The comments are more entertaining than the video.

Putting aside the possibility of audible improvement through the use of a fuse and SR's marketing tactics, it's worth repeating that the reviewer didn't even get the actual reason for fuses in consumer electronics correct. Fuses aren't going to protect your equipment from under-voltage or over-voltage due to AC supply issues (like the power outages in NY he mentions). There are other devices (transient voltage suppressors) and external solutions (power conditioners/UPS) for these issues. The fuse is there only to melt and break the circuit when there is an over-current condition typically caused by a failure in the device itself. So, when your amp fails with an internal short it doesn't draw excessive current, heat up, and start a fire... Maybe you should review if the fuses do their actual job as well as the fuses that come in the device from the manufacturer (the fuses that were in place when the device was most likely UL certified). Maybe conduct a test to see if they blow at the rated current? It seems that "do no harm" should apply to what should be a safety component first and foremost. I expect that they will, for probably obvious reasons, but, interestingly, there is zero discussion on the SR website or in this review about the performance of these fuses as safety devices.

I like how Ted can't even get the SR sticker to stay adhered to the 10 cent fuses the video shows over and over.

He even talks about burning in the fuses. Batshit.

I'll keep my own opinions on this to myself, but here's an indisputable fact: A typical consumer fuse is nothing but a 1-2" long conductor; a piece of thin, low-melting-point metal. It has very, very low resistance (because it's just a short piece of metal,) and it has very, very low impedance (having almost no inductance or capacitance, because it's so small.) It's wired in series with other conducting paths in the product and it breaks the flow of current, when that current exceeds its rated capacity. It's extremely likely, that the conductors/wiring a fuse is in series with are lengthier than 1-2", and that they have much greater (although still minimal) impact on performance than the fuse can have. That's it. In normal operation, a fuse's sole purpose is to conduct current without impeding the flow of current, just like the short piece of wire it is. As others have said, a fuse has no capability to compensate for power-line sags or bumps. Further, fuses are normally used in power-supply stages. Many times, immediately after the power cable itself. It's almost universal that various stages of filtering occur after a fuse, further damping any possible effect it might have by not acting like a simple stub of wire. Given that, and without any objective evidence to show real performance differences, we'll all have to make up our own minds on the value of replacing one almost-free piece of 1-2" metal with another that costs hundreds of bucks.

I'm truly astonished that someone is marketing this stuff. I bought one of these 15 or so years ago when they were maybe 50 or 75 bucks. My amp was blowing fuses, so I bought a replacement but did a comparison, as calmly and in as reasonable a way as I could, and I really heard no difference between a .50 fuse and the $50 dollar one I was using. I spoke to an electrical engineer about the whole concept of high end fuses and he just laughed. Of all the preposterous claims in the audiophile world, he said, that topped the list.

This is all plausible when you don't know how anything works.

Did these fuses cause the audio of this KZfaq video to present as a brick wall low pass filter at 8kHz?

Why don't these fuse reviews include a silver plated copper slug as a control ? I understand that this defeats the purpose of the fuse but having a control in an experiment is important.

Some people clearly don’t feel shame, huh?

“ there appears to be more meat on the bone” I’m sure after you empty out your wallet and then there’s less meat on your bones

As an electrical engineer I find it impossible to take this seriously. We have knowledge gained through our education to analyze and understand how electrical networks behave with great accuracy. We also know that any audible differences are invariably the result in changes in frequency response of the overall system. What each component including wires and fuses do in a particular circuit depends not only on the device itself but on the impedances of all elements in each circuit including the impedance of the source nd load. The most effective way to control system frequency response is with an equalizer. It requires an acquired skill and a good musical ear to use one properly to get the desired results. Professional audio installations including recording studios and mixing and mastering studios find them indispensable. But they generate not much profit and most audiophiles don't have the skills to use them effectively. Being a powerful tool they can do more harm than good.

What is a "liquid texture"? What does it mean to be "one with the acoustic space?" What are "more expansive" bells? How do horns have "more reverb" when horns don't have reverb in the first place? I want to be respectful, but you really hear all this? From the fuses?? It's not imagined? Its not due to the inherent nature of the remainder of the system?

Take the label off the fuses that’s all they have done to the fuse is put a sticky label around them.

I have a hypothesis that will be upsetting to many people here. It is that devices such as these fuses do not make any audible difference in a blind AB compare test against conventional fuses. I think it’s an experiment worth trying. Everything this reviewer says he is “noticing” about these fuses may be real. Or it may placebo effect and/or confirmation bias. Isn’t this a question worth testing, especially for a product like this which is easy to switch in and out? For those who may be upset with the mere idea of doing so, what are the reasons not do such a simple test? What is the case for maintaining willful ignorance regarding what may (or may not) be a psychologically induced opinion of these items?

Good idea to get a handle with the fuses are doing or not doing yeah taking your money is what they’re doing.

The fuse isn't to protect the equipment. Its to protect your wiring and ultimately your house, Don't want to smoke test the house .

Here in the UK, we have 13A fuses in all our mains plugs, and QSA (stands for Quantum Science Audio -- yes, I know; just stick "quantum" in something and we're meant to swoon -- produces a series of such 13A fuses. They start around £50 with the Black, £86 with the Light Blue, finally £200 with the Yellow in their "entry"(!) level fuses. From there they go on to mains plug fuses costing up to £8000 (the Gold) believe it or not. I was extremely sceptical, but took a punt on an £86 Light Blue and was tremendously surprised by the improvement it made. After a week of mulling it over, I decided to buy a Yellow fuse for £200. On its own, when used in the mains plug for my preamp, the Yellow improved sound even more. But here's the thing: When I additionally put the Light Blue in my DAC mains plug, it made everything worse, even though putting either fuse alone in my DAC's plug had made improvements (albeit not as much as in the preamp's mains plug). So the effect sounds a bit like the SR's master fuse. You only need 1 for your most susceptible piece of kit. Futureshop, who sold me the fuses, say that they've been informed by QSA that actually, the further back in the power supply you can place one of their 13A fuses, the bigger the effect will be -- so next I'll be trying the Yellow in the plug for my mains power strip to see if that's right. I've moved the Light Blue to the mains plug for my secondary, nearfield system's integrated amp with some, albeit less marked, improvement. I'll be spending no more than £200, I can assure you, if only because of the law of diminishing returns. The LIght Blue makes a subjective improvement in main system's sound of c. 50%, and the Yellow, I'd say around 85-90% . But what is the subjective improvement, exactly? Best way I can put it is that without any QSA fuses, I used to notice how most days my system sounded so-so -- not bad, you understand, but not as emotionally involving as on rarer days. Just occasionally, it sounded significantly better. I put it down to my mood or maybe the weather or whatever. What the fuses, particularly the yellow, seem to do is to introduce consistency, so that every day it sounds like it used to only on those very occasional good days. Sound is full, natural and engaging; it's easier to follow instruments in a wider and deeper soundstage; bass is better... and so on. Heck, everything is just more musical and I can listen for hours to pretty much any track I posses, even the ones I used to play less often. Who knows, maybe I'm kidding myself -- time will tell. In the past, I've bought various system tweaks and been very enthusiastic about them, only to find that in time the effect wears off. So far, that hasn't happened for the two QSA fuses I've bought. We'll see how I feel in three or six month's time. If I remember, I may post a progress report here at that point.

Can I trust this?

That's a pretty good demonstration of the placebo effect. Gentlemen, please don't fall for this nonsense. I know the idea of being able to upgrade your setup with a simple fuse is extremely alluring, but trust me when I say that absolutely nothing in the world of physics supports this. Psychology, on the other hand, has countless times shown how these effects happen in all of our brains all the time. If you test these kind of products in a setting designed to eliminate expectation bias, the perceived differences will disappear completely.

I wonder why no one has reviewed the pink fuse yet.

This is billed as a Purple and Master Fuse listening test. I heard no review of Purple or discussion of the Purple's sound. Either I missed it or TAS needs to retitle this review. I use Orange and Purple fuses and would look forward to a Purple and Orange review. To my surprise they DO make a difference. No Masters for me, even with my high-end system. $1,200 +tax for 2 is a push too far. I'd rather continue to spend $850 for season tix to Philadelphia Orchestra.

Was the fuses in the signal chain or power supply.

I do not dismiss the usefulness of purely subjective reviews. In fact I often support them: they can be informative, in particular for reporting differences between things like loudspeakers which are well established to sound different. HOWEVER...this is an area where the purely subjective, uncontrolled listening of audiophiles in general, and reviewers in particular, really fail audiophiles. The fact is human imagination is incredibly powerful - on any given day people around the world are believing impossible and contradictory things. The scientific method arose for a reason, one of those being that it takes the big problem of imagination and bias seriously in it's very method. Once you are operating in purely uncontrolled conditions people can imagine effects that aren't there. That's why there hasn't been one audiophile tweak ever dreamed up, that doesn't have some advocates swearing they "hear a difference." No matter how impossible the tweak is on known theory, engineering and science. It is a limitless reservoir for companies to take advantage of. It's made worse by the perfect confluence of elements: Most audiophiles have some level of "gadget lust" but combined with a very low understanding of how electronics work, not to mention human psychology and bias, and psycho-acoustics. So it makes them the perfect audience for dubious products - just give a technical sounding patter "here's a problem we claim is reducing your sound quality and here is our proprietary method of fixing it, all you have to do is try it!" And since most audiophiles don't have the knowledge to vet such claims, they just use uncontrolled listening to judge and, to no surprise, "hear" differences (even if the product isn't actually altering the sound audibly). The exact method is used to sell magic dots on amps, teeny brass bowls on walls, special pebbles on CD players and DACs, anything you can imagine. And reviewers like this just amount to more of the same: taking the marketing technical claims on face value, or not having the skills or knowledge to vet the claims, then using uncontrolled listening and...to no surprise..."hearing" differences (try finding a subjective review of a tweak where the reviewer DOES NOT hear differences!). And so, audiophile reviewers, like homeopaths or alternative medicine practitioners, continue to lead other audiophiles down the garden path, declaring "success" to whatever implausible product any company can dream up. It's fascinating to contemplate what the audiophile industry would look like if these type of products were actually publicly tested under conditions controlling for well known sighted biases.

Try using a good quality fuse on your TV as well. The difference isn't mind-blowing but there are definite improvements to be seen.

Were the fuses that were replaced glass or ceramic?

And there you have it, a $0.50 fuse with a sticker on it sold for an eye watering $595 and a "reviewer" who can't probably tell the difference in a blind test raving about it.... ... and then you're wondering why "Hi-End Audio" is considered the biggest scam in the consumer electronics industry...😁

Rumor is that (at least some) SR fuses are UL certified. Take off the sticker and you see UR 189140 markings (SIBA Fuses? No mention of graphene on their site). I guess one might ask if the graphene SR modification was tested or invalidates the certification?

Think it’s time to rename the channel the absolute snake oil salesman

Great review! Daring and controversial as the subject may be, there are far and few between reviews of fuses. Also very interesting comment from Craig there - «over-egging» the punch is something to keep in mind - sometimes too much clarity can break an otherwise good setup. - Cheers TAS!

This is getting embarrassing.

And the next video will he him blind testing this for us?

Boy reviews like this certainly makes me think of PT Barnum and he was certainly 100% correct there is suckers born every minute and sad people try to suck them in and get all their money

Before I've tried SR fuse, I tested different ones (silver, ceramic, some German fuse). All this is proper BS! Eventually, i went for SR orange fuse, and this time difference was easily distinguishable. SR is definitely not placebo or snake oil.

Didn't even watch it. But worth coming here to troll. What a load of shit.

Forget about which sounds better. First prove there’s a sonic change if you cannot prove a sonic change, the rest of your listening is placebo.

Somebody buy one, take it a part, and make a video of what's inside.

How could a tiny strand of wire mske any difference? The very presence of a fuse negates the whole purpose of 'high end' mains cables anyway.

For goodness sake. Peoples ignorance is shocking. I will agree that these fuses are wildly expensive. However, not knowing exactly what research has gone into the product I’d caution a tonne of criticism here. More to the point, YES fuses sound different. Whether that’s worth the money is another question. Oh and btw all you experts with educations, how about you conduct an experiment and actually test these fuses before running away with your “my textbook didn’t tell me this” comments.

Trolls dont beleive in fuses but believe in God.....God is the OG snake oil 😂

Wait…is today April 1st?

What are all those people who do not believe any components make any sound difference doing here? They should be back in their homes or businesses doing something!

Please 🙄

Such an amazing component these fuses. Incredible that obviously before using these the well engineered components and circuitry in various pieces of equipment sounded just OK, the manufacturers got it so wrong and used cheap protection fuses. All they needed to do was implement these amazing fuses to transform their equipment into amazing audio performance. What utter nonsense.

Psychoacoustics. NO!

I just put the Pink fuse in my Innuos Pulsar, these fuses do in fact alter the sound, which means YES to all the ASR idiots trolling the comments here that they're wrong. Now, does it change it for the better is the question..In my case likely not, things sound a little more sibilant with the fuse in, some aspects of the sound are better but as a collective picture I don't prefer it and it makes my system sound worse. So what do all the naysayers have to say about that? Do these fuses work and impact the sound? Absolutely. Does that mean it's some kind of magic that will improve your entire systems' sound? Absolutely NOT.

hahahahahahaha

Oh please....

Over price master fuse I owned a purple fuse bought used just for a review I think they are too forward or enhance chance the music character

I didn’t hear you mention the fact that they rely heavily on Graphene as well as million volt charges. The best test for anything made by Synergistic Research is to read the reviews of best rooms at any audio show. Seems that these rooms that have the best sound quality have asked Ted Denny, the founder of Synergistic Research to come in and treat their rooms. That’s a testament of what some of the best high-end audio companies think of Synergistic.

This video is insane.

Why didn't you do any objective measurement? This is pure subjectivity and completely unscientific.

Interesting stuff. I never considered upgrading my fuses. Thank you for this in-depth review.

The answer to your question is **NO**

I'm sure other companies will jump on the band wagon if there are enough people foolish enough to fall for this hokum. As if the power cable insanity weren't silly enough.

Have to say that from a group of more than 60 audiophile friends with sistems from 20k to 400k there was only one that was so used to the sound of his sistem that he didn’t want a purple fuse. The rest all have minimum 2. They make a big difference on all gear, and can solve some big problems in your sistem, for example I was sure that I had lose and not very defined bass because of my room’s acoustics… 2 Purple fuse actualy solved it for me. Tighter bass, more defined, faster, bigger soundstage, focus, cleaner sound. Would love to see some day soon a fuse and holder from SR for the main home switch. That would be the product of the year for me and my friends:)

Well done - I enjoyed your review!

I just got Magnepan LXR+ and I believe they use a regular fuse with a tiny wire in line. There are some upgraded fuses that seem better. Will be doing something but not spending $200 plus on fuses.

How come whenever we talk about cables and now fuses, the electrical engineers come out of the woodwork. News flash, these fuses are not doing anything to the sound, the original ones were. These are more transparent and do not have a negative effect like the basic original ones did.

You know working on a radar weapon system where your life and the life of others depends on how well the system can detect a very small radar return. Amplify it enough, then eliminate background noise enough to isolate the return signal (millivolts), just so you could try to get enough signal return from a nose cone with a radar return less than 1 sqr meter in size. All on a generic fuse. If the noise filtering in your DAC and amp can't handle a basic task.... Don't waste your money folks.

Absolute sound, we would love to see a test like this with the Hifi Tuning fuses, specially the new diamond

LOL

hilarious that all the negative reviews never bothered to try it....all the positive reviews actually heard it and like it.....even if you believe it has no basis in science if your ears (fooled or not) like the sound better with the SR fuse then bottom line you enjoy your system better. On the other hand not trying it because there is no white paper behind it sounds like someone who doesnt trust their ears

Previously have the Orange and Blue fuses. As my fuses are in the amp speaker line, they make an easily audible difference. So far, the power line fuses, for amp and balanced transformer box, (4) never seemed to make much difference. So, already behind in versions, next will probably be the Purple fuse. And for some reason, when they have a sale, its always a third fuse, so not all matching.

what a load of bs

I’m not against SR fuses doing what SR claims. But I’ve got problems when a reviewer recommends fusing only one channel with SR fuses while using stock fuses for the other channel to discern sound quality differences between channels. This might sound like a good strategy for mono recordings (as I think the reviewer suggested) but it really doesn’t work for stereo recordings. And then there’s the comment about allowing fuses to “break in.” Lol. Really?? Call me stupid for believing this is meaningful or useful. And finally, why so many pics of the actual fuses??

The price of these tweaks is absurd. I can only assume that because the thin wire in a typical fuse limits the amount of current through it(maybe?), that somehow the Synergistic fuses can deliver more current and still do their job protecting the component. I can't imagine that these fuses are difficult to manufacture, so it would be the material inside them that's expensive. I'd like to hear them compared to some freshly made ceramic fuses with the endcaps polished and treated to perfection. Over the years a lot of claims have been made in audio with only subjective claims of results. They're fuses; they can't possibly add anything. They can only make things better by getting out of the way. Better yet, two identical components with one wired directly to the outlet. no fuse in the circuit and the other with the fancy fuse. You say potato, I say Potahto!

“ Patricia Barber’s voice seems to be more distinctive” I can’t say how true that is however, I would have to say I think this review is more de stinktive.

Oh dear me the modern American world is utterly bizarre!,,,,

this question will bum those who like to buy expensive three foot power cables, because it will be hard to embellish such a small item enough to command a thousand dollar purchase price.

LOL!

And when UR gear smokes 🚬 😮

The answer is simle people thinks oh dear what a massive difference but the reality is completely different unfortunately there is no difference at all its just your mind playing tricks on you to spend more money thats all stock fuses and midnight blue fuses are exactly the same just cosmetic however if you change your circuit breaker and the cables with audio circuit breakers and pure silver insulated cables with specific fuse and plug them through power conditioner than HEY BABY YES YES YES 💥

Fuses may be effective but it should be one of the last ungrades , best equipment comes first..