Synergistic Research SR Orange Fuse snake oil ?

[fas42]

The problem with a fuse is that it relies on a poor quality metal to metal contact, either end, which will develop contact noise - gunk builds up, and a slight rectifying electrical characteristic become part of its behaviour ... it's just another, weakest link in the chain, issue.

 

I started soldering in fuses decades ago - and found that silver paste treatments also do a good job.

[fas42]

You need to turn the question on its head ... what is the engineering issue in the equipment that changing the fuse makes a difference? The fancy fuses you can buy are just rubber band fixes for flaws in the equipment - if the latter were made better, then any old fuse that met the specs for what a fuse should do, would be fine ...

[fas42]

IME, it's all about the poor metal to metal contact of where the fuse is clipped in, as mentioned in an earlier post - if you want to eliminate that weakness, and still keep the fuse functionality, then one get fuses with solderable leads. Or, if deft with the iron, add leads to a non-leaded fuse, or otherwise solder in place - there is stuff online detailing how people do this ...

[fas42]

1 hour ago, 57gold said:

 

Finally, will share an observation that one of the local electronics gurus who worked with audio and instrument related electronics proposed, resonances in his view impacted electronic circuits significantly in a way similar to musical instruments.  Damping them, tuning them or otherwise managing them in a sympathetic ways would increase musicality.  He created tunable power and audio cables and other implements to tune musical instrument resonances. Believe he was onto something (he was well beyond feet for components) that might explain why some of these "tweaks" can have positive impacts.  

 

Me, I'm done with tweaks.  Gonna go play some guitar.

 

Yes. Parasitic behaviours of electronic parts create a cacophony of audible 'distortions' which can easily be heard if a setup is 'transparent' enough - which can send one into a tweaking frenzy as bad as any "tube roller" would succumb to, 😁.

 

The real trick is knowing when one is getting closer to making a rig subjectively transparent, versus merely smearing various types of makeup on - the latter can be fun, and exciting; but ultimately is just running in circles, when the real pleasures lie in hearing the unvarnished content of the recordings, in as pure a form as possible ...

[fas42]

Where changing a fuse may change the sound, but not actually tell you the full story, is that removing and inserting the parts is refreshing the metal to metal contacts on the ends - contact noise may in fact be the main factor in the situation. To get around this to some degree, do some experiments where the fuse is swapped for a week without touching it, then swap back to the former for a another week; back and forth a couple of times - if there is a pattern, then this should reveal it.

[fas42]

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.

 

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 .

[fas42]

29 minutes ago, botrytis said:

 

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 .

 

 

Inside the "audiophile fuse"? What if the actual fusible link is surrounded by materials which have various electrical behaviours, say, at RF frequencies?

 

There is no magic. But there are a whole swath of parasitic behaviours which are usually not accounted for; IME, once a system gets to a certain level of resolution it becomes trivially easy to hear how the slightest misadjustment, somewhere, impacts the SQ ...

[fas42]

2 hours ago, Archimago said:

 

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?

 

 

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.

[fas42]

3 hours ago, botrytis said:

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!

 

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 ...

[fas42]

8 hours ago, botrytis said:

 

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

 

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 ...

 

8 hours ago, botrytis said:

 

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.

 

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.

 

8 hours ago, botrytis said:

 

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. 

 

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 ...

 

8 hours ago, botrytis said:

 

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.

 

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.

 

8 hours ago, botrytis said:

 

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.

 

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 ... .

[fas42]

6 hours ago, dericchan1 said:

Synergistic Research - are they the same company that makes $399 cable lifters that's not made of gold and all it does apparently is to lift up your cables? (I have been using my kid's mega blocks to do exactly that). I thought I read a review somewhere the reviewer claimed it provided Night and Day improvement to his system he would not remove from his system

 

The cable lifting tweak is merely a means of reducing vibration, or static noise generation, which impacts sub-optimal audio gear. Unfortunately, nearly everything you buy fits into that category. Do the tweaking on the cheap, by using everyday household materials, to get the same result.

[fas42]

1 hour ago, botrytis said:

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

 

See, you've just admitted that you are part of "if no-one measures it, then it doesn't exist" universe - this can be also phrased, "the anomaly has to come to me, rather than that I have to find the anomaly" - if what you measure doesn't show anything, then everything's OK, in your world ...

 

1 hour ago, botrytis said:

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.

 

We're talking analogue, not digital. And what the noise does is create 'digititus' - via the magic of We Have To Find The Problem thinking, jitter was brought forth as the villain. And now no matter what the actual real cause for subpar SQ is, "jitter" is the evil that lurks within,  ... ummm, no ...

 

1 hour ago, botrytis said:

 

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

 

 

You're trying desperately to put me in a box, aren't you? Which will make those slight seeds of doubt lurking in the back of your mind vanish, hmmm. The sad outcome of all this is that the audio world grinds on, producing gear which outputs substandard SQ, and the rest of the world couldn't give a f#*k about audiophile nonsense, because it's a terrible ROI.

[fas42]

1 hour ago, dericchan1 said:

I get that cable lifting is meant for lifting the cable up especially if you have a thick carpet floor. What I don't understand is how a SR cable lifter is 100 times more expensive to make than anything that otherwise does the same thing - lift the cables up, AND how does these SR cable lifter making NIGHT and DAY improvements over using something else to lift up the cables, as suggested by the reviewer

 

Because much of the first world believes in the glory of money ... as in, it is scientifically impossible for something that costs 100 times as much to not be superior in All The Important Ways - you know, the same reason why people buy Porsches, .

 

People need to believe in fancy toys, and that sums it up pretty well, .

[fas42]

1 hour ago, dericchan1 said:

I can appreciate there can be electrical noise induced in the audio chain, or audio devices but it makes no sense to me how a fuse can actually address electrical noise. 

 

As said before, exactly how materials are used in the fuse can make the difference. In a world where Bigness is everything, it doesn't make sense for many that the tinier something is, the more effective it can be. Well, in the world of very high frequency electrical signals, the tiniest is king.

[fas42]

Overall, the general failure of audio systems to deliver competent SQ has been the result of poor quality investigation of all the factors that can matter. This remains to this day, and the comments and reactions here indicate that this will continue, indefinitely.

[fas42]

See what I mean, ...

[fas42]

The world of cars demonstrates the price craziness, quite clearly .. if you have a prestige vehicle, and some tiny, inconsequential part of the trim, say, breaks, to replace it will cost a ridiculous amount of money. The size, importance and true value of the part is irrelevant - that you trying to 'improve' a costly item is the key, and means that people will pay commensurate amounts of money, to achieve such.

[fas42]

1 minute ago, dericchan1 said:

I don’t believe anyone here know what you mean!!

 That @pkane2001 considered the previous post 'funny'; precisely confirming my point, in that post.

[fas42]

9 minutes ago, botrytis said:

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.

 

 

 

( Sigh ... )

 

Let's start at the beginning, a very good place to ...

 

Thought experiment: on the other side of your listening room, in a soundproof room, you have a heavy duty arc welder; plugged into a socket back to back on the circuit, and socket, used by your audio gear. Are you 100% convinced that absolutely no-one will know when the arc welder is operating, while your system is working, by the quality of the sounds coming from the speakers ... yes or no?

[fas42]

4 hours ago, botrytis said:

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 91.68 kB · 2 downloads

 

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 ...

[fas42]

20 minutes ago, botrytis said:

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.

 

Umm, in the sense you speak of it, just about everything in life is based on, er, bias. I'm biased to believe that when I get out of bed in the morning that my legs will work, and that I can walk in the kitchen to start breakfast - now, if I have an excellent hypnotist came in just before I go to bed, and plant a powerful belief in me that my legs are useless, then there is every chance that when I wake up, I will fail to reach my morning feed ... .

 

How we live our lives is based on reinforcement, and repetition - science and textbook learning is a mere accessory to that; if the latter fails to explain something that the former keeps strengthening, then it's dead meat. In the lovely world of academia one can dream one's dreams, but unless what you experience in the real world is in agreement with those thoughts, then they are worthless ...

[fas42]

24 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

I don't recall cave men discussing theory of relativity or using smart phones to browse the internet, so maybe not everything is based on repetition. Some centuries ago we discovered some neat new tools to help avoid going in circles (you know, things like science, measurements, objective facts, scientific process). Some prefer to keep going in circles to this day, though.

 

It's a balance ... science, investigation determines the causes, and deeper nature of things - and those explanation have to be in accord with what actually is out there, in terms of what our senses tell us. There's always been 'science', so to speak - primitive man worked out which timber burnt the best, to keep him warm; just because he didn't have textbooks didn't mean he didn't evolve in understanding how the world worked .

 

People go in circles when they know that what they are using isn't good enough, isn't as good as what they've experienced at some other time - if the supposed clued up people can't give them satisfactory answers to resolve things, then, yes, lots of wasted movement will happen, .

[fas42]

9 hours ago, gfroman said:

...

 

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.

 

9 hours ago, gfroman said:

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.
 

 

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.

 

 

[fas42]

Not arrogance ... experience. I discovered 35 years ago that the quality of the typical audio connection makes a difference, having never ever heard of such a factor, before that time - from any audiophile publication, etc. And this has been confirmed over and over again, over the years, in all the systems I've dealt with. So, it's part of my tool kit, and always will be ... of course, some people will always run to the Big Expert in the room and say, "Pretty please sir, what do you think ...?!" ... but that's not my way ...

 

I've said a number of times, that I can't bear listening to a rig that has obvious connection quality issues for any length of time; it has a very distinctive distortion signature which just grates, and once recognised you hear it in every track played.