Steve-I think the only way that people can make up their own minds is to buy some of these fuses and try them themselves and see what they think. I would hope that at this stage of Mike's journey he would recognize the difference between an improvement and a pleasant coloration. Remember that Mike first heard a system that belongs to a friend of his and noted that his friend's system now sounded better by a few notches than what he remembered.
Audio Magic Nano-Liquid Fuses---mikey likey :)
- Thread starter Mike Lavigne
- Start date
what happens here with this fuse is that it keeps the active bass amplifer more linear. therefore the subwoofer drivers are more linear. less smear. more focus. quicker. my guess is that anywhere this fuse gets used it will basically tighten things up. power supplies and circuits will be more linear.
in my system this does make things more 'precise'. bass information that was ghosty is now articulate. overtones in the mids and highs from the deep bass are now less smeared. one could say it's less warm; but that would be a gross oversimplification and wrong. by increasing accuracy in the deep bass it adds refinement and naturalness in my system. the speakers disappear more simply becuase there is less distortion giving away the speaker location. less a sense of drivers, less a sense of speaker cabinets, less a sense of electronics.
more natural, more real. less a sense of a recording.
would every system get the same result from these fuses? i'd say when the fuses are used on a subwoofer then it should have a similar result. it's hard to imagine any amplifier having a problem with being more linear. but i think it's possible that that could happen.
so when you say that the fuse introduces color you are only wrong in the sense that it could be going away from colorations, or going toward colorations. making an amplifer more linear will change the degree of coloration.....in my estimation for the better.
and sometimes more linear might leave the tonal balance alone and simply clarify. so it depends on what you mean by coloration how you might interpret that.
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Bruce B
WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
So here's a new wrinkle. You went to the guy's house that Mike is talking about and moved his speakers, listening position and room acoustic stuff and subsequently Mike went to this guy's house and heard his system was improved and the guy told Mike it was all due to some fuses instead of giving you credit for what you did for him?
I did try Isoclean, HiFi Tuning, Furutec, and Audio-Magic.
Unfortunately they all make an improvement!
That much money for a fuse....yes it is crazy, but it make an improvement worth that kind of money.
broad your ming uy's!
And yes even if it is A/C direction of the current flow mather.
Unfortunately they all make an improvement!
That much money for a fuse....yes it is crazy, but it make an improvement worth that kind of money.
broad your ming uy's!
And yes even if it is A/C direction of the current flow mather.
Bruce is my very good friend; so i don't want to dispute anything with him for sure. also, the system we are speaking about is our mutual friend, Andrew's. i know what Andrew had told me about what had been done to his system....which i wrote about in the first post of this thread here....
so obviously there is a difference between my story and Bruce's. so i just called Andrew and he clarified what happened with Bruce for me. when Bruce was there, Andrew was trying out an Audio Magic grounding device for cables which another friend Darin (the President of our local Audio Club) had loaned him. Andrew said they tried it but could not hear a difference. Andrew also said that the fuses were installed then but at no time did he remove them while Bruce was there and that was not the focus of their efforts.
obviously if my friend Andrew had not been so impressed with the fuses and told me what he told me i would never have tried them. i don't sell the things and have no motivation to go down this road other than finding better sound.
and i'm sure Bruce simply got the grounding device investigation mixed up with the fuse issue here on this thread.
Bruce; if that explanation does not make sense, please talk to Andrew so we are on the same page.
and just remember, the memory is the second thing to go.
Bruce B
WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
Bruce; if that explanation does not make sense, please talk to Andrew so we are on the same page.
and just remember, the memory is the second thing to go.
I thought it was the fuses because he had to shut everything down. Maybe it was the grounding thing..... memory is already fading fast!!
even if it's true?
signal path/power grid improvements can be significant....the fuses were a big deal in my system.
Andrew is the guy who laser aligned my MM7's. so before he and Bruce did do some adjustments they had already been laser aligned. so the degree of improvement from additional tweaking might have been minor.
anyway Frantz, enjoy the music!
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Mike
I will answer to this and bow out. Moving speakers and acoustic treatments will often bring changes of several dB in the response of speakes in a room. Fuses change in the room response... is always immeasurable. What do you think will bring the more audible change? Several dB or the micro dB that a fuse in the best case scenario will? Your amplifiers will not become more linear with a fuse change. your amps designers will have seen to that, be it those in your bass towers or the Dar Tzeel give them this credit.
My position is not to change your point of view . it is to learn through your experience with a system that mine doesn't approach and likely will not approach for several years. I learn a lot through the experiences of my fellow audiophiles. especially when I am not able or willing to conduct the same. When their experiences conflict with what i think Science is , it is time to bow out gracefully and agree to disagree.
before I get out. Aligning the speaker t the precision you mentioned in your report would mean that your own seating position may have to remain the same throughout the listening sessions. 1/8 of an inch or so IIRC. in my view and what I think I know, impossible , thus in my view such precision in placing the bass towers would not make much of a difference everything else being equal. If you heard a difference in your own system and I wasn't there, who am I to discuss your perception? I do however maintain that such extraordinary results may need a little bit of checking before defending them as facts. As I told you. Due to your dedication, Love of music, enthusiasm and system quality , your observations have sway. At that level even casual hypothesis testing and just an attempt however informal to remove the elements that tend to cloud our judgments. For example having your wife or a friend remove the fuses and check it out, would help us all.
I remain skeptical that a fuse will make that kind of difference in the bass towers with Class D amps of with crossover point around 40 Hz or so? To me unlikely. I have been wrong before and don't mind being corrected.
Out for now ...
I will answer to this and bow out. Moving speakers and acoustic treatments will often bring changes of several dB in the response of speakes in a room. Fuses change in the room response... is always immeasurable. What do you think will bring the more audible change? Several dB or the micro dB that a fuse in the best case scenario will? Your amplifiers will not become more linear with a fuse change. your amps designers will have seen to that, be it those in your bass towers or the Dar Tzeel give them this credit.
My position is not to change your point of view . it is to learn through your experience with a system that mine doesn't approach and likely will not approach for several years. I learn a lot through the experiences of my fellow audiophiles. especially when I am not able or willing to conduct the same. When their experiences conflict with what i think Science is , it is time to bow out gracefully and agree to disagree.
before I get out. Aligning the speaker t the precision you mentioned in your report would mean that your own seating position may have to remain the same throughout the listening sessions. 1/8 of an inch or so IIRC. in my view and what I think I know, impossible , thus in my view such precision in placing the bass towers would not make much of a difference everything else being equal. If you heard a difference in your own system and I wasn't there, who am I to discuss your perception? I do however maintain that such extraordinary results may need a little bit of checking before defending them as facts. As I told you. Due to your dedication, Love of music, enthusiasm and system quality , your observations have sway. At that level even casual hypothesis testing and just an attempt however informal to remove the elements that tend to cloud our judgments. For example having your wife or a friend remove the fuses and check it out, would help us all.
I remain skeptical that a fuse will make that kind of difference in the bass towers with Class D amps of with crossover point around 40 Hz or so? To me unlikely. I have been wrong before and don't mind being corrected.
Out for now ...
While I remain highly skeptical of the directionality of fuses having an impact on the sound quality based on the logo of the company that was misinterpreted to be a sign for directionality of the fuse, I think there is a chance that fuses could have an impact on the sound. If the B+ of a power supply flows through a fuse and someone has found a way to increase the diameter of the conductor without altering the fuse's characteristics for when it will blow, that could possibly change the sound of the circuit. Look at the wire inside a fuse. It's pretty tiny.
Weirdly enough, I was skeptical about the direction thing too but it was definitely audible in my system. One direction had a wider more detailed image (like a crisp photo) and the other direction produced greater depth and slightly warmer sound (like a good video). I don't think one was "worse" than the other; more of a preferential thing. Now whether the Audio Magic have this direction bit or not is something else. I believe their claim is more for redunction of microphonics.
Mike, has your friend tried other brands to see if he prefers the Nano Liquid fuse or HiFi Tuning Supreme (or even the SR Quantums)?
Cheers,
Hedwig
Frantz,
I will not speak about the changes due to fuses, as I have not any experience about them. However IMHO the argument you present about audibility is very weak.
My own system is all ARC, but recently I am using a Dartzeel NH108/NH18s system with a Nagra CDP Cd player as a source. Just for fun I measured the acoustic frequency response using the two systems - it is similar withing .5 dB. The Dartzeel amplifier has an output impedance of .3 ohm, the damping factor is not very different from the ARC REF150. As both systems are currently assembled I can change from one to the other in five minutes, keeping both warmed up. One think is sure - the sound of the two systems is completely different along all the spectrum.
As I have been looking for a better position for the Aida's they have now Teflon pads and can be moved easily in my room. Moving them 3 feet and the listening position of the same amount, to keep the speaker to listener constant, can introduce changes up to 8 dB in the measured spectrum (1/6 octave weighting) but the perceived global audible differences are much smaller that the differences between the two different systems. The sonic signatures of the electronic systems, both measuring excellently , are IMHO larger than the effect of just moving the speakers.
Surely I am picking between two acceptable good sounding positions for the speakers, avoiding the so called bad positions.
You moved your speakers 3 feet (0.91 metre) ... I can understand dramatic change in response ... but 1/8 of an inch 0.00which of difference about 4 mm will not make a dent in audibility.
Larger is a subjective matter. And you are nitpicking about two good systems at seating positions carefully chosen. Those vastly different systems are bound to sound different. Of course they were in plain view thus you knew what was playing/ Right? Your subjective reaction to these, the "larger" epithet, you use to qualify the differences, I will not look too much into it. Similar to the "night and day" we audiophiles use, for what is for many, small to non-existent differences . Still fuses remain an issue that I promised not to discuss anymore so whatever floats one's boat.
Oh, alright. I'll do it. But only as a purely altruistic gesture for the rest of the WBF community...I'm just that kind of guy
Thanks for making the sacrifice!
Look forward to your observations.Frantz,
I was not expecting the plain view argument from you in this case. The differences between the two systems (all ARC versus Nagra + DartZeel) are so large that even if I was hiding the identity of what was playing I would immediately know which is which. One friend even accused me of changing the recording when swapping systems.
Perhaps next someone will suggest that audiophiles should wear ear protectors when carrying listening tests to avoid being biased by the small differences ...
Any way the DartZeel system is leaving today - putting an end in the forbidden tests that challenge the wisdom of the "inaudible small differences" speech.
Hedwig,
i don't think my friend has tried any other fuse brands. if i do get that info i will pass it along.
cheers,
Mike
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