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Music servers and other computer based digital audio technologies.

RE: Scientist ... educate thyself.

There are two potential kinds of symmetry and the presence of either one of these will make the other irrelevant. The asymmetry of the wire in the fuse is the first element. For signal wires, there will be obvious asymmetry in the audio signals (due to even harmonic distortion or other polarity effects) and that will provide the second element. Hence it is reasonable to assume that reversing a fuse that's in the signal path might have an effect on the waveform arriving at the speakers and ultimately one's ears.

A power supply fuse is not in the direct signal path and it is processing a nominally symmetric AC waveform. One would expect, therefore that the effect of power fuse polarity would be less than signal fuse polarity . The amount would also depend on the quality of one's AC power, including the time of day and what devices were nearby and connected (especially connected to the same circuit, breaker panel, or distribution transformer). There might also be an interaction with fuse polarity in the holder and AC plug polarity, when using products with two wire plugs and/or cheater plugs. The better the design of the power supply, the less the effect AC fuse polarity should have on the sound. Since the effect of power fuse polarity is likely to be system dependent and vary with the time of day and day of the week, the only way to know what the effect might be is to try it.

By the way, bypassing the fuses completely might further improve sound quality, but doing so could be foolish and might result in loss of the equipment, fire, or even death. It would void the component's warranty and in the event of a fire might void one's fire insurance. So, don't try this at home! Swapping fuse ends ought to be safe enough if done when the component is unplugged. And doing so might improve the sound even if polarity does not prove to be important as a new contact is a clean contact. One must keep this in mind when conducting tests of fuse polarity, otherwise one may confuse cleanliness with polarity.


Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar


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  • RE: Scientist ... educate thyself. - Tony Lauck 12:37:29 04/14/12 (0)

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