Let’s get back on topic, the subject is Audiophile Fuses. I have found them to be quite useless in any and all of my equipment (mostly all from the EU). <snip>
Happy Thanksgiving to you as well and good morning to Texas from SC.
As I read this, I (
honestly) reared my head back. I feel bad that this has been your experience and here's why. A friend of mine came over a couple of months back to audition my rig again, after I have dialed in on some of the upgrades I have made over the past year. He just so happened to have a fuse that he brought with him that he "really" wanted me to try out.
I was reluctant, to say the least, because I couldn't figure out how/why a fuse would make any change but he kept talking about this fuse and how he wanted to hear it in my system. Toward the end of the listening session, we actually (
with me still being a bit reluctant) installed the fuse within the power supply unit of my amplifier.
At first, I was thinking to myself, "get this thing outta here!". The bass was grossly over exaggerated, the mids were strange, the images were all over the place and the tonal balance of the system had shifted to where it was now unacceptable. Not a very good first impression AT ALL.
Even though it sounded bad, we kept listening and revisited some of the tracks we had just listened to in the hours preceding the fuse install. As I was listening, I kept hearing things that perked my ears up. Glimpses of artifacts that I had not previously heard out of my system. As we kept listening and as the new addition got settled into the system, this reminded me of a PC break in. I could not believe that a simple fuse could be doing the same thing. This was beyond believable that something like this would happen but it was, at the same time, undeniable to these ears. Heck, you could even feel the difference.
After another hour or so, I told my friend that I was still not sold on this little fuse. The lower registers would have to tame down significantly, the tonal balance would have to come back to something that was enjoyable once again and the images would have to be not so smeared. When he left, the system was still in flux and I told him that I would let him know if I wanted the fuse or not but there was a very high probability that I would be returning it to him.
The only reason I wanted to give it a chance was because of those little glimpses of "potential" that I kept hearing. I wanted to hear what else this thing could do because those little glimpses of potential were again, something that I had never heard my rig do before.
Fast forward about two weeks, for the most part, the system had lost the exaggeration of the lower frequencies. The tonal balance had returned. The imaging was now sharper than it had ever been before. I purchased the fuse from him and was fully confident that I was making a great decision, even though it was still somewhat in flux.
Fast forward another month. Everything, and I do mean all aspects of the system had changed. Usually, there are compromises and deficiencies that you trade off in return of the attributes something offers you. In this case? It was
all attributes. I could type for hours on end about the changes this little fuse has made in my system. Now that I have heard it? I could never go back.
That fuse was a QSA Red/Black fuse.
For a product to have had such a horrible first impression, this sure has changed my mind and taught me things that I honestly, didn't think was possible. FWIW, I have zero affiliation with QSA. I wasn't even really familiar with them (
I had only read about them), until the day my friend came over with the fuse and insisted that I give it a try. Everyone in this hobby could use more friends like that!
Tom
