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Audiophile Fuses. What the...


thebes

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...hell. In all my years in this hobby I had truly never heard of such a thing until today. However, after a little googling it appears there are lots of them and they can cost up to several hundred dollars.   Forget cables. Apparently what's truly needed is a hyper-expensive power cord attached to a special audiophile grade wall plug, but that is not enough for true sonic bliss. You need a copper, bronze, gold or ceramic fuse to lift the veil from the music.

 

Here's another odd thing about them, many require that they be installed in one direction only.  I never realized electricity flowed in one proper direction only, because I could have sworn that the juice flowed from positive to negative, or visa versa if you have a two prong plugged and simply switch it around.

 

So has anyone played around with these fuses, and is there any rational at all to using them.

 

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  1. Monster Cable had some interconnects with bold arrows on them indicating directionality.   I asked a dealer, "What the Heck?"  The answer I got was, "Current flow is not easier in one direction than the other at first, but after the cables are used a while, it is."  Someone should collect all of these notions into a book, The Audiophile's Handbook of the Secret Lives of Electrons.   I'll bet it would sell.
  2. What's wrong with just having a surge protector? WWMLS (What would Mr. Lee say?")
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3 hours ago, thebes said:

...hell. In all my years in this hobby I had truly never heard of such a thing until today. However, after a little googling it appears there are lots of them and they can cost up to several hundred dollars.   Forget cables. Apparently what's truly needed is a hyper-expensive power cord attached to a special audiophile grade wall plug, but that is not enough for true sonic bliss. You need a copper, bronze, gold or ceramic fuse to lift the veil from the music.

 

Here's another odd thing about them, many require that they be installed in one direction only.  I never realized electricity flowed in one proper direction only, because I could have sworn that the juice flowed from positive to negative, or visa versa if you have a two prong plugged and simply switch it around.

 

So has anyone played around with these fuses, and is there any rational at all to using them.

 

 

Well, Thebes, you can really find 'em!  since then is no fuse commonly in the signal path, .......   

 

And You KNOW AC power goes both ways, right.  I'm too old, anymore.  😉.

 

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1 hour ago, garyrc said:
  1. Monster Cable had some interconnects with bold arrows on them indicating directionality.   I asked a dealer, "What the Heck?"  The answer I got was, "Current flow is not easier in one direction than the other at first, but after the cables are used a while, it is."  Someone should collect all of these notions into a book, The Audiophile's Handbook of the Secret Lives of Electrons.   I'll bet it would sell.
  2. What's wrong with just having a surge protector? WWMLS (What would Mr. Lee say?")

 

Hi Gary,

Found a bit of Blarney, didja?

I have some interconnects like that.  They are Vampire Wire.  They were described to me as having 2 conductors and a shield.  The shield is only bonded at the preamp end to avoid ground loops. 

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IMHO - This kind of stuff is for very wealthy people. Ones who have already bought everything money could buy and still wanting something else to add to their system. Then they can convince themselves while bragging how much better they make their system sound.

 

Hey Jeffery, would you factor in the length of these fuses when you use the 57.125" (or what ever it was) wires?

 

 

 

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5 hours ago, RandyH000 said:

 

Thanks for the articles.

 

I only had time to read the first one, for now.

 

IMO, this kind of research should always:

  1. Have an absolute minimum time gap between trials, so that auditory memory is less likely to be a factor.  A subsequent piece of research can be done with living with each fuse in the circuit for a while, if desired ... or a massive (large N) factorial study could be done.   The APA stat books might have other, better options.
  2. Be true double blind studies.  These folk are married, so, hopefully, he provided no voice announcements, but evven breathing patterns could, conceivably, be a problem.
  3. Order effect and carry-over effect should be controlled.

Some people cite "goats v.s. sheep" effects.  Even when all of the above precautions are taken, it is conceivable that in a double blind test, skeptics might be less likely to hear a difference.

 

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14 hours ago, Peter P. said:

Where can I find these fuses for sale; I'd like to read the ad copy.

Just google audiophile fuses.  The reason I heard about this in the first place was from a Audiogon Forum post.  Audiogon sends me a weekly summary of what that forum is up to for some reason. Here's the link:

 

https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/sr-blue-fuses?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=website&utm_source=sendgrid

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13 hours ago, JohnA said:

Found a bit of Blarney, didja?

I have some interconnects like that.  They are Vampire Wire.  They were described to me as having 2 conductors and a shield.  The shield is only bonded at the preamp end to avoid ground loops. 

Now ground loop prevention is an idea I hadn't considered but, I think it hardly applies in the case of fuses.

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I think we should form the Klipsch  Collective Partners, LLC (after all, we have several attorney's hanging around)

 

Buy some household breakers, 20 amps for Beginners, 30 amp for Wannabe's and 40 amp for (true) Audiophiles.

 

Gold plate the flipper switch (so said people can easily spot which one is the audiophile breaker).  Possibly cryogenicaly treat them (probably can take the entire case of them and simply "hose" them down with a tank of Co2....nobody will really ever know.  Oh, we MUST have a Canadian do the cryogenic treatment....  this way we can have an official (non-paid) "Hoser".

 

Sell them for $2,500 a pop and we can all get a giggle while splitting this funding for our retirement accounts.

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8 minutes ago, Coytee said:

I think we should form the Klipsch  Collective Partners, LLC (after all, we have several attorney's hanging around)

 

Buy some household breakers, 20 amps for Beginners, 30 amp for Wannabe's and 40 amp for (true) Audiophiles.

 

Gold plate the flipper switch (so said people can easily spot which one is the audiophile breaker).  Possibly cryogenicaly treat them (probably can take the entire case of them and simply "hose" them down with a tank of Co2....nobody will really ever know.  Oh, we MUST have a Canadian do the cryogenic treatment....  this way we can have an official (non-paid) "Hoser".

 

Sell them for $2,500 a pop and we can all get a giggle while splitting this funding for our retirement accounts.

 

We would need to use Nitrogen instead of the CO2 or the “Green New Deal” would shut the entire operation down. :)

 

 

 

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On 8/1/2020 at 3:20 PM, thebes said:

  I never realized electricity flowed in one proper direction only, because I could have sworn that the juice flowed from positive to negative, or visa versa if you have a two prong plugged and simply switch it around.

 

 

 

I'm an electrician, when we bend pipe 90 degrees we have to be careful of how tight the radius is.  If we bend to tight of a 90, the electrons can't make the bend and fly out of the pipe!

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On 8/1/2020 at 2:20 PM, thebes said:

...hell. In all my years in this hobby I had truly never heard of such a thing until today. However, after a little googling it appears there are lots of them and they can cost up to several hundred dollars.   Forget cables. Apparently what's truly needed is a hyper-expensive power cord attached to a special audiophile grade wall plug, but that is not enough for true sonic bliss. You need a copper, bronze, gold or ceramic fuse to lift the veil from the music.

 

Here's another odd thing about them, many require that they be installed in one direction only.  I never realized electricity flowed in one proper direction only, because I could have sworn that the juice flowed from positive to negative, or visa versa if you have a two prong plugged and simply switch it around.

 

So has anyone played around with these fuses, and is there any rational at all to using them.

 

 

Just use tin foil and be done with it.......

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