[Metal-Fi]

Well, the good thing is that I am not perceiving the addition of the fuse as a downgrade in my chain, so I can surely wait and see. An interesting test might be installing again the stock fuse in a couple of weeks (or even three) to better understand if I was biased or not.

 

[DAPpower]

Perhaps give it more time than 24 hours.
My SR purple fuse had a roller coaster sound signature for days.
The first 24 hours I thought it was a downgrade, but after about week, it sounded really good.

Yes definitely, I forgot to mention "burn-in" changes in these fuses.
Ultimately, they made my setup sound more "lively" thus more "musical".

 

[phoneslave86]

Yes definitely, I forgot to mention "burn-in" changes in these fuses.
Ultimately, they made my setup sound more "lively" thus more "musical".

Different for everyone I think. They all did the same thing each time I popped one in I have them in everything. Added smoothness, clarity, realness, separation, reduction of fatiguing highs. Reminds me of adding master clock somewhat. Quite profound. My system has lots of static, grounding issues ect. along the way as I improved it as well. Now I at least have it fully disconnected from my 1300W PC. Thing is I have bad power too where I live. Alot of blackouts and brownouts with above ground lines so grounding is a big deal and the fuses do alot. Someone with relatively good power or a really high end power purifier with Farad LPS on everything ect. might not benefit so much

 

[ray12345]

I received the Gustard fuse yesterday and it's been in my U18 for about 24 hours. So, my system used to be good sounding before...and it is good sounding now - basically unchanged. It's a good replacement fuse with a better build quality for sure; but I was skeptical at first about the "audiophile promises" and what I get now just confirms my skepticism...

You are saying Gustard fuse sounds exactly the same as the original fuse? Gustard fuse is directional, make sure you install it in the direction as instructed.

I also have the U18 and the Gustard fuse does soften up the treble quite a bit and add a bit of Gustard taste to the sound, which is ok. It is not the most analytical compared to other fuses, but is ok to use if one wants to add some musicality to the system instead of just analytical power. The original fuse should sound muddy and not as clear anyway, what is your other components?

 

[Metal-Fi]

Hmm. My system has never sounded "muddy", even before buying the U18. The addition of this DDC to my audio chain has brought some improvements - described in my earlier posts on this thread - resulting from cleaning my laptop usb signal from noises and distortion.
Upon reading other users' experiences I developed a curiosity about fuses, a curiosity which, along with some skepticism, made me decide to buy a cheap upgrade, namely the Gustard 630mA fuse, so to prove or disprove a point. My mistake in doing so has been to start "educating" myself about fuses after the fuse arrived, perhaps being obnubilated by the quest for some audiophile "promised land". By no means a passive electrical component placed in the mains socket of an audio device could - and should - change the sound. Nor there could be anything such as "fuse directionality" or "fuse burn-in".
By the way, the fuse arrow points the correct "direction" and, of course, after one week of operation there is not even the slightest hint of what one would address as "burn-in". So I confirm: no change in sound at all. It is not a disaster for my ego to admit that my expectations were just wrong and biased...

 

[phoneslave86]

Hmm. My system has never sounded "muddy", even before buying the U18. The addition of this DDC to my audio chain has brought some improvements - described in my earlier posts on this thread - resulting from cleaning my laptop usb signal from noises and distortion.
Upon reading other users' experiences I developed a curiosity about fuses, a curiosity which, along with some skepticism, made me decide to buy a cheap upgrade, namely the Gustard 630mA fuse, so to prove or disprove a point. My mistake in doing so has been to start "educating" myself about fuses after the fuse arrived, perhaps being obnubilated by the quest for some audiophile "promised land". By no means a passive electrical component placed in the mains socket of an audio device could - and should - change the sound. Nor there could be anything such as "fuse directionality" or "fuse burn-in".
By the way, the fuse arrow points the correct "direction" and, of course, after one week of operation there is not even the slightest hint of what one would address as "burn-in". So I confirm: no change in sound at all. It is not a disaster for my ego to admit that my expectations were just wrong and biased...

My Tubulus I2s cable and Gotham RCA cables are also directional as well as the purple fuses but it can be designed not to be directional as well as many cables ect. are bi directional. Doesn't mean they are better than bi directional though. I have bi directional RCA cables coming that are an upgrade from what I have now. I see you didn't try the Synergistic Purple fuse but a cheap Gustard fuse as you said. Thanks for contributing evidence that the Gustard fuse you mentioned doesn't do much. Good to know.

On the general topic of the U18 and its cohabitants: I have my 5th Purple fuse on the way for my Afterdark LPS and I added my first piece of grounding out my whole system today with a puritan groundmaster city. The Gustard is still scaling and singing away. Immediate improvement even smoother sound. Love this thing. I don't feel I need an upgrade for a long time regarding a DDC this is a satisfying endgame for me. Pretty sweet too that it can do sine and square wave. If I ever need an upgrade I can go for a sinewave clock now. What can't the U18 do for $500!? One could spend so much money just trying to satiate its potential. It really sucked me into spending alot of money I didn't plan on spending already hah. DDC = now you want to try many other things.

 

[ray12345]

My Tubulus I2s cable and Gotham RCA cables are also directional as well as the purple fuses but it can be designed not to be directional as well as many cables ect. are bi directional. Doesn't mean they are better than bi directional though. I have bi directional RCA cables coming that are an upgrade from what I have now. I see you didn't try the Synergistic Purple fuse but a cheap Gustard fuse as you said. Thanks for contributing evidence that the Gustard fuse you mentioned doesn't do much. Good to know.

On the general topic of the U18 and its cohabitants: I have my 5th Purple fuse on the way for my Afterdark LPS and I added my first piece of grounding out my whole system today with a puritan groundmaster city. The Gustard is still scaling and singing away. Immediate improvement even smoother sound. Love this thing. I don't feel I need an upgrade for a long time regarding a DDC this is a satisfying endgame for me. Pretty sweet too that it can do sine and square wave. If I ever need an upgrade I can go for a sinewave clock now. What can't the U18 do for $500!? One could spend so much money just trying to satiate its potential. It really sucked me into spending alot of money I didn't plan on spending already hah. DDC = now you want to try many other things.

I agree SR Purple is wonderful, I also used one in my system. However, I have heard that using too many could slow down the dynamics of your system, beware of that.

The strange thing about these purple fuse is that it is influential to other systems as well. I installed it in my tube preamp, and if I turned on my tube preamp, it brings a tuby sound to the power amp even if I bypass the preamp and connect DAC direct to power amp, I turn off the preamp and the sound immediately becomes dry because there is no tube. I don't pretend to understand the science behind these things and I just go by my ears.

For fuse in general, only use it if you can hear a difference. It depends very much on the analytic power of one's system, if changing fuse (even cheap ones) doesn't make a difference, forget about expensive fuse like SR Purple because the system is not analytical enough to show the difference.

 

[sbgk]

Just got a U18 and removed the IEC socket, fuse, voltage selector and optical out and soldered the tx secondary wires direct to the pins, same as what I've done to the R26.
People are spending hundreds on fuses when the IEC socket is the crappiest bit of metal and plastic you could imagine, the unshielded voltage selector is live 240V and it's right beside the USB input, not a good choice for noise rejection.

Came from a U12 which was good, but the U18 seems to have much more going on in the detail it can produce.
I use a windows kernal streaming player and when I swapped over to the U18 it was using the latest USB driver for the U12 2.26 and was playing music quite happily, I then installed the latest Gustard driver for the U18 and was getting bad crackling noise, changed back to the U12 2.26 one and it worked ok again.
Not sure if kernal streaming is still supported, foobar 2000 ks module no longer installs, which is a shame as it was the best sounding method, better than asio, wasapi, alsa etc.
It's no wonder people go to dlna streaming as the latest driver options for USB are not able to show the best the U18 has to offer.
LMS and squeezelite uses kernal streaming, I'll check if that has the same crackling issue with the latest driver.

 

[trh322]

I have a A26 for a few weeks and I connect it to my laptop through the usb input. I'm thinking about adding the U18 into my usb chain. How much of an improvement does DDC improve upon the sound? From what I've read here and there, the improvement is just the reduce in digital noise from usb by using hdmi connection. What other improvements do you notice? Thank you

 

[sbgk]

I have a A26 for a few weeks and I connect it to my laptop through the usb input. I'm thinking about adding the U18 into my usb chain. How much of an improvement does DDC improve upon the sound? From what I've read here and there, the improvement is just the reduce in digital noise from usb by using hdmi connection. What other improvements do you notice? Thank you

on my R26, the USB was pretty rough sounding, used my 6 year old U12 via I2S instead until I got the U18 which is much better than the U12, depends on your amp and speakers etc as well

 

[ray12345]

I have a A26 for a few weeks and I connect it to my laptop through the usb input. I'm thinking about adding the U18 into my usb chain. How much of an improvement does DDC improve upon the sound? From what I've read here and there, the improvement is just the reduce in digital noise from usb by using hdmi connection. What other improvements do you notice? Thank you

Adding a DDC can do the following :

1) deeper soundstage and better layering
2) better instrument separation
3) improves airiness of soundstage
4) improves details of vocals
5) making the whole soundstage less tense at high volume

Adding a clock to the DDC again further enhances everything above. The degree of improvement depends on the resolution of your whole system. The more analytic power your system has, the more improvement it shows.

 

[trh322]

Thanks

 

[kopczas]

I need an opinion: is 800mA fuse way to much for device safety?

 

[sbgk]

was trying the xmos thesycon evaluation driver which is at 5.58 and thought it sounded different, so then found this Cayin driver which uses the same files and think the sound is more refined, worth the 5 mins it takes to upgrade.

Don't think we'll see a Gustard 5.58 driver as it costs them money to buy the next release.

can update usb driver to 5.58, think there's a small improvement in SQ
install driver 5.58 from https://en.cayin.cn/drive/9/18/568.html
then go to C:\Program Files\Gustard\USB Audio Device Driver\x64

rename the *.sys files to *.sys.bak
rename the *.dll files to *.dll.bak

go to C:\Program Files\Cayin\USB Audio Driver\x64
and copy the 2 sys files and 4 dll files

go to C:\Program Files\Gustard\USB Audio Device Driver\x64
and paste the copied files

rename the CayinAudio.sys file
to GustardUsbAudio.sys

do this for the 5 other .sys or .dll files

that's it

can uninstall the cayin driver and can reinstall the gustard driver or just rename the *,bak files etc if you want to go back to start

 

[nexgen]

Hello. I'm fresh owner of Gustard U18 which has been connected with Gustard A20H over IIS (I2S) by standard short 25cm HDMI cable. That is my first DDC and it was recommended in other thread. That was totally blind purchase because I didn't read much about it. In practise U18 brings A20H on much higher sound level now. I was happy before and just wanted only to maximize its potential. The final effect exceeded my expectations - this is huge upgrade to my source. I know that in this hobby never say never but for now that is so big step up that I resigned from purchase X26 Pro or R26 DAC.



Apart from above in my set-up :

1) deeper soundstage and better layering
2) better instrument separation
3) improves airiness of soundstage
4) improves details of vocals
5) making the whole soundstage less tense at high volume

- bass is tighter, more prominent in subbas region and better textured
- attack from bass to guitar string strokes and other instruments is faster and more impactful
- I get no hiss on 6.3mm jack output with quite sensitive over ear headphones just pitch black
- Crosszone CZ-1 needed all above changes like an air