do not know if, perhaps, I have masochist inclinations, but I cannot refrain from what I do. It is naïve, but I believe that if I hear, learn or use something that makes listening to music more satisfactory to me, I want to share it with others. This is why “High Fidelity” was created twelve years ago (we celebrate our birthday on May 1st :). In this way, I expose myself to mockery and taunt, as well as direct remarks regarding my mental disability from technically educated readers (most frequently made “by the way”). What can I do, it is my job. I hope that the idea of changing fuses in audio devices is not only going to activate haters, but also people who dare to think

In the audio domain, solutions previously suggested by audiophiles – manufacturers of specialist devices are incorporated in the technological mainstream as part of an ongoing process. It was so in the case of decoupling printed circuit boards, tin with an addition of silver, the choice of specific metals for sockets, power cables and then USB cables, as well as with such simple facts as the one that a mechanism used to reading digital discs must be mechanically rigid and insusceptible to vibration. There are a lot of things awaiting their turn and new ones constantly appear, but there is one clear trend: most of them are sooner or later adopted by constructors and companies that had previously rejected them. It is because the effects of these changes are within reach – they just require listening.

Fuses are a problem that has always existed but has been seriously taken into account just for a few years. Thermal fuses are passive elements, designed to protect electrical circuits. Their principle of operation is very simple: the element of a fuse which the current flows through blows at too high currents. The design of a fuse is equally simple – it is a housing, usually in the form of a glass tube, with metal “caps” on both sides. Sometimes it is a ceramic tube filled with quartz sand. A cut copper, silver or silver-plated tape placed inside is soldered to the “caps”. After operation, a fuse is damaged and must be replaced with a new one.

We have different types of fuses, but it is not important for the audio domain. Here we only have miniature fuses in two sizes: ø 5 mm diameter, 20 mm length and ø 6.3 mm diameter, 30 mm length. What is important is that although the electrical installation in our flat (building) consists of thick copper wires and although power cables have a large conductor cross-section, electrical current eventually flows through a 1 centimeter-long thin “wire”, welded with nickel elements. However, nickel is not used in audio devices. It is no coincidence that solder with an addition of silver improves sound quality – why should it be different in this case?

VERICTUM

Slow-blow thermal fuses are commonly used in audio devices in front of power supply units and power supply transformers. The function of such a fuse is mainly to protect devices against fire by preventing overheating of elements exposed to short-circuit current. It is wrong to think that the main fuse protects sensitive electronic sections, semiconductor elements, etc. from damage. A fuse is, unfortunately, a necessity. Considering our own and our household members’ safety, we must not replace it with a piece of wire.

It is characteristic for the audio domain treated as a hobby that most of us want to achieve the highest sound quality possible in our home systems. At some stage, time comes for an audiophile to buy better and better power cables. However, many people forget that right behind a perfect and often expensive power cable equipped with rhodium-, silver- or gold-plated plug contacts, there is a modest element – the thermal fuse. Most manufacturers of audio devices use standard, popular and cheap nickel fuses commonly applied in electronics.

Audiophile fuses have also been available on the market for quite a long time. A lot of good sound lovers are already successfully using them. So, considering there is already a considerable choice of renowned good quality fuses on the market, why were X Fuse fuses created?

As our team at Verictum mainly consists of demanding “long-term” audiophiles, we had personally used higher standard, very good fuses available on the market. However, we had always felt that it was possible to do more in this field, to do it in a different way and obtain even better-quality sound. We decided to investigate this matter further and create a fuse that would be optimal for us. As it eventually appeared, our work let us achieve spectacular results. This is how the first Polish audiophile fuse called X Fuse was created.

X Fuse is a ceramic fuse. The conductor inside is covered with quartz sand that damps its vibrations very well, but its main function is to extinguish the electrical arc which occurs at a short circuit. The conductor of the fuse is made of silver-plated copper. The contacts of the fuse themselves are not nickel-plated, but covered with a thick layer of silver. After many hours of cryogenic freezing adjusted appropriately to X Fuse, fuse contacts are hand-polished using jewelry equipment – each fuse is polished in this way. Next, the contacts are carefully cleaned manually, using an isopropyl alcohol-based cleaning agent. Thanks to this, the purchaser does not additionally have to degrease the surface of fuse contacts. Since the fuse wire itself is protected inside against vibration by quartz, we decided to damp vibrations of the ceramic housing, too, using properly prepared multi-layer covering, to isolate our fuse as effectively as possible from this type of phenomena and unwanted distortion. The whole manual process of preparing one X Fuse lasts almost 60 minutes.

X Fuse fuses are directional. Their directionality must be set after 12 hours of heating by reversing the fuse in a socket. After the direction is set, the fuse is going to “adjust” for about 50 hours.

“He who has ears to hear, let him hear” – perhaps, or even for sure, the authors of the Gospel did not think of what I have in mind now: stupid is the one who says “no” just for the sake of saying “no”, without listening. Changing the classic thermal fuse in all the devices that took part in the experiment resulted in a change of sound. And these were not micro changes that were hardly perceivable and resulted from my delusion. Try doing the same thing in your system, if it is a sensible one that allows you to hear anything, and you will look differently at what I will say about the character of these changes. This itself should give some food for thought to all ignorant people (i.e. lay warriors) who use book knowledge and refuse to think independently.

Changes introduced by a high-class specialized fuse designed for audio purposes are structural. They change sound in the elements that can be pointed out, specified and described, but these are not changes as such – they are effects of something underneath.
But, as I say, our attention focuses on specific modifications. With the X Fuse, sound becomes lower and darker. It is something we can hear after a few seconds, with the dense percussion in Vendome from the Pyramide album of The Modern Jazz Quartet. It is also strongly present with the stingy and sharp Louis Armstrong’s trumpet in Tenderly from the album Ella and Louis and then is repeated by Ella Fitzgerald’s vocal.

What happens here is interesting, as dark sound can be looked at from two different perspectives in audio – a positive and a negative one, depending on what such sound quality results from. When we deal with warming up of the musical message, i.e. a reduction of the treble, then we talk about a negative modification. It can be, of course, part of a larger compromise and eventually prove positive, but it is always a step backward. However, sound may also be lowered in connection with better distribution. A huge amount of dirt in the treble disappears then and the weight of sounds increases, as if their 3D images weighted more and their shapes were closer to their real shapes.

This is what happens with the X Fuse. A lay person will like sound achieved with a basic fuse more, as it is brighter. By the way, this is how most people who buy speakers get tricked – brighter ones that sound more explicit seem better to them. Such people take their speakers home and after some time discover that “this is not it.” Overall, Verictum fuses move the centre of gravity of sound towards the midrange (its lower part). There is much more information in the treble than before, but not everything is given at once. A classic fuse moves towards very explicit sound in which everything is clear and equally unambiguous, while it is not what happens in music.

It is where differences, contrasts and slight shifts matter a lot. X Fuse allows us to detect them better and more easily.

At the same time, the midrange becomes denser. The piano in jazz recordings had a more present “body”, it was not just another layer of the recording. The differentiation of the musical message was significantly better. Thanks to the fact that delicate “murmuring”, which had been added to all sounds, disappeared from the treble, Fitzgerald’s vocal was more natural. It was not really properly recorded when it comes to the treble and it may often sound harsh. If it is not so, then your system modifies this part of the sound range, towards withdrawal. However, thanks to the openness, her voice is so “present” and expansive. X Fuse gave it more freedom and, at the same time, removed dirt from the stressed sibilants – the treble was still too strong, but did not attract attention.

Bass also changes in a very interesting way. These changes are not as explicit as in the case of higher frequencies, or at least we do not perceive them in such an unambiguous way. This is perhaps why the sound is so coherent. There is not more or less bass, but the way of presentation of the sounds attack changes. With X Fuse it is softer and less contour. It is closer to what I know from reality. However, this is why it is not as explicit as with an ordinary fuse. One needs to know how the double bass and piano sound to appreciate X Fuse. Without the awareness, one may be more fond of sound oriented at stressing the rhythm, achieved with an ordinary standard fuse.

Summary

Fuses are associated with the same problem as power cables – worse ones sound better to a lay person if, of course, such a person at all considers the possibility that something may change and will allow for an “unguarded moment” while sitting down to make such a comparison. If not – well, nothing can be enforced. However, it is worth considering that the absent ones cannot vote. The problem that I am talking about consists in a bright, contour and often shrill sound of such elements. People who are used to the “quality” of their smartphone headphones are also used to low quality sound that is “right” for them and therefore they consider such sound as “normal”, because it is the only sound quality that they know.

However, neither you, nor me are natural-born audiophiles, are we? This has to be learnt. After accommodation and time spent with something better, it is impossible to return to the previously used crap. It is true for both power cables and fuses. X Fuse changes sound clearly – it is ca. 5% of the sound of even very expensive products, which is a lot, indeed. It makes sound denser, more substantial and makes less mess in the treble. It makes listening to music more comfortable, as if a small thorn – invisible, but still irritating – was removed from our finger. Tests do not cost us anything, apart from our time. However, this is what we do in the audio domain and this is what the fun is all about – spending time listening to music and finding the best solutions for this purpose. Fuses such as X Fuse are a little brick in the wall. Nothing is going to fall without it, since it is not the cornerstone, but when we use it, we will be able to build higher and higher structures.

FLEETWOOD MAC
Tusk

Warner Bros. Records/Warner Music Japan WPCR-17017/9

Medium: 3 x SHM-CD
Premiere/remaster: October 12th 1979/January 20th 2016

Tusk, Fleetwood Mac’s twelfth album released on October 12th 1979, was broadly commented in the press. It was even not because of its huge popularity – although it was really big and, in total, 4 million copies were sold. It was due to its enormous budget: over 1 million dollars (today that would be several times more). The sum was so big that the record company, Warner Bros., declared that the album was a failure for which it blamed Lindsey Buckingham – the vocalist and main instrumentalist of the band. He had suggested using an innovative working method, compared to what they had done preparing the previous band’s album – Rumours. Basically, it consisted in experimenting with song lyrics, flirting with punk rock and new wave in the production layer, as well as something that the bass guitarist of the band, John McVie, called “the work of three soloists”. Only after some time did the album gain recognition and in 1981 it was nominated for the Grammy award,

Tusk was a two-disc album and it was priced higher than other albums of that time ($15.98, i.e. $2 more). Though today it may not seem so much, then it was a lot of money. In the late 1980s the album was remastered to suit the needs of the Compact Disc format. The project was led by Ken Caillat, a co-producer and one of the two sound engineers who had worked on the original album. The tracks that were included on the disc were the same as on the vinyl edition when it comes to their mixes and number. In 2004 Ken Caillat remastered the album again, this time to produce a 2-disc CD version. It included, apart from the original album, demo recordings, recording session rejects and alternative song versions.

On December 4th 2015, another, even richer album version was released on five discs. Apart from the album itself, demo recordings and recording session rejects (a lot of which had not been published before), the third disc included Alternate Tusk, a version of the album with tracks in their original order, but in other versions. On the next two discs there are concert recordings from the concert tour promoting the album (1979 – 80), from London, Tucson, St. Louis and one track from Omaha. The last disc – a DVD – features a stereophonic 24/96 mix and a multi-channel 5.1 mix. The release was accompanied by a vinyl re-edition on two 180g discs.

At the end of 2015, information was published on stevie-nicks.info http://stevie-nicks.info that Warner Music Japan started to re-edit the band’s albums from before 1975 on SHM-CDs. They were soon joined by a 3-disc version of Tusk, also released on a SHM-CD. The first disc included the original album, the second one – material rejected during recording, demos and alternative mixes, and the third one – an alternative version of the album with songs that almost none of which had ever been published before. Dan Hersch remastered the material in d2 studio. The album was released in a 4-part, beautiful, paper box, with a booklet, a lot of photos and discs put in antistatic plastic pockets. Bravo!

SOUND

The tracks on the album were recorded in different ways, depending on what instruments were used in them. They also differ when it comes to their sound quality – from the excellent opening track Over & Over or Sara to the much weaker Save Me A Place and What Makes You Think You’re The One (Lindsey Buckingham recorded some of the material at home). However, listening to it is a pleasure, even if the 1970s are not close to our hearts. There is honesty and directness, and a lot of music.

I like the album even more since the remaster is flawless. although we hear a lot of compression used during recording, now it does not bother us. Perhaps it is because the guitars are incredibly tangible. They are dense when it is necessary, as well as “here and now” – like in, for example, at the beginning of The Ledge. Vocals are presented quite far away in the mix, but that is typical for recordings from that time. The whole thing is mostly very dense – I liked Not That Funny very much – it has the energy and drive.

I like the album very much and the remaster is one of the best ones with this type of music from that time that I have listened to. Even the remastered versions of Eric Clapton’s albums released by the renowned Audio Fidelity company sound less distributive and more one-dimensional.

Sound quality: 6-8/10
REMASTER: 10/10

www.warnerbrosrecords.com
wmg.jp