Audiophile Fuses

[MarkusBarkus]

...IMO the hardness of plug, fuse, etc. metals and coatings only *practically* comes into play if you are inserting/removing/swapping a lot. How much is a lot? I don't know, but not a hand-full of times, in normal use-cases.

Here is an image of a demo power cable from a well-regarded manufacturer. When I sent him this pikkie, asking if I should send it to him rather than on to the next demo user, he agreed (I send it to him)..

 

[Geoffkait]

Piltdown man, (Eoanthropus dawsoni), proposed species of extinct hominin (member of the human lineage) whose fossilremains, discovered in England in 1910–12, were later proved to be fraudulent. Piltdown man, whose fossils were sufficiently convincing to generate a scholarly controversy lasting more than 40 years, was one of the most successful hoaxes in the history of science.

40 years?! Whoa! Hey, What?! that’s exactly how long the CD Perfect Sound Forever hoax has been around. One of the most successful hoaxes in the history of audio. Is that a coincidence or what?!

 

[ssfas]

I would grain orient branch wire. You don't have the ability to do stranded feeder or service wires.
I mean a choke as every not optimized piece of the puzzle is just that. The more you do correctly, the better the overall result.

You wouldn't have the opportunity. Here all the cabling before the electricity meter is installed by the electricity network engineers and you don't get to go near it. Part of the $7,000 I had to pay was for barriers to keep people away.

 

[ssfas]

Piltdown man, (Eoanthropus dawsoni), proposed species of extinct hominin (member of the human lineage) whose fossilremains, discovered in England in 1910–12, were later proved to be fraudulent. Piltdown man, whose fossils were sufficiently convincing to generate a scholarly controversy lasting more than 40 years, was one of the most successful hoaxes in the history of science.

Ironically, the English scientific community were not impressed by Piltdown and thought it was a hoax, it being ancient was mainly supported by two senior American academics.

Unlike fuses, Piltdown was not about deceiving people to make money. There seems to be quite a record in the USA in that regard - Madoff, Bankman-Freid, the orange guy.

 

[MarkusBarkus]

...I think Rex means grain-orienting the branch wiring for your audio inside the house. We can't DIY the feeds into our homes here (US) either. The utility company connects the riser (installed by an electrician) which leads down the side of the home to your meter. Could be up to your meter too, if buried.

I imagine most electricians would think you were crazy if you asked to audition the cabling they were using inside the house, but they would do it. It would just be another amusing story to share with the counter guys when they pick-up materials.

 

[ssfas]

...IMO the hardness of plug, fuse, etc. metals and coatings only *practically* comes into play if you are inserting/removing/swapping a lot. How much is a lot? I don't know, but not a hand-full of times, in normal use-cases.

Here is an image of a demo power cable from a well-regarded manufacturer. When I sent him this pikkie, asking if I should send it to him rather than on to the next demo user, he agreed (I send it to him)..
View attachment 126239

Fuse caps are made of brass, a copper alloy. Usually two-thirds copper. Then plated. Brass presumably has some benefit over pure copper, besides being less malleable it may flow better so be easier to manufacture.

However, the main reason seems to be that it corrodes far less than pure copper.

 

[ssfas]

...I think Rex means grain-orienting the branch wiring for your audio inside the house. We can't DIY the feeds into our homes here (US) either. The utility company connects the riser (installed by an electrician) which leads down the side of the home to your meter. Could be up to your meter too, if buried.

I imagine most electricians would think you were crazy if you asked to audition the cabling they were using inside the house, but they would do it. It would just be another amusing story to share with the counter guys when they pick-up materials.

I used Neotech NEP-4003 UP-OFC Copper Silver plated Mains Cable. This is a multi-stranded cable. How do you grain-orient that?

Neotech NEP-4003: UP-OFC Copper Silver-plated Mains Cable | HIFICollective

Neotech NEP-4003: UP-OFC Copper Silver-plated Mains Cable

www.hificollective.co.uk

In most building jobs the electrical cables are laid and the building work completed before the consumer units are wired up. In my case, the audio power cable was buried under 5 inches of screed a few months before anything was wired up. The reason for this is simple - the electricians want all the building work completed and builders out of the way before power is connected and tested. The last thing they want is to test it and then builders drill holes in it. So reversing cables is not an option.

Here the water pipes are white and the electrical cables in black trunking. They are sitting in 5 inches of thermal insulation, under that is the damp proofing and 6 inches of ballast. Everything gets buried under 5 inches of screed, a dry concrete that is much easier to level than normal concrete. The builders barrowed in and levelled 25 tonnes of it in a day.

There's no going back when this stuff is down, and it is months before any sockets are installed.

 

[MarkusBarkus]

...oh, I get it. My service feed (220v) is underground and under a poured screed fill too. I have no idea how whatever grain is there is oriented. I think folks were making a case for doing what one could in that regard, whether it was cables, fuses, or in-wall pulls. It doesn't keep me up at night worrying about it. In fact, if I bother at all, I might swap ends a couple of times on ICs, decide and carry on bravely. I don't mess around with fuses at all. I assume there are impacts to the sound, but I just don't care about fuses, other than to keep my gear from burning up, or burning me up.

 

[ssfas]

...oh, I get it. My service feed (220v) is underground and under a poured screed fill too. I have no idea how whatever grain is there is oriented. I think folks were making a case for doing what one could in that regard, whether it was cables, fuses, or in-wall pulls. It doesn't keep me up at night worrying about it. In fact, if I bother at all, I might swap ends a couple of times on ICs, decide and carry on bravely. I don't mess around with fuses at all. I assume there are impacts to the sound, but I just don't care about fuses, other than to keep my gear from burning up, or burning me up.

I suspect you and I share the same level of disinterest in directionality and fuses as 99% of audiophiles.

 

[Kingrex]

You wouldn't have the opportunity. Here all the cabling before the electricity meter is installed by the electricity network engineers and you don't get to go near it. Part of the $7,000 I had to pay was for barriers to keep people away.

I have designed a few jobs in Europe. People run new branch wires from the Consumer Unit to the outlet in the wall. That happens all the time. You have stranded wire. I have not been able to grain orient stranded wire. So you are right in that regard.

 

[Kingrex]

You don't have to pay attention to a fuse if you don't want. You don't have to pay attention to any tuning if you don't want to. You are welcome to place your gear on a Ikea media center and use Home Depot cabling throughout. Shove the speakers in the corner and hit play. Its up to you. Most people who are on these forums are trying to find a higher level of performance. I am simply saying a decent fuse that is copper and under $100 that you take a moment to listen to, flip it once of twice will likely give a positive improvement in what you hear. Maybe it won't. Maybe you applied so little thought to the whole of setting up the system that other deficiencies will far overshadow the benefits you get from the fuse. That is a very real reality for many people.

 

[MarkusBarkus]

...I couldn't tell a difference in the stranded #10 THHN at my place. The #6 copper from the panel had a directionality I went with. ICs were a mixed bag, so I didn't puzzle over them for long. I just never had an interest in fuses, but I'm not against other folks trying them out. I'm pretty fussy about isolation, dressing cables, landing the wires I pull, etc.

 

[ssfas]

I have designed a few jobs in Europe. People run new branch wires from the Consumer Unit to the outlet in the wall. That happens all the time. You have stranded wire. I have not been able to grain orient stranded wire. So you are right in that regard.

Sure you can run a spur (branch) from the consumer unit, I did three - for my hifi, AV and internet cupboard. I used stranded Neotech and Belden cable. These cables were chosen for their amp rating, they are shielded with a drain cable and their flexibility. However, we mostly use ring circuits.

 

[ssfas]

You don't have to pay attention to a fuse if you don't want. You don't have to pay attention to any tuning if you don't want to. You are welcome to place your gear on a Ikea media center and use Home Depot cabling throughout. Shove the speakers in the corner and hit play. Its up to you. Most people who are on these forums are trying to find a higher level of performance. I am simply saying a decent fuse that is copper and under $100 that you take a moment to listen to, flip it once of twice will likely give a positive improvement in what you hear. Maybe it won't. Maybe you applied so little thought to the whole of setting up the system that other deficiencies will far overshadow the benefits you get from the fuse. That is a very real reality for many people.

You seem to forget that a lot of audiophile fuses, such as those from QSA, Russ Andrews, MCRU and others, are mass-produced $0.30 fuses that have been treated somehow and repackaged.

Some like Russ Andrews and MCRU are honest as to what they do, usually just replating the caps, and they are cheap - under $10.

Others like QSA are evasive, relabel the fuses (illegal in the UK) and their other claims do dot withstand any scrutiny. They are expensive to hugely expensive.

Your are making a false equivalence between fuses, which the vast majority of audiophiles consider a non-issue, and things like speaker placement, which all audiophiles know is an issue, and placement often determines speaker choice. My speakers were positioned by my Wilson dealer and haven't moved since.

When I stream music there are 7 fuses in play, besides the sealed ones, that's a lot of possible combinations (49?). Life I too short. If fuses are directional, and act as a choke, surely it could be measured rather than testing 49 fuse direction combinations.

You can't make a solid copper fuse because copper's melting point is over 1,000 C. I presume that is why fuse wire is often made of tin-plated copper. The caps are mostly copper, because they are mostly brass, which is mostly copper, plated with silver or nickel, it seems because those metals are non-corrosive. Fuses of this design cost $0.30 and are made to far better tolerances than could ever be made by an audiophile fuse manufacturer.

 

[Geoffkait]

Your are making a false equivalence between fuses, which the vast majority of audiophiles consider a non-issue, and things like speaker placement, which all audiophiles know is an issue, and placement often determines speaker choice. My speakers were positioned by my Wilson dealer and haven't moved since.

I have an inside track on audiophiles and their fuse habits and I know that, as of a few years ago, the top two audiophile fuse companies had sold more than 100,000 fuses in total. That‘s a lot of audiophiles who consider fuses an issue.

I submit that as one improves his room acoustics treatments over the years one should relocate the speakers accordingly, as room acoustics changes, preferably using the XLO Test CD speaker set-up track, or the equivalent. Trying to find the very best speaker locations without a foolproof methodology is like trying to solve x simultaneous equations in x + n unknowns.

 

[Geoffkait]

When I stream music there are 7 fuses in play, besides the sealed ones, that's a lot of possible combinations (49?). Life I too short. If fuses are directional, and act as a choke, surely it could be measured rather than testing 49 fuse direction combinations.

The way to determine correct orientation for multiple fuses is surprisingly simple. Audition each fuse one at a time, pick the best sound orientation each time. So, if you have 7 fuses that‘s 7 auditions, flipping the fuse each time, or 14 trials total. if you only have 2 fuses, then it’s 4 trials.

 

[ssfas]

It depends how many fuses each fuse-lover uses, how often they change them and how long these companies have been in business. SR who seem to sell a few here offer quite a few in the $50-$100 range. But 100,000 don’t seem a lot. Quad sold about that many 909 amplifiers.

My wife and I designed our music/reading room. There is no visible acoustic panelling. It hasn’t changed and the speakers haven’t moved since it was finished. When I moved room the Wilson dealer came back and realigned them. They offer a good service. Wilson flew their main UK dealers to Utah for a week a few years back so they know how to get them sounding right.

 

[ssfas]

The way to determine correct orientation for multiple fuses is surprisingly simple. Audition each fuse one at a time, pick the best sound orientation each time. So, if you have 7 fuses that‘s 7 auditions, flipping the fuse each time, or 14 trials total. if you only have 2 fuses, then it’s 4 trials.

Only 14 different configurations to try. That’s a relief.

 

[Geoffkait]

In hindsight you probably shouldn’t have got so many fuses. I don’t have any fuses, life is good.

 

[Geoffkait]

I'ver just inherited a battery operated Discman. Is it worth anything? It uses a 9v battery, so a rather expensive hobby.

So sayeth the man with Wilsons.