Synergistic Research SR Orange Fuse snake oil ?

1 hour ago, pkane2001 said:

Just in case you're in need and Orange Fuse is not handy, here are some other options (with variable sound qualities):

 

2000A for the wrench is about right (although a little too slow to be useful)

32 minutes ago, ray-dude said:

 

 

 

2000A for the wrench is about right (although a little too slow to be useful)

That's awesome! But, nothing beats a bullet in place of a fuse when it comes to the sharpness of transients ;)

Remove the original fuse.

Deoxit the contacts and the fuse.

Replace the original fuse with a cloth to avoid skin acids.

Done. 
 

I’m critical of Synergistic fuses since they do not publish the fuse curves. It’s then not possible to select the fuse for the application.

Standard fuses from various manufacturers offer curves that show melting times and let through current that are often designed to an international standard, eg BS-88. 
 

There’s a difference of let through from manufacturer to manufacturer and without this data, the Synergistic offering is essentially worthless. 
 

Not good enough to offer a rating and be done with it, like power ratings of amplifiers, 100W means nothing if the distortion levels are not mentioned.

Synergistic offer no standards compliance, voltage ratings, fault withstand, I2T, pre-arcing data whatsoever. As a safety device this is essential!! 
 

Steer clear of this shite and spend it on music. Far more rewarding.

Firstly, let me state that I'm a fuse-believer, and the SR Orange is the end-game fuse for me. I love its sound and I hate its (probably) high mark up price.

But more objectively, I'd like to explore the reason why most audiophile fuses do not have any safety certification. I think this is because:

1. No audiophile company has the resources to manufacture fuses with multiple ratings and sizes, which need to go through an expensive certification process.

2. So each company tries out several stock fuses to find the one that sounds best. SR uses a German stock fuse manufacturer.

3. Then they add some secret sauce to the stock fuse - it may take several tries to find which secret sauce sounds best.

4. They then instruct the stock fuse manufacturer to produce the fuse to an upgraded specification, e.g. different ceramic body (for vibration control) or better end caps. The fuse wire itself is almost certainly unchanged because it has strict manufacturing tolerances. Part of the new spec is the Audiophile company's logo printed on the barrel.

5. Some leave it there. Others take it further in their own factory by, say, zapping with millions of volts and literally coating the fuse with a secret sauce like UEF. Two frequent objectives are to reduce vibration and noise.

6. So, AMR is one of the lowest-priced audiophile fuses. All they've done is gold-plated the end caps of the best sock fuse they could find. This doesn't affect the electrical properties of the fuse wire, so AMR fuses are one of the few that do have safety certification.

7. Another company inserts beeswax into the stock fuse (for vibration control). But this most likely impacts the heat characteristics of the fuse wire, so the original safety certification is effectively invalidated.

8. SR adds all sorts of voodoo which would also invalidates the certification. The original fuse wire rating is probably still ok, but they don't have the resources or inclination to go through a full re-certification process to prove it.

So there we have audiophile fuses that are probably ok, but no one can be totally sure, other than most people's experiences suggest that these fuses are more likely to blow quicker than stock - which is good for safety, but bad for your wallet.

OK, so there's a fair bit of speculation in the above, but I don't thinks it's completely baseless.

This thread is in the objective area of AS, so a question: does anyone have some measurements showing distortion levels due to Orange or other audiophile fuses (or any other fuses for that matter)? I tried a quick search, but except for a few mentions of fuses and distortion, didn't find actual measurements.

My assumption is that an undersized fuse is more likely to cause problems, as it will be operating at or near melting point and can therefore have significant temperature swings as current demands change. That can change resistance dynamically, and this can cause distortion, at least at the power supply level where the fuse is in the direct line. With some assumptions, such distortion could potentially make it to the output.  Either way, this should be measurable.

So, any measurements showing the distortion due to fuse at the power supply, and at the output of the audio device that you can share? 

Interesting thread. I have this orange SR fuse in a FARAD linear power supply.
I bought it because it is recommended by FARAD directly on the site because it improves the SQ.

Is it snake oil? I do not know . I do not have the competence to really measure what it brings. My SR is in the process of burn in. For the moment no wow effect but if the experience of people helps to say that it brings an SQ. I trust them and the forums.

When it comes to measurements, hardly anyone is measuring things and we have to trust the manufacturers. Ditto with clocks that grow all over the place for the sole purpose of getting audiophiles to buy. AfterDark, for example, is surfing the demand for clocks and yet it is not clear in its offer. The products have no name except on a piece of paper and impossible to verify. Really buy the clock with the measurements indicated on a piece of paper. I do not know since it is impossible to verify ...

I have an audio Uptone JS2 too, but I don't want to change the fuse because Uptone does not recommend tweaking the JS2.

I added an SR Orange Fuse to the mains plug for my Stax 700s Energiser last Thursday.  I've never purchased an audiophile fuse over £25 before.  The immediate impact to the soundstage and placement of instruments was obvious.  It presented an almost holographic 3D image.  The overall impact was one that I wanted to keep.

Unfortunately, since my initial observation the sound has changed almost daily, initially losing bass and treble and soundstage (which has now returned to a certain extent - especially tonight). 

Based on others burn in experiences I am hopeful that things will return to something similar to my initial experience.  If that was to happen and be consistent I would consider the SR Orange to be one of the best value upgrades (price to positive impact) I have purchased.

Ade

For reference my system is

Innuos MK3 Mini & Innuos Linear PSU

Chord Mscaler & Sbooster PSU

Chord Hugo 2 (awaiting Paul Hynes SR4T PSU)

Stax 700s Energiser

Stax L700 Earspeakers

All power cables are good quality Kimber Cable based Russ Andrews.  Storm Wave BNC to Hugo 2, Toslink from Innuos to Mscaler.

3 hours ago, Apmusson said:

I've no idea how it works or why it changes.  I can't justify any of it. 

 

I do know that if I don't like it I will remove it.  I'd love to know what it is doing.

This has been my understanding and experience in general with Synergistic Research products. Lengthy discussion below, but the tl;dr version is that you might conclude the SR fuse, like some other SR equipment I have used, is a *change* but not really an *improvement* you want in the long term (and as usual, YMMV).

A basic premise here is that SR has a house sound, or impact on sound, that it tries to achieve with many of its products (not all of them). I think from my own experience and reading that of others who have heard or owned SR soundstage enhancers that the word "holographic" used above is a good description of the house sound SR wants to create.

I have an SR orange fuse that was installed by the manufacturer in the Sonore power supply for my opticalRendu, so I can't truly evaluate its impact (because I can't remove/replace/compare to another fuse for that device).However, I don't think that its presence in the power supply of the oR is having any effect on the soundstage, at least nothing like what I am about to describe. Put an SR orange fuse in another piece of equipment elsewhere in the chain, and it well could have this effect.

In addition to my passive ownership/use of the orange fuse noted above, I also have used an SR soundstage enhancing gizmo called a Tranquility Pod, that for reasons I can't explain or understand *did* have a "holographic" effect on the soundstage.

Another way of describing it would be to say it pushed the sound stage forward and upward, like the soundstage was contained in a balloon, and the SR device added air to further inflate the balloon.
 

Interestingly, when I first used the SR gizmo, it had exactly the opposite effect, collapsing the soundstage as if the air had been let out of the balloon. The sales person told me to reverse the polarity of the AC plug (unplug it, rotate it 180 degrees and plug it back in the other way), and that is when the soundstage expansion effect truly kicked in. This experience was all the proof I needed that the Tranquility Pod did *something* identifiable and repeatable (otherwise unwittingly plugging it in wrong wouldn't have had a noticeably deleterious effect, one I did not anticipate nor could have, as nobody warned me about it).* 

Anyway, that SR product continued to have its holographic, balloon-inflating effect on my system's soundstage for as long as I continued using it. Eventually however I tired of the effect, or at least thought I might be tiring of it, and so experimented by taking it out of the system and returning it on alternate days for a week or so. At the end of the period of experimentation, I concluded that I didn't prefer the SR's impact on the soundstage and found it somewhat distracting and artificial sounding, if also seductive. The enveloping nature of the expanded soundstage was an initially pleasant sensation that eventually lost its novelty and came to seem like a *change* but not an *improvement* and so  out it went.**

* SR is known as a marketer of "woo" who are truly opaque in how they discuss the designs and internal workings of their products, which makes buying them an act of faith and *using them* sometimes a guessing game. Maybe they are protecting trade secrets, and I can't complain about that. But they really don't provide adequate product documentation or user manuals, up to and including the obvious benefit of simply indicating which way to plug in an AC transformer with an arrow on the plug, or a picture in the manual. (This is an unpolarized US 120V AC plug, which can go into an outlet with the blades in either of two 180-degree rotational positions.)

** The SR Tranquillity Pod now resides on a shelf in my listening room 12 feet from my stereo, where unplugged from AC in any polarity it is silently having  no discernible effect on the soundstage. Make me an offer.