Antoine's system

[Antoine]

The Shunyata Alpha Digital power cord in transit is coming closer, it's in Germany now!

The Oyaide DC 2.1x5.5mm DC connectors were delivered last week so I've soldered these on to the Paul Hynes DC cables feeding the microRendu and Anti-mode DC2.0 using WBT silver solder. As always, with any Oyaide product I mean, the quality of these connectors is amazing.

   


Unfortunately the HiFi-tuning Supreme 3 fuse (3.15A) I installed into the PH PSU blew. It had worked fine since first power on (the PSU is powered on 24/7) but did not survive the second power on inside the PH PSU. So that's 37 euro's up in smoke.   HiFi-Tuning and supplier are refusing to replace it. (edit: the importer has decided to replace it)

Also this fuse did some good things but overal it didn't do it for me. I haven't been able to change it's initial installed direction though so it is a bit indefinitve. There was some additional warmth and cleanliness but the negatives outweighed the positives. The mid range was robbed of dynamics and detail and the highs felt rolled off. Overal presentation in short became really dull and lifeless. The influence of this tiny piece of wire has shown to be significant though so I've done my own research and also contacted Paul Hynes for some advice which he gave in his usual high quality style. It's safe to use a higher valued fuse (up to 5A) so I'm taking the risk of trying and thus possible blowing up two other ones, one of Furutech and a Synergistic Research Red.

Paul also confirmed the long burn-in period required. I feel though it is starting to settle down and it sounds great!

The SR7EHD-MR4 I sent to you had new modules fitted and these would require the normal burn-in period just like a new power supply. The results of burn-in that you are hearing are normal with the circuit topologies and materials I use in these power supplies and others have also commented that they have head similar changes in musical presentation through the first month with a more settled performance progressing thereafter. After two months you should hear little difference in performance from day to day.
 
Regarding the fuses I fit to the SR5 and SR7 power supplies. These are standard 20mm fuses, manufactured to British Standards, which have defined characteristics that are selected for each product to provide safety of the product and the customer and his property in the event of an internal or external fault developing. I am aware that fuse upgrades are available and as long as they fail safely under fault conditions I have no objection to their use, although customers should check compatibility of fuse upgrades when selecting values for replacement, because they are not always a direct replacement regarding fusing characteristics. I do not fit fuse upgrades as standard and leave this to power supply customers. It is a simple task to change a fuse without opening the chassis, as they are externally accessible.
 
The metallurgy and impedance of the fuse will affect performance and the article you have linked too explains the impedance issue well. Changing even small lengths of copper wire to fine silver is audible so I would certainly expect a silver fuse to have a sonic effect compared to a standard copper fuse. I generally design for large transient current delivery from my power supplies to avoid restricting large dynamic load power swings, which could cause dynamic signal clipping in analogue stages or signal processing dropout in digital stages. This demands low impedance throughout the power supply. I can see that a lower impedance fuse would be less restrictive of current flow during normal operation.
There is no specific current limiting in the regulator output stage as this would limit the power delivery to the load.
 
The materials I select for the standard product range are selected to provide a very high performance without hitting the wallet too hard. In SR5 and SR7 products all the connectors on the chassis and the XLR connectors used on the Dc leads have silver plated terminals. I have spent the majority of the product cost within the products to provide first class electrical performance from the mains transformer and the voltage regulator circuitry, which is a proprietary design. This is because no amount of quality upgrade of the connections to the outside world will compensate for poor internal electrical performance of the mains transformer or the voltage regulators. Incidentally, this is why I do not use the three terminal regulator chips, often used in after market power supplies, for high performance supplies for audio, as they are not good enough electrically.
 
There are other upgrades possible, for instance IEC inlets, DC connectors, wiring from the regulator modules to the chassis DC outlet connectors with annealed fine silver wire as well as annealed fine silver DC leads which can be added to order. I also can provide Teflon regulator module circuit boards and fit Vishay Bulk Foil precision resistors within the regulator circuitry but the cost of this upgrade is considerable. If I were to fit these upgrades and the finest hardware to my products as standard, the performance would be even higher, but the retail price would be considerably higher and I would sell much less product, as the price would be too high for the market sector I currently work with. There is a happy medium for the standard product and these options are available for those who can afford them.
 
I hope this has illuminated your concerns adequately.

Burn-in time will vary depending on usage but 2 months usually sees most of the burn-in completed. This is why I allow 56 days for a return if not satisfied guarantee. It allows most of the burn-in to occur before a final decision is taken and also allows some time for meaningful comparisons to be made towards the end of this period.

You can increase the rating of the audio grade fuse you are using to 5A continuous max but it may still be subject to nuisance tripping as the surge ratings are not as high as the time delay fuses I use.