Fuses can make an audio difference?

rezerekted

rezerekted

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Can't find the article again now but was browsing Stereophile last night and in one amp review the reviewer said he changed the stock fuse with a "hi-fi" fuse and then went on to make all these outlandish claims about SQ just by changing the fuse. Words like more transparent and more slam, etc. I just had to smh because if such a small change made such a difference in SQ then the engineers would know this and also use a "hi-fi" fuse. Ya think?
 
I totally recommend buying a 500 dollar fuse to your 200 dollar hardware. It will make it like totally awesome.
 
Technically it could make a difference depending on if the fuse metal is of poor quality or the fuse has a bad connection.

The board traces are most likely going to be made of copper, and fuses are generally made of something other than copper until you get up to a certain size.

Theoretically, it could make a difference if the electrical conductivity is not the same.

I would be more concerned with clean power over some fuse though.

If the fuse is so horrible that it causes audio degradation, then you have a bigger problem.
 
I was reading there about power source making a dif too and if that is true then in the UK they get better SQ because they use 220v instead of 115v. Right?

Another thing they were hawking in a review at Stereophile was an ultrasonic LP cleaner, not saying it is a bad product but the reviewer said the almost $4,000.00 price tag was justified for such a device.

Reading through their reviews I get the impression Stereophile are not very forthcoming and are massive industry shills for high end audio.
 
rezerekted said:
Reading through their reviews I get the impression Stereophile are not very forthcoming and are massive industry shills for high end audio.
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I think it's more an issue of them pandering to their readers. Telling someone who just spent $10k+ on their stereo that they wasted their money is a good way to lose them as a reader/subscriber. Proof is never an issue as they can always fall back on subjective tests where people mostly just hear what they want to hear.
 
GotNoRice said:
I think it's more an issue of them pandering to their readers. Telling someone who just spent $10k+ on their stereo that they wasted their money is a good way to lose them as a reader/subscriber. Proof is never an issue as they can always fall back on subjective tests where people mostly just hear what they want to hear.
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Bingo. Although some really expensive components can make a difference up to a point(and there's diminishing returns), it goes well beyond simply a $10k stereo, hell there are $4k speaker wires not to mention the $1k worth of top quality "speaker wire stands" to keep their expensive wires off of the ground(and elevated for perfect harmonic resonizational balance or whatever bullshit wording they use).

Of course then you've got the problem of someone attempting to asking about a $400 pair of headphones, and then some members of the "audiophile community" will just crap on that person for spending less than 4 figures.

There are some people and sites dedicated to factual information, but the bulk of it is definitely a circle jerk to justify spending absurd amounts of money on nonsense.
 
Well. Some of this crap does work. You do not have to buy the boutique stuff. Usually overpriced like paying for a name brand. Good ingredients make for a good sound. I have paid a premium for gold wiring and great hand made headphones. The sound was different than the same headphones at stock. Better? I thought so but it is all subjective. The AKG 340s I bought from Headphile and the SQ-84 amp w/ J & J tubes were bought from me by the studio that recorded Robert Plant and Allison Kraus when they did an album. Pretty stoked that Robert Plant wore the same headphones I had on my head. He liked the way he sounded on them though so yeah. Pretty cool.

I will say that in my experience, you get what you pay for at a specific point. After that, it is really pricey to get even a wee bit better. All you can really hope to do is get it setup properly and not spend a lifetime fussing with every little detail. Like fuses. I doubt a fuse would make a big difference unless the one used previously was defective.
 
Audio is filled with all sorts of superstition, placebo effect and downright cheating. When top high end audio experts were invited to find differences between a 10 dollar and 1000 dollar speaker cable, every single one of them failed in the ABX test. Yet they can hear the difference clearly when they *know* it's a 1000 dollar cable.

Most of the very esoteric stuff like shakti stones are simply bullshit. But if you believe in snakeoil, it works up to an extent. Homeopathic drugs have no traces of the original drug they were derived from, yet it is scientifically proven that the drugs work to an extent if the user believes in them. If you don't believe in the effect, it's just like drinking water. Due to extreme subjectivity of audio listening and general publics lack of knowledge, snake oil is effective on most people.
 
thesmokingman said:
Feet, cables, rocks, and now fuses. There's no shortage of snake oil.
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Feet actually do help. By having base of the speaker directly on the ground, bass is muddier and more easier coupled to the room. Like a numberplate on the back of a car rattling away.
Feet isolate this much better (cheap easy spikes help here) and prevent coupling to as much of a degree, resulting in cleaner bass. I didn't believe it until my hifi dealer gave me a free set of feet to try out.

Even cheap subs have these feet for that reason, often they are also downward firing so need the clearance too.
 
Yeah there is more snake oil and bullshit products in audio, home audio especially, than anywhere else. It's almost like religion too cause you'll set off a firestorm is you state something like Signal Cable's $70 magic extension cord won't do shit to improve your sound quality. Cable risers, rocks on top of cables, $1000 RCA's, you name it. Call them into question and you might as well go onto a church forum and claim there is no God.
 
Don't forget to lube the bottom of your CDs with audiophile oil. And hang a small bag of crystals on your audio cables.
 
rezerekted said:
I was reading there about power source making a dif too and if that is true then in the UK they get better SQ because they use 220v instead of 115v. Right?
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*snerk* riiiiight.... nevermind that audio gear runs on DC so it really doesn't matter at all what voltage goes in. Though I could *maybe* believe bad AC->DC conversion being a problem but even that would be a bit of a stretch.
 
FnordMan said:
*snerk* riiiiight.... nevermind that audio gear runs on DC so it really doesn't matter at all what voltage goes in. Though I could *maybe* believe bad AC->DC conversion being a problem but even that would be a bit of a stretch.
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Actually 110v poses problems for higher powered amps. They have to pull double the current for starters, some amps blow house fuses in 110v systems. The more current you need to pull, the more potential pitfalls there are.
 
LOL @ the twaddle.

I build and program industrial environmental and motion control systems with high-resolution analog inputs and outputs. A fuse permits current, or it does not; there may be a minuscule difference in resistance in the filament within each of a handful of fuses, but we would be talking about a variation in measurement that would be far beyond meaningless.

B00nie said:
Actually 110v poses problems for higher powered amps. They have to pull double the current for starters, some amps blow house fuses in 110v systems. The more current you need to pull, the more potential pitfalls there are.
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You are talking about the ampacity of the line in; if you cannot turn your device on, or it cannot remain on during operation, you have a different problem to solve that what FnordMan is alluding to. An unregulated power supply will not have predictable output as a response to changing voltages on the line side, for example.
 
N4CR said:
Feet actually do help. By having base of the speaker directly on the ground, bass is muddier and more easier coupled to the room. Like a numberplate on the back of a car rattling away.
Feet isolate this much better (cheap easy spikes help here) and prevent coupling to as much of a degree, resulting in cleaner bass. I didn't believe it until my hifi dealer gave me a free set of feet to try out.

Even cheap subs have these feet for that reason, often they are also downward firing so need the clearance too.
Click to expand...

I think you missed it.

Mystery Feet, new | MARIGO AUDIO LAB
 
rezerekted said:
I was reading there about power source making a dif too and if that is true then in the UK they get better SQ because they use 220v instead of 115v. Right?

Another thing they were hawking in a review at Stereophile was an ultrasonic LP cleaner, not saying it is a bad product but the reviewer said the almost $4,000.00 price tag was justified for such a device.

Reading through their reviews I get the impression Stereophile are not very forthcoming and are massive industry shills for high end audio.
Click to expand...

Ultrasonic cleaners are great, but can be put together for less than $400 with 3d printed parts (open sourced files on forums) and a standard ultrasonic machine off of eBay. $4k is actually the mid-level for what those companies charge, I've seen one go for $8k that does the same thing as mine, just looks a little fancier.

Stereophile has a few writers that know their stuff, and is it Jon Atkinson who does the measurements? Its nice to see those on occasion, but listening is key for high dollar purchases, no matter what the charts say. One of those guys at Stereophile writes about literal snake oil, like little $1k magnets that you put on your amplifier and it opens the soundstage, or some $10k machine that plays inverted wave forms of the audio you are listening to in order to fight room reflections or some crap like that ... You could just treat your room for 1/6th of that if you really care.
 
thesmokingman said:
I think you missed it.

Mystery Feet, new | MARIGO AUDIO LAB
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Lmfao. Holy shit I'd seen a few bad feet/spike designs but not those.

Was meaning more like this at 10 bucks a piece..
2.15_Gold_Speaker_Spikes.jpg


Brass Speaker Spikes Floor Cones
 
Google patrick82 or patrick821 on youtube. Dude was legendary for this type of thing.

Example:

 
HeavensCloud said:
^That has to be a joke.
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Sadly no, it's not a joke, and people really do buy this kinda shit. Here's a $7000 12 foot pair of speaker cables: Pear Cable Audio Cables - Home Audio - Anjou Speaker Cable

Here's a company that sells $1100 16' HDMI cables: Digital Interconnects

It goes on and on.

edit: There's actually another funny thing these audio people do. Normally we like gold plated connectors because they don't tarnish, right? Well you can buy custom headphone cables(nothing wrong with that alone) that use silver connectors requiring you to carry around a polishing cloth because the damn things tarnish! I think moon audio and audioquest do that nonsense.
 
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Cables don't make a dif so long as you have the right gauge for the length of cable and they are oxygen free to avoid corrosion. There is an abx test you can look up where they tested people with bare coat hanger wire against decent cable and no one could hear a dif.

I have a pair of Totem speakers and they had these yellow tuning dots on the baffle of each tweeter. I didn't know what they were there for so looked them up. Supposed to focus the sound or some bs like that. Took them off and could hear no dif at all. Pure snakeoil.

One thing that does make a dif is room treatments like bass traps, etc. But your wife/gf might not like that.
 
xorbe said:
Don't forget to lube the bottom of your CDs with audiophile oil. And hang a small bag of crystals on your audio cables.
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I tried the green magic marker on the cd trick once because a friend had the same cd as mine and he had already put the magic marker around the edge of it. He claimed it made a dif so I borrowed his to compare to my clean cd, I heard no dif at all and told him he wad fos the next day.
 
HeavensCloud said:
I was referring to the rocks taped to the cable haha.
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Ah well, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some "audiophile" out there who believes that taping bags of gravel to his interconnects after washing them in the blood of 3(not 2, and definitely not 4) chickens under the light of a full moon makes a difference. Heck, over on head-fi you're not even allowed to discuss how this kind of crap is provable to be bullshit, because the people who blew 5 figures on cables for their home theater system get butthurt.
 
It's legit there are people that believe in gravel ... I mentioned them in post 16 already lol
 
Merc1138 said:
Ah well, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some "audiophile" out there who believes that taping bags of gravel to his interconnects after washing them in the blood of 3(not 2, and definitely not 4) chickens under the light of a full moon makes a difference. Heck, over on head-fi you're not even allowed to discuss how this kind of crap is provable to be bullshit, because the people who blew 5 figures on cables for their home theater system get butthurt.
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No no no, they have to be polished like in one of those kids polishing gem toy kits!!

Look, you can make your own magic rocks.

https://www.amazon.com/Classic-Crafts-635-Rock-Tumbler/dp/B00000ISUU/ref=zg_bs_166307011_1
 
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Just take the existing standards approved fuses ( I do worry about the high end after market fuses if they are up to spec) out of your system and clean the ends with a soft cloth and some isopro alcohol. See the black crud that comes off them and pop them back in.

Job done. This might apply more to the UK where we have fuses in the power plug.

Whether it makes any difference...dunno. However, you have not made things any worse in most cases.

I remember many years ago when I was massively into hi-fi I bought a bottle of Kontak contact cleaner. It cost like £15 twenty years ago. Everyone swore by the stuff. I opened the tiny bottle and sniffed it.

It was essentially Liquid Poly glue (Trichloroethane) which you could buy for pennies. Tippex Thinner was good too! All banned now.

Caveat Emptor!



 
My dad put fuses in his homebuilt speakers after the neighbours complained about us playing them too loud. The fuse would blow if we cranked them. Friend showed us how to defeat his fuses by wrapping aluminum foil around the fuses. We got away with that for about a year until one day my dad noticed it. Good thing he laughed about it instead of getting mad.

High end stereo stores used to sell that contact stuff to make the cable connections better. I never bought any but read it was the same stuff they put on defibrillators to increase contact between skin and the defibrillator.
 
Making a good >connection< is actually verifiable science!
 
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