Synergistic Research Fuses vs cheaper ceramic fuses

This is not the case this guy is wrong.

The usual suspects are going to tell you that fuses don’t make a difference. The more resolving your system is the more you will notice the positive difference they make. I wish it wasn’t true as it would save me some coin but the Synergistic Research orange fuses are their best yet. 

It's easy to buy some cheap ceramic fuses from Amazon and find out for sure.

Try this. Wrap the glass part of the fuse with a few turns of PTFE (or masking) tape not touching the end-caps.

I have been using Teflon plumbing tape on the stock fuse of my PS Audio P5 and first impression it has changed things but I haven’t removed the tape as I’m wanting to spend more time first. I have SR fuses on the rest of my gear (except amp as it does not have a fuse but a circuit breaker) and I am one that does prefer them… only have the stock fuse for the P5 so can’t compare to a SR fuse but am hopeful the Teflon does make an improvement. It would make sense it could change things as Teflon is a insulator and does block EM/RFI and also dampening the glass tube could help. Pretty sure PTFE/Teflon tape does not have continuity so ok if it does come into contact with both ends but don’t get carried away as they need to be exposed to complete the circuit.

Don’t doubt masking tape could change things but only because of dampening but doubt it would help as an insulator plus masking tape is going to stick and can’t take much heat where Teflon can.

Would like to experiment with a cheap Bussman glass fuse that has been Cryoed but not sure the glass can sustain the process so maybe has to be a ceramic type fuse, then wrap that with Teflon tape. Above my pay scale so curious what some EE’s think.

omg you are opening up pandoras box.  Please read the myriad of forums on this topic.  It will keep you busy and confused for weeks.  BTW, I have the orange along with the orange duplex and I think they matter.  

They totally matter. Obviously. 

The thing about the interzones, everything is already here. When I hear about something new and interesting the interzones make it easy to search out all the info and usually in a heartbeat. 

When I heard about fuses that is what I did. Within an hour I had learned so much it was a no-brainer to get some and try. Never once came on here asking anyone anything about it. Why? All those questions have already been answered. 

Like, adg101 is unsure if glass can "sustain the process" of cryo. But there are countless on-line sources that make it clear you can cryo just about anything. I had tubes and all my wire and even a whole CDP cryo'd. Cryo is baby steps compared to the stuff Ted is doing with his fuses. Teflon tape is stone age. This is like 30 years ago putting the CDP on a phone book. This is like, "I wonder if my speakers would sound better pointed towards me?"    

Imagine if, instead of asking what-if to whatever few people happen to be on one little forum at one point in time, imagine if they used their keyboard instead to look and find the answers from everyone across all time. Then they could go and do, and in the process figure out their own way of doing it even a little bit better, and come back and tell us all about that.   

Imagine that. 

Thanks for the input. Let me say this. In response to people telling me to research the web, I have.  

2 things:
1. 99.9% of the Youtube videos related anything to SR are actually SR sponsored videos.  It's very hard to find and independent youtuber making videos about SR products.  

2. My question here isn't really whether SR fuses make a difference, it's are they better than cheaper ones from Amazon? Are SR REALLY better or different. I haven't found much at all on that.  

So I certainly have done some homework and found most threads turn into bickering back and forth making research a waste of time.

I tried $40 Furutech rhodium fuses. They definitely make a difference. Up to you if you like the sound. I should have tried the nickle or gold versions.

I can't bring myself to pay SR prices I'm afraid and I've spent $425 on an idler wheel. I've little doubt they're a good upgrade but that price... for a fuse?

@noromance  Yeah, I haven't really heard anyone talk about what's so different about them to justify the price. People say they sound better, but what's the difference in build?  Are they using different insides? 

I saw one video where someone took off the orange/white paper and discovered it's just another ceramic fuse.  Not sure how real that vid was but it's worth thinking about.

Are SR fuses just repackaged .50 cent fuses?

@ebm 
This is not the case this guy is wrong.

How do you know?

In the scheme of things in the Audiophile world  $159 for a sonic improvement to your system is reasonable. Remember that Synergistic Research has a satisfaction guarantee. Why would they do that if they don’t work?

hilde45 - @ebm has an amazing gift.  He knows what other people will hear in their systems before they hear it.

My question here isn't really whether SR fuses make a difference, it's are they better than cheaper ones from Amazon? Are SR REALLY better or different. I haven't found much at all on that. 

So I certainly have done some homework and found most threads turn into bickering back and forth making research a waste of time.

Very hard to teach fundamental reasoning skills so this will probably be a waste of time but someone somewhere might get something out of it. So here goes. 

It helps first to know what the heck you are talking about, and to have a goal. Are you talking about sound quality? Or construction? Is your goal sound quality? Or something else? Really no point in your doing any research until you are able to answer these two questions. Which on the evidence so far, doesn't look like you can. 

For the sake of the argument we will assume you give up on your construction nonsense and come down on the side of looking for sound quality. Okay. No contest. There is no argument. SR are superior. By far. 

The only argument you will find is from people like yourself questioning how and why. These kinds of things almost always come from people with no actual experience. Whereas virtually all the people who actually bother to listen wind up gushing amazing compliments and describing how much more clarity, dynamics and detail they are hearing, how much more real and palpable the image is, and so on. The reviews are all over the place. Reviews from people who actually paid money and bought the stuff and heard it.  

People who have not done this, what they have to say is worth precisely zero. Absolutely zero. 

Next point, why you are mistaken to be concerned with construction. The fundamental problem with high end audio is that everything, all the best stuff anyway, is being done at the sharp end of the spear, pushing the envelope, where things are not yet very well understood. Like Yeager trying to break the sound barrier. Now we do it every day. Back then they thought it was an actual physical barrier. Planes broke up. Pilots died. Pushing the envelope. 

Now there are fundamentally two different ways we can push the envelope. A good example of one is Wilson Audio, making behemoth insanely expensive speakers that really do nothing new at all, just with better more esoteric materials. A good example of another completely opposite approach is Tekton Design. Eric Alexander uses exceptionally ordinary MDF boxes, ordinary off the shelf drivers, and minimalist crossovers. But he uses them in a technologically unique way that allows 14 little tweeters to deliver the sound of one 9" midrange.  

Don't mean to be pedantic, but what this means is you can look at Tekton the way you look at a fuse and completely miss the big picture. You cannot judge a Moab by the ordinary drivers any more than you can judge the Orange Fuse by it looking like a Buss.     

Synergistic uses a Tesla coil to permanently re-orient the wire. They apply some treatment as well. Plus probably some other cool stuff Ted won't tell me about. What he did tell me, they have done the Tesla thing so much they have figured out different methods that produce different results.  

Should go without saying you can look at that fuse all day, take one apart, dissect the bejeesus out of it and never see any of this. So all your talk about construction is a total waste of time. 

Buckminster Fuller predicted this 50 years ago by the way. He called it the ephemeralization of technology. The technology becomes so advanced it is ephemeral, intangible, nothing you can see, touch, smell, etc. Safe to say I think when you are rearranging quantum levels of atoms in wire you have reached ephemeralization. 

Hopefully this explains why it matters precisely zero what anyone who has not listened has to say. Why you need to stop questioning and get up and go try and hear for yourself. Go and listen. You will see. 

If you care about sound quality, that is. Do you? 

Very hard to teach fundamental reasoning skills so this will probably be a waste of time but someone somewhere might get something out of it. So here goes.

Always dignifying the learner, eh?

@millercarbon, I respect you, your opinions, and your experience, but I have to say, I am typing this with my middle fingers right now.  

Yes better sound quality is always the goal.  How much should I study before I come here and ask a question and seek advice and direction from those older, wiser, and more experienced than I?  

I've done enough research to raise my eyebrows and ask questions. I didn't go back and obtain a post-graduate degree in the field though I have to admit. 

These kinds of tweaks, $150 fuses that MANY claim are bs, and a company that puts out some highly suspect youtube reviews/demos all with their own experts in the room are highly suspect - and worthy of asking questions and poking with skepticism.  I want to see independent third party audiophiles make videos about this.  It's more enlightening to me than reading forums where everyone demeans one another and the question gets lost in the bxtching (as has happened here).

You are right, I should try them myself, but before I order $500 worth of fuses, I'd just like to know if any one has tried other cheaper fuses and seen the same or similar improvements.   

These threads always go awry.  So to bring it back to the original question.  Has anyone tried other fuses besides $100-150 SR blue or orange?  Inferior results? 

I tried a SR red fuse that was given to me to try in my Audio Research preamp. That was the color of the day back then a few years back. Little if any difference. I put the stock fuse from ARC back in and the red fuse has been sitting idle since. 

Let me try again. The following is from the Synergistic Research Orange Fuse page:

Sold with a no-risk 30-day money back guarantee. $159.95 in all sizes

Orange Fuse - Synergistic Research

Talk to someone at SR to make sure that you’re getting the right fuse and that you can return it if you are not satisfied. Ask any questions you have about the fuse blowing immediately or anything else on your mind. Pay for it with Paypal or a credit card.

When it arrives test it against your stock fuses or some cheap ones from Amazon for 28 days. If you think the improvement is worth the money, keep the SR Orange. If not, return it for a refund. This is the only way to be sure what works for you. No amount of research can do that.

Very hard to teach fundamental reasoning skills so this will probably be a waste of time but someone somewhere might get something out of it.

So as you can see my post wasn't really even intended for you, and I hardly needed you to prove me right. All the same, thanks.

Buckminster Fuller believed that technological advancement would one day allow humans to do “more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing.”

Seems SR has succeeded in reaching the endpoint!

I think I'll just buy them and try them when my woofers come back from Millersound.  Heck I made that much in dogecoin today so might as well try it out.

I gotta agree with millercarbon on this one. I compared glass to ceramic fuses 15+ years ago and spilled ink on it in a audio forum then. The amount of information out there on this subject is vast and in that time, fuse technology has advanced leaps and bounds. 

Why anyone would not take advantage of the SR 30 day money back guarantee is beyond baffling. For a budding audiophile, it would be child's play to procure a glass fuse, a ceramic fuse and a SR fuse and do a comparison to make an informed decision for themselves instead of relying on the cacophony of responses on a chat room. 

Unfortunately, there are both extremes that crawl out from underneath the rocks when fuses are discussed.

Far too much arrogance and condescending language being thrown about sadly. 
Pretty straight forward. 
Buy them, try them. Like them, keep them. Otherwise, send them back.

And not a peep yet from that caped crusader with an unhealthy obsession with fuses. I‘m amazed..........

You can semi cryo fuses, cds, cables... by introducing them first from your refrigerator then into the freezer, then back to the refrigerator. Do a search for the technique

hth

Synergistic Research is a con...  plain and simple.
These are just commercial fuses with fancy labeling and a bunch of pseudoscience mumbo-jumbo made up to shucker you in.

Con men prey on our "expectation bias" with their pitch.  If anyone paid that kind of price for a fuse I'm sure they would think it sounds better... Just ask any psychologist. We are all susceptible to this.

+1 nmmusicman

As a result of this post I ordered a couple Littelfuse 285 series, their orange ceramic with gold caps. One for my PrimaLuna and 1 for my Innuos Zen mkIII. Hey, its $20, what can it hurt to try. I'll let you know what I hear. 

If an expensive fuse did nothing at all, most would keep it because it MIGHT be making a difference, the purchaser is past the angst of payment, and it still feels like a caring investment in the quality of the system they care about.  Since any returned fuses can be resold as new, the money back guarantee is a great marketing ploy.  But at these markups, no financial need to  resell them.

Its funny how nobody talks about the fact that system upgrades are all relative.

Replacing a fuse in a garbage amplifier made of 6 wires and radio shack components will do little. But removing a radio shack fuse made of junk metal in a $40k Kondo amp will free an incredibly weak link in an otherwise transparent system. Its like washing a filty dirty window in a Ferrari will cut your lap times in half because now you can confidently drive extremely fast, while the guy in a broken down wishy washy honda says "What kind of person claims that cleaning their window makes them cut their lap times in half?" because no matter how hard he drives, the car will only go 1 second faster to begin with. 

This goes for differences in system noise, poor power, etc. 

When people come here and speak with such objective certainty about components...makes me wonder.

Experiencers and Negativists. Two camps. I suspect the first camp have better sounding systems. Why? Because they’re willing to simply TRY. Because they’re willing to experiment...
That’s the only way to know for sure. It’s obvious by these posts who is who and the paradigm they exist within. 
Have I tried SR fuses...Yes. Make a difference? Enough of a difference to prove me wrong about what a fuse can do in hi-end audio components. I was as suspect as the next guy but I was willing to try. Glad I did. 

Experiencers and Negativists. Two camps. I suspect the first camp have better sounding systems.

How right you are. You have no idea. Come check it out some time. Freaking insane what can be achieved when you are willing to try. Especially if you are clever about what you try, and persistent. Absolutely freaking insane.

"The only argument you will find is from people like yourself questioning how and why. These kinds of things almost always come from people with no actual experience. Whereas virtually all the people who actually bother to listen wind up gushing amazing compliments and describing how much more clarity, dynamics and detail they are hearing, how much more real and palpable the image is, and so on. The reviews are all over the place. Reviews from people who actually paid money and bought the stuff and heard it.

People who have not done this, what they have to say is worth precisely zero. Absolutely zero."

Do you mean like when you mock and belittle Machina Dynamica products even though you have never used, heard, or have any experience whatsoever with said products?
Do you mean like that?