit amongst audiophiles) have mostly heard the difference.

As an IEEE engineer, I was highly skeptical of cabling decades ago (I like the speaker design of John Dunlavy but he said on many occasions that cables nor footers matter at all, WRONG!). Luckily, my curiosity proved me wrong as well. I see the same skepticism that I and many others had about the need for aftermarket cables many, many years ago now on fuses and esp on the direction on fuses.

Another example is the direction of capacitors (I do not mean electrolytic types). Even some manufacturers now and certainly many in the past did not believe it can make a difference sonically. Maybe some do but it takes time in the assembly to sort and put them in the right direction/order (esp as some of the cap manufacturers still do not indicate "polarity") so that maybe is one argument why this is not universally implemented.








jazzonthehudson
jazzonthehudson's avatar
jazzonthehudson OP
277 posts
 
Somehow this thread turns into, similar to some other threads, to the roast of GK...I wonder why... 

Maybe I am not qualified to issue the above statement but I know for one that Ralph (atmasphere) is a competent designer and very knowledgeable person, truly willing to help fellow audiophiles. 

Back to fuses: after retesting in different systems (DAC and power amp), I have come to conclusion that the SR Red, whilst very good and indeed way better than SR 20, HiFiTuning Premium, does not provide the best of details/texture whilst the Audio Magic Platinum (direction same as SR although I am not sure they are labeled consistently due to the hand made, lower production rate) provide nearly everything that the SR Red does but sounds with more complex texture, organic and more detailed. Vocals and strings simply sound gorgeous!
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
14,147 posts
 
Jazzonthehudson wrote,

"Somehow this thread turns into, similar to some other threads, to the roast of GK...I wonder why..."

I thought I smelled something burning.

infection's avatar
infection
593 posts
 
Geoff, the statement I quoted is from almarg. 

nonoise's avatar
nonoise
4,382 posts
 
 Lots of Fuses reviewed here and some I haven't heard of. Does anyone have any first hand knowledge of the ones not discussed here? 
And, if so, how they compare?

All the best,
Nonoise
almarg's avatar
almarg
8,673 posts
 
Infection 5-12-2016
Geoff, the statement I quoted is from almarg.
Although you omitted the first part of my sentence that you quoted. The full sentence (see my post dated 4-28-2016 on page 1 of this thread) was:

Many of those who have extolled the virtues of the fuse upgrades that have been discussed in the other recent threads have expressed the opinion that the higher the resolution and the quality of the components that are involved, the greater the benefits fuse upgrades are likely to provide.
So I was citing the opinions of others, who are experienced with fuse upgrades, which I am not.

Also, I have pointed out in many prior threads on various topics that the sonic quality of a system, and its ability to resolve musical detail, do not necessarily go hand in hand with the ability of the system to resolve hardware differences, contrary to what many audiophiles seem to believe. Just to mention one example among countless others that could be cited, lower speaker impedance will tend to make a speaker more resolving of amplifier differences and speaker cable differences, while not necessarily resulting in the speaker being an intrinsically better sonic performer than one having higher impedance.

In this particular case, however, and despite the additional fact that I have often emphasized the considerably less than perfect correlation between price and performance in audio, I did feel that there was a substantial chance that the cited opinions could be applicable. As what was being considered was a relatively expensive upgrade of 19 fuses in an amplifier providing **seven** channels of fairly high powered amplification, but which cost just $2500 to $3000 ten years ago.

I hope that clarifies the thinking behind my comment that you quoted.

Regards,
-- Al

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