Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ.

---

[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] Thread: [ Display  All  Email ] [ Tweakers' Asylum ]

---

[ Alert Moderator ]

---

RE: Question about Hi End Fuse (HiFi Tuning,Synergistic, etc) use

Posted by stehno (M) on May 9, 2015 at 13:42:01

In Reply to: Question about Hi End Fuse (HiFi Tuning,Synergistic, etc) use posted by Old SteveA on May 4, 2015 at 10:04:01:

That's good to hear you're a believer in line conditioning. That means there's two of us now. But I always use the adjectives "proper" or "superior" when mentioning line conditioning to imply there are "improper" and "inferior" line conditioners and there are many of those.

I appreciate your questions about fuses because that's about where I'm at with them. In nearly all of my experiences with audio-grade fuses, replacing the fuse alone with an aftermarket fuse has been nil to almost nil.

I said almost because I remember one time I replaced I think 8 internal fuses on the rails of my old Class A/B amp and after 3 days of burn-in, there was clearly an audible improvement.

Also, there was another time of replacing the internal fuses of my fabulous Foundation Research line conditioners along with a few other items replaced. Collectively the improvements were huge and I don't use that term lightly. I've done this replacement on earlier versions of the line conditioners with hardly any improvements. This time was vastly different. But I've never attempted to break it down to isolate how much of the improvement could be attributed to the fuses alone.

I'm outside of my realm with this subject matter (as with most subject matters) but my take is that a fuse is a wire just like speaker wire or power cable wire. Stock fuses are usually aluminum and that in itself makes them inferior to a real audio-grade fuse.

One thing I like to consider. Fuses are tiny. If a dike is full of holes, do superior fuses equate to plugging only tiny holes in a huge dike full of bigger holes? Or perhaps with all of a component's AC power regulated to tiny fuses, could the fuse actually equate to huge holes in the dike? In other words, could it be one of the great performance restricters because all AC power must pass thru it? It seems pretty well known that the best fuse is no fuse at all. I've tried using I think 8 gauge solid copper house wiring cut to the length of the fuse and have substituted it for the fuse. But noticed no difference so I put the stock fuse back in place. My amps come with circuit breakers rather than fuses and I really appreciate that.

Here's a cut & paste of my response to somebody inquiring about cryo-treated products and I think it applies equally well to fuses too.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I can only speculate. But performance, regardless of the industry, most always has much to do with improved efficiency of operation, eg improved trueness, minimized friction, resistance, etc.

Electricity itself may not be mechanical, but it is a form of vibration, and in high-end audio we use a mechanical conduit as a means of transferring electrical signals, i.e. cabling. My best guess is the cryo-treatment constricts the wiring to make it more congruent with fewer or smaller fractures, thus lowering an electrical part's resistance.

Should the difference be so minute that when calculated should be inaudible? Perhaps.

That's about as deep as I can speculate. But in a controlled environment, just the addition of one cryo-treated IEC connector after burn-in is a nice and very audible improvement.

I own some phenomenal AC line conditioners. Several years ago I took 3 of these latest version LC's and at the same time I installed cryo-treated plugs, IEC connectors, and fuses. And after the normal burn-in time period I nearly doubled the performance of my already fabulous line conditioners. I've repeated this several times including for local friends who own the same line conditioners.

Now to throw a monkey wrench into the mix, 5 years earlier I've made these same mod's on earlier/older models of the same line conditioners but with only minor audiible differences. The replacement parts were not of the same mfg'er so that may explain the difference in improvements. And now that I think about I suspect the smaller gains years ago probably had to do with inferior Audio grade parts, even though at the time that mfg'er was king of the hill.

Something I like to keep in mind as I seek to minimize my maximums and vice versa. Sometimes even the smallest of bottlenecks is just enough to greatly choke performance. And when that small bottleneck is minimized or eliminated can be just enough to cause performance to soar. Sometimes not. :)
----------------------------------------------

Regardless of all of the above, whenever I purchase a new component I always open up the lid to check every last fastener and connection for tightness and while I have the lid open I always replace any fuses I can find with audio-grade cryo-treated equivalents.

My latest supplier of fuses is Acme Audio based in Eugene, OR. Their fuses I believe are ceramic and they have all their fuses cryo-treated via the superior full-immersion method by Jena Labs in Portland, OR, and they only cost something like $16 a pop.

They say, when in doubt, leave it out. But when it comes to audio and fuses, I say put it in.

Edits: 05/09/15

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

VH Audio

---

[ Top of Page ] [ Contact Us ] [ Support/Wish List ] [ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]

---

[ General ] [ Speakers ] [ Tubes ] [ Vinyl ] [ Digital ] [ Hi-Rez ] [ Video Asylum ] [ Cables ] [ Tweaks/DIY ] [ Music ] [ Films ]

---