Lighting the fuse

There's a really interesting discussion going on our forums right now. You can take a look here. Central to the controversy on the Community Forums are a lot of valid questions about why something so small in the power chain would make a difference: but general consensus is that it does. My view is a little different. How could it not? If you think about it we spend a lot of energy getting the best power cables to our equipment and then all that beautifully built copper cable gets necked down to a tiny quarter inch whisker of wire designed to let only the right amount of current through - too much and poof the whisker is vaporized and the equipment protected. Even the lowly PC board trace has a magnitude more copper content than a fuse. Actually a fuse is perhaps the single worst thing we designers seem to want to put into the power path of equipment we design. Adding a switch contact in a magnetic circuit breaker is generally better but not quite as safe as a fuse because of the time it takes to activate - and certainly a lot more expensive. Over time the engineers at PS are trying their best to eliminate fuses from every piece of equipment we manufacture wherever it's practical. I can't explain why some fuses with identical wire whisker sizes sound different but they surely do - a lot different. If your equipment has an internal fuse, give some thought to upgrading it to a better sounding variety.