[Sovkiller]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dan Millheim /img/forum/go_quote.gif I am using some high end PC cables throughout my system...I even have the "give away" VD P1 as well. I started with two Hifi-tuning fuses on my amp and the sound improvement was so amazing, I ordered some for my Dac and Preamp as well. IF I were a high end PC builder, I would R&D a synergistic Fuse to offer with my cables as well.

The fuses is a little more complicated, any IEC power cord will fit any IEC socket, but fuses are a little more technical, you have slow blow fuses, fast blow fuses, then the sizes, so the person need to know which fuse is using most of the times you do not know what fuses are used in the equipment, so the problem is not so simple...Don't forget that the main purpose of a fuse is protection, you choose the wrong one, and for good that it sounds, it will do nothing to protect, or will be blown all the times you turn the amp on...

 

[markl]

I've used Hi-Fi tuning fuses in my amp, and it made a small but OK improvement in similar areas that a good aftermarket power cord will, but at a lower level.

 

[amb]

An AC line fuse on the primary side of the power transformer is not going to make any audible difference, since the AC will be stepped down, rectified and smoothed into DC, then regulated before it reaches any amplification circuitry.

Fuses that are inline with speaker outputs, however, could cause significant degradation. You have to remember that fuses work by having some resistance which heats up when current flows through it. An overcurrent condition will melt and open the fuse element and that's the whole point of it.

That added resistance in the fuse will increase the effective output impedance of the amplifier and decrease the damping factor, as well as change the effective Q of the woofer. It will also change the speaker's crossover network tuning slightly.

Moreover, as the fuse heats and cools in response to music current being passed, it will expand and contract slightly and literally "dance". Such physical changes also dynamically change the electrical characteristics of the fuse element.

In short, fuses are evil when directly in the signal path, but not in the AC mains.

 

[omegaman]

How about this one for a bargain price of £42.75 ( $85 ) and thats in the sale.

Phonosophie 13 Amp Fuse - £42.75 : Audio Destination, Devon's Audio Specialist

This is a 13 amp fuse for the AC mains cable !!!! Anybody willing to try one ???

 

[QQQ]

No, it can't.

 

[Spiug31]

If you'd searched you'd have found this thread already but just in case http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f21/ro...-heard-275921/

 

[milkweg]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crow /img/forum/go_quote.gif Rather unsafe idea, but one could try bypassing the fuse altogether... assuming the fuse is the weakest link, maybe this would reveal the greatest contrast sound-wise.

Yea, I was thinking of that myself. You can just wrap tin foil around the fuse to bypass it. As far as cables go, I have bookmarked a really good article on speaker wire but it is on my other PC so will post it to this link later. The difference in db from 22guage compared to 12guage is .1db. BFD I say. I use 16guage. You only need 12guage for really long runs or maybe for high powered sub woofers.

 

[kipman725]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Acoustic Chef /img/forum/go_quote.gif Common now…. your not allowed to be a skeptic anymore... https://www.virtualdynamics.ca/content.php?id=254

I just had a look at that and have to say thats some very shody study I don't understand why a university would put its name to it. All the results are pretty meaningless and given to greater acuracy than the variance of the components used to construct the two DAC's and quite probobly the test equipment. It's a few pages of absolutly meaningless mesurments.

 

[amb]

Indeed. Measuring slew rate using a sound card (which has severely restricted bandwidth) is useless. No wonder the numbers are so poor. The difference between the various results could only be measurement tolerances and no conclusions could be drawn from them.

To make an analogy, let's equip car A and car B both with speedometers that reads up to a maximum to 10mph. Then plug each car's tailpipe full of restriction. Wow, car A did 0-10mph in 399.6 seconds while car B did the same in 400.1. Presto, car A must be superior!

 

[NelsonVandal]

And what about the power station, cables leading to your house, and your wall jacks etc etc? The only effect this kind of "upgrade" could have is make HiFi neurotics nervous. I think it's disinformation and all placebo. Of course I've never "heard" a fuse upgrade and never will, and I know people get banned for commenting on thing unheard to them, but this is just silly.

 

[milkweg]

And what about the wire wrapped around the speaker driver? Read this article for the truth about speaker wire. Speaker Wire "It can be solid, stranded, copper, oxygen free copper, silver, etc.--or even "magic" wire--as long as the resistance is kept to be less than 5% of the speaker impedance. There is no listening difference as long as the wire is of adequate size."

 

[tourmaline]

Quote:

Originally Posted by milkweg /img/forum/go_quote.gif And what about the wire wrapped around the speaker driver? Read this article for the truth about speaker wire. Speaker Wire "It can be solid, stranded, copper, oxygen free copper, silver, etc.--or even "magic" wire--as long as the resistance is kept to be less than 5% of the speaker impedance. There is no listening difference as long as the wire is of adequate size."

oh yes there is.

I used alot of cables to experiment with, cheap and expensive and i found following;

pure silver sounds soft, silver plated copper sounds best to me, more natural and lifelike, pure copper sounds rolled off to me, not going as deep or high as silver plated copper.

So, apperently every cable has it's own caracter, not even calculating in the influence insulation has on the sound!

On topic;

I use a audiofile fuse in the braker box and it made quite a positive improvement in sound.

 

[tourmaline]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sovkiller /img/forum/go_quote.gif Let not this debate go in the wrong direction....BTW we all know that differences in cables exist, the problem is not to measure them, and get a number, those numbers already exist, you can measure a lot of parameters in cables (well indeed not a lot but a few of them) the main problem always have been to determine to what extend these numbers measured by instruments are audible to us...for example to go from a 150db signal to noise to a 155db in an audio device, will do absolutely nothing practically, other than make the design a lot more expensive...Design is a trade off, and not only in audio, in life in general, you need to set certain parameters or goals to achieve, in a reasonable margin, and cost, otherwise is a cost no object project...You can measure that for example a transducer is able to reproduce 10Hz to 100kHz, to what extend that figure says something about the quality of the sound is still a mystery, why...? Don't ask me...and others will more conservative figures, could sound a lot better... For every single attempt to demonstrate a theory in electronics, you may find most of the times the opposite field, that will say the opposite mentioning a lot of other arguments not considered in the first study...and offering also even other experiments that will prove the opposite... Also keep in mind that the results of the power filtering depends not only in the filtering device used, in this case a better power cord, also in the PSU used, and the internal filtering that this PSU uses, topology, design, parts used, etc....and how it handles the noise, trust me that if you have a PSU that improves only by replacing the power cord, IMO you have some room for improvement internally that will be a lot cheaper than expending insane figures in a power cords...I do not know of any well designed PSU, for audio purposes that will cost you over $500.00 to be the manufactured, and you do not need to go insane in complicated topologies, many of the "classic from the books" ones will work for audio applications...just my two cents... Anyway and regardless of the outcome I feel that at least VD had given a lot of skeptics the possibility of trying in the comfort of their homes, good products, that they believe in, and that is IMO an step forward from the rest at least...Let's at least appreciate that... Thanks guys Do you have any fuse I can try for free???? ...LOL...

I agree.
I have both high end cables and totally modded my amp but the most difference made the complete mod of my amp and i think modding the powersection is at least for 50 percent responcable for the better sound! Clean power is a must! The sound is much more natural and is flowing much easier; the music flows with such an ease.....only you find this in the high end systems. Now you can do it yourself by modding your powersection. Power IS underestimated, as i said it is responcable for the sound for at least 50 percent!

The modded powersection is even so good, it sounds much better straight out of the socket then using a powerfilter! The mod wins by a huge margin, no competition and it is much cheaper then using an expensive powerfilter or powerplant! If the powersection is up to notch, you won't need either of those 2 patches, that's what they are, expensive patches that don't cure the real problem in most amps!

powercables and fuses are dots on the i, but nice ones.

 

[bhd812]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NelsonVandal /img/forum/go_quote.gif And what about the power station, cables leading to your house, and your wall jacks etc etc? The only effect this kind of "upgrade" could have is make HiFi neurotics nervous. I think it's disinformation and all placebo. Of course I've never "heard" a fuse upgrade and never will, and I know people get banned for commenting on thing unheard to them, but this is just silly.

In my speaker setup the Power was the second biggest change after Room Acoustics. i mean power being the dedicated line with a Oyaide XXX outlet. at first i had a cheapo hospital grade outlet then switched to the XXX just for giggles, i will never go back to anything else. I also heard and lived with the experience of how "screwing with the power" can bring a speaker system to its toes, like balanced power conditioners and crap like this type...leave the power pure and solid! You have to understand one small basic your forgetting in your reasoning though..

Music that you hear, the music that is being produced from your audio system is just power. its power all the way up to the cones of the speakers, then it becomes energy our ears are able to hear..well you get the half cracked idea. if you believe in room acoustics you believe in power, again all sound is..is energy. its up to your room how that energy moves.

I firmly know the reality of a dedicated a/c line. i know the reality of a tight fitting outlet. i never tried fuses but they should make something of a change, how much and will you like it is the real question. power cables depend on what gear you run and again will you like it? at first i loved the sound of my BPT power condition but later..much later i rolled it out of my setup and realized and how much damage it did. my point is, is that with fuses or cables you might not realize the negative effects until much later.

 

[milkweg]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tourmaline /img/forum/go_quote.gif oh yes there is. I used alot of cables to experiment with, cheap and expensive and i found following; pure silver sounds soft, silver plated copper sounds best to me, more natural and lifelike, pure copper sounds rolled off to me, not going as deep or high as silver plated copper. So, apperently every cable has it's own caracter, not even calculating in the influence insulation has on the sound! On topic; I use a audiofile fuse in the braker box and it made quite a positive improvement in sound.

Saying you heard a difference is not proof of anything. Could be pure placebo effect at work. At least the article I posted provides data to back their claims. You provide none. May I ask how old you are? I ask for this reason. However, as we age, our sensitivity to high frequencies decreases dramatically. The chart is from Modern Sound Reproduction by Harry F. Olson. It shows the average hearing loss Vs age for men and women at frequencies from 250 Hz to 8000 Hz. This means that for a man at age 35, sensitivity is down about 11 dB at 8000 Hz. For a woman at that age, sensitivity is down only about 5 dB. We can infer that sensitivity is down a whole lot more at 20kHz.