Synergistic Research SR Orange Fuse snake oil ?

[botrytis]

3 hours ago, TheAttorney said:

This is missing the point of where audiophile fuse technology is heading.

 

A couple of highly regarded contributors to this forum have recently stated that their (ultra expensive) QSA fuse sounds much better than a fuse bypass. Which suggests that the fuse is filtering or conditioning the power supply in some way that is better than a direct connection. I have also demonstrated this to myself at a much lower level by replacing the fuse in a UK 13A mains plug with a solid copper rod of the same size.

 

To extend this concept,  we're not taking about finding a fuse alternative that does least damage, but now considering the possibility of inserting a fuse (or rather it's secret magic sauce) solely  to improve a circuit that doesn't need fuse protection.  If somebody here has not yet found out how expensive an "ultra expensive" QSA fuse can get then, well, prepare yourself for a shock...

 

There does remain the major issue of cost of replacement when the blown fuse costs more than some of your main components. My understanding is that QSA will replace for free in the first year. But after that, what? Much better if the magic sauce in such fuses gets transferred to non-fuse situations.

 

 

DBT or sighted listening? Sighted is suspect because of 'EXPECTATION BIAS'.

[botrytis]

40 minutes ago, Kens said:

I have had my purple fuse for about 2 months and YES I did get a nice bump in performance much like when I went to the orange. 

 

I will wait for proof. If it makes a difference, it should be able to be measured. If not, maybe your ears filled in the difference...

[botrytis]

1 hour ago, skyline said:

 

Some of these fuses are so colored, the real question is do you like them in the long run. 

 

I know audiophiles who have gone back to stock fuses because they preferred them.

No, the question is, do they actually make a measurable difference? If not, why spend the money?

 

 

[botrytis]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

What a non-standard fuse can do is alter the types and levels of electrical noise that the components see - depending upon the competence of the audio engineering of those components, this will cause a subjective audible difference to the sound. Whether anyone has worked out a method of precisely measuring this is irrelevant; if you can hear it, then the effect is real.

 

The poor ability of most audio chains to reject interference is the reason that there is so much "madness" in the game; people will keep fiddling with 'snake oil' until this is finally properly understood. We're still in the world of witch doctors who use various plants to get rid of evil spirits in sick people; then, the medical world worked out that these plants had compounds that actually had beneficial properties - that is, some sanity descends into the situation .

 

NONSENSE. It is a fusible wire is all. Nothing magical or special about them.

 

Adding mumbo jumbo to a description doesn't make it real .

 

If you believe it Frank, I have some Shun Mook discs to send you. :D

[botrytis]

20 minutes ago, Archimago said:

 

Even if the surrounding material shields from RF across the 20-40mm fuse length, what's that going to do to change sound quality to a significant degree?

 

We can imagine all kinds of things being "possible". And companies like Synergistic want us to think that it might be (so we send over $200). But seriously, how "probable" is that to make an effect on the power supply's performance - much less eventually a sound difference from your amp or DAC or whatever?

 

IMO essentially ZERO.

 

Show me something. Anything other than vague testimonies (or snake oil salesmen talk like Ted Denney) that the sound output is different or there is any electrical difference something like the Orange/Blue/Purple "UEF" fuse makes.

 

(BTW: I've never heard a significant difference with the Synergistic stuff... Even when attending Ted Denney's presentation at an audio show.)

 

I remember at one AXPONA, one of the manufacturers was talking about these 'Magical rocks' for CD players and it made his sound so much better. So, he was showing what they do. Literally, 3 rocks with some foam glued onto them. He had them in a triangle, close together, on top of his CD player. He said, 'Wait' and he moved them apart. The other audiophiles were like, 'OH, that is amazing!' I was like WTF? My wife had the same reaction. Expectation bias is big in sales.

 

Oh, the rocks were 500 USD for 3 of them....

[botrytis]

12 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

I've been dealing for years with stuff "that shouldn't matter!!" - so, I never assert that something can't affect the SQ, just because that seems a reasonable stance. As I've said many times, digital playback is extremely sensitive to electrical noise; and that noise can originate from the most headscratching sources - it's a journey to excise every last ounce of this crap; and people who sell 'snake oil' have made a mint over the years from producing stuff that can impact this behaviour.

You have been dealing with things for years yet you still don't understand basic science and engineering.

 

Also, your expectation bias is just like WOW!

[botrytis]

11 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Which is exactly why so many audio systems are so lacklustre - they have been designed using just "basic science and engineering" - the cheap ones and the expensive ones. What you get with the latter is plenty of bling, and "expensive sounding" distortion - which may be enough to satisfy the buyer .

 

What is coming through is that you can't conceive that electrical noise may impact subjective SQ - part of the "if no-one measures it, then it doesn't exist" universe ...

 

Ever hear the expression, ' A fool and his money are often parted'?  Imaginary noise can't be measured.

 

As I said many times, one needs to divorce what we hear from what is actually played. Oft times they are different things because our brain does fill in nuances, etc. that we have heard before. That is why many salespeople, will tell you what you will hear, play the song, repeat the same thing about what you will hear, play it again and then a third time. That is expectation bias being used and is the most common sales process in the audio business. The term 'Snake Oil Salesman' comes from the classic medicine show men, who would basically sell alcohol or even dangerous products as a 'cure all'. An example would be, in medicine, chelated silver to treat Covid. Doesn't work and oft times turns people blue and is eventually toxic.

 

I am not, as you say, 'doesn't exist' group. The thing is our senses are setup for specific things, like blue light with our sight, 500-3K for our hearing, etc. Anything outside of that, is a crap shoot. As we get older our senses get tend to get de-sensitized so our hearing, eyesight, taste, etc. get less sensitive. Women have better senses than men, and that is a proven fact. 

 

Frank, you like to spout flowery platitudes but there is no science or reality in that. That is the issue. Music reproduction is not something that is 'magically' special so it can divorce from the laws of science. This is the way you treat it. I do not. I am trained as a scientist, so I tend to veer on the objective side as it is hard to prove a negative. Data is how I roll.

 

Test your ideas with a properly DBT, then come back to me. I will be waiting.

 

What you believe you hear (I do think you believe it) and what is actually played are two different but subtle things.

[botrytis]

26 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

The noise is there. This was something I spent months and months trying to eliminate over 3 decades ago, and which made me give up audio entirely for nearly a decade - the frustration of not understanding what to do, to fix it, was enough to undermine my interest; for that period, it was just another kitchen radio, not to be taken seriously.

 

Others who are also bugged will spend money, to try and get an answer - if they want to spend "silly" money, that's up to them; if they chance on a good combo of tricks that really reduce the noise, then they come out winners ...

 

 

You have obviously never experienced a rig where you do something quite 'ridiculous', and the SQ changes markedly. Most setups have plenty of 'instability' points throughout them - an analogy is the classic broom standing on its handle end equilibrium; the slightest puff of wind sends the broom crashing to the floor ... unfortunately, that's where the current state of knowledge of audio is at.

 

 

As I've said a thousand times, anyone who has no trouble, whatsoever, in picking whether music coming from an unseen source is real, or merely hifi, has sensitive enough hearing ...

 

 

Oh, most certainly science has everything to do with it ... if you happen to work in a such a field where precision is critical, you will have to go extreme measures to ensure accuracy in the results - has it never dawned on you that there are audio tweaks which use equipment designed to eliminate vibration from some, scientific, procedure.

 

 

Which is always the Get Of Jail Free card. There have been a number of these done over the year, by individuals, which are then either blown over by the windmilling arms of those who demand that those outcomes must be refuted, or, completely ignored. A combination of these methods gets the job done, of burying that which is too uncomfortable ... .

If you can't measure it, is it really there? It is obvious you believe it to be, but measurements say otherwise.

 

Also, music is not something special. I have worked with digital data since 1984. Yes. That long. I worked on one of the very first computer controlled HPLC's. So, don't tell me about noise. My last GC-MS had larger magnets than even large speaker electromagnets (like the ones in Focal large speakers). If the noise was bad, one could not detect below PPM levels. If there was as much noise, as you say, the data would be corrupt and that doesn't happen.

 

As I said, you believe there is noise so you hear it. Our brains are amazing that way.

 

Sorry Frank, you are just an audiophile that believes snake oil salesmen

 

[botrytis]

20 minutes ago, fas42 said:

See what I mean, ...

You don't see. The old phrase you can take a horse to water but you can't make them drink.

 

As I said, nothing you talk about, with electrical noise makes absolutely no sense, both engineering-wise and based on physics, and I have pretty decent hearing for a 61 year old gent. But, I also base things on listening to how people describe their equipment. Using flowery words, means more subjective which is hard to prove one way or another. That usually is a flag, not always. I also listen with an objective ear.

 

 

[botrytis]

To @fas42 - I will give an example of hearing hallucinations (which are actually fairly common) is tinnitus. It is the nerves over-acting, etc. but it also an auditory hallucination. There are many more.

 

Here is an article on just BIAS...

 

Scientist deal with bias in research all the time, and that is why experiments and papers go through a review process to make sure there is very little bias in the data and the discussion/conclusions from it. One such classic bias science paper was the 1980's British paper on how vaccines cause autism - they don't but it took years to prove the researcher that published this paper had taken money to prove this point. He was put in jail.

 

 

 

 

635.full.pdf

[botrytis]

On 3/4/2022 at 2:50 PM, fas42 said:

 

You see, the problem is that you use BIAS as the catchall for everything you don't have a ready answer for - hence, a Get Out Of Jail Free card. This will get you somewhere, but soon enough the elastic is stretched too far - and it breaks.

 

I could use the exactly the same talk that you do, with respect to the silliness about speakers. The amount of nonsense about the characteristics of speakers, and how they so vitally shape what you hear, to me is mindbogglingly stupid - anyone who is obsessed what needing exactly the Right Speaker is so far from understanding what is really going on - they are, On The Road To Nowhere ...

That IS the point, Frank. You have already made up your mind and everything stems from that. It is bias, callnit what you will but that is essentially what it is.

[botrytis]

3 hours ago, gfroman said:

I know this may make some of your heads explode.....

(1) SR Master on the EMM Labs DV2 and (1) SR Master on the Aurender N30 music server.

Also, (2) SR Purple fuses in my REL212SE subwoofers.

While I had the components open, I also added a little Mad Scientist Graphene on some of the contacts, including the fuses.

Right when I powered the system up, no bass at all, kinda weird?
I had to check if the subs were functioning.
Only took about a day for things to shape up.
Supposed to take about 300 hours to burn in, but I like the improvement in sound so far.
Hard to describe, but it just sounds more relaxed and the music seems to flow effortlessly with improved imaging.
Haven't had time to sit and listen for an extended amount of time yet.
I am willing to pay the cost for the improvement, which hopefully only gets better in time!

Thanks.

 

 

 

 

LOL - 300 hour burn-in what an absolute joke. Your ears are breaking in not the electronics.

[botrytis]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

 

Nothing strange about what is going on ... contact noise, the electrical misbehaviour when two metal surfaces are just pressed together to make a connection, without any attempt to stabilise the environment, by say soldering the joint, has been the nemesis of best SQ in audio since forever. Contact enhancers of all sorts can and have been used - depending upon the materials used, and how they age, say solvents that evaporate, the spectrum of contact noise will vary over time - for better, or worse! Which you will hear, depending upon everything ...

 

"More relaxed", "flow effortlessly", "improved imaging" are markers for less contact noise degrading what you hear - what unfortunately can happen is that these enhancers lose effectiveness over a period of time; which means, either periodically redo them, or use something better to do the job.

 

 

Frank you are so full of it.

[botrytis]

Of course, Frank, you would disagree. It is your arrogant attitude that causes this. You don't listen to science or any reasonable explanation. Read (listening - which my wife points out I can improve also) and understand is key - also you MAY BE WRONG. But that doesn't stop your religious audiophile reaction.

 

A good scientist understands that information improves and may change over time. One doesn't double down on the nonsense; they accept the factual data and move on. YOU DO NOT.

[botrytis]

On 7/26/2023 at 1:41 AM, bambadoo said:

Science? What science is behind these fuses? Where is the spec sheet?

 

Exactly what I am saying. People believe these can change sound, they believe it so they hear it. Our brains do all types of things like that.

 

I am on your side in this.