Author Topic: Speaker fused protection ?  (Read 7781 times)

Offline victor.askew

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Speaker fused protection ?
« on: April 15, 2011, 10:18:11 PM »
Hello to all.  Im sure there are many thoughts on this matter,  to use a fuse  to protect your speakers or not to use a fuse. Also if the use of this fuse degrades the sound that the speaker produces. I would like to know your thoughts on this matter. Thanks in advance.
Amp, Nakimichi PA 7 & PA5/2.
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Offline OCCD

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Re: Speaker fused protection ?
« Reply #1 on: April 15, 2011, 11:21:43 PM »
I like the fuse thing.
Do you want ants? Because THAT'S HOW YOU GET ANTS!

SunnyDaze

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Re: Speaker fused protection ?
« Reply #2 on: April 16, 2011, 01:23:16 AM »
Yeah. It's a good idea.

That's probably why I don't do it.

If you ever want to get rid of that Tandberg, I'm your man.

Offline Kingman

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Re: Speaker fused protection ?
« Reply #3 on: April 16, 2011, 06:32:01 AM »
If you are running a high power amp with efficient speakers it would be cheap insurance.   :)
IN REALITY IT ONLY MATTERS WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE TO YOU!!!!!

Offline MasterBlaster

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Re: Speaker fused protection ?
« Reply #4 on: April 16, 2011, 02:54:13 PM »
If you are really worried:

« Last Edit: April 16, 2011, 02:58:56 PM by retsalB retsaM »
HT: Audiocontrol Maestro M3, Sunfire 5*200,  Tannoy Mercury MX , SVS PB-12 Sub

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NATOE

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Re: Speaker fused protection ?
« Reply #5 on: April 16, 2011, 03:10:04 PM »
Gold plated ends that will make it sound better and protect it too.

Offline MasterBlaster

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Re: Speaker fused protection ?
« Reply #6 on: April 16, 2011, 04:14:31 PM »
Hey, I would never buy it. that is over the top.
HT: Audiocontrol Maestro M3, Sunfire 5*200,  Tannoy Mercury MX , SVS PB-12 Sub

Head-Fi: FUBAR IV Plus DAC, Grado SR225

Living Room: Dynaco ST-70 (R&R work done by NATOE), Dynaco PAS Preamp, Jamo C607 towers, MCS 6710 Turntable

SunnyDaze

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Re: Speaker fused protection ?
« Reply #7 on: April 17, 2011, 02:33:00 AM »
Hey, I would never buy it. that is over the top.


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Offline NatiKid

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Re: Speaker fused protection ?
« Reply #8 on: April 17, 2011, 03:41:28 PM »
I'm all for protecting expensive speakers from over drive and amp failures, but I think you want to be a little bit cautious here.  Make sure you do some careful listening with and without fuses in place before you decide.  Especially focus on music that has intricate low and mid bass content.

Fuses have non-trivial resistance.  I just grabbed a random 3A line fuse and it measured at 0.035Ohms of resistance.  Initially, it sounds like not much.  But this is roughly the same as 30ft. of 12 gauge OFC speaker wire!!!  One of the reasons we use high quality speaker cable is to get a very low resistance connection between the amp and speaker.  Resistance in series with a woofer will alter the Thiele-Small parameters of the driver.  This is not such a big deal for speakers with sealed enclosures, but it is a big deal for vent enclosure designed.  Crossovers for vented enclosures are carefully simulated and aligned with all parasitic resistances accounted for to properly tune the box/port.  And the chokes in high end speakers are selected to have minimal but expected series resistance.  Any additional series resistance is potentially throwing the vented box alignment off, and could hose up the bass response of your speakers.

Bottom line.  I have no problem with fuses.  Just make sure you select some good fuses with very low resistance, and do some listen to verify that don't screw up your sound.  I would hate to see you run 8 gauge wire to your speakers, then put fuses in series that have 5 to 10x the resistance of your cables.

If you want to bring some fuses in to the next geek fest, let me know and I can bring a special ohmmeter that can measure very low resistances accurately.  I would be happy to measure some for you.

Offline confused

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Re: Speaker fused protection ?
« Reply #9 on: April 24, 2011, 07:00:28 PM »
Hello all and happy whatever you celebrate,

Thought I would add a couple thoughts.  I basically agree with NatiKid.  Though i probably would not hear any difference, i would not want to add more resistance to the crossover.  Better speakers will have well designed xovers that may be changed enough to be audible, not only in frequency response, but electrical alignment and total power to the drivers.

Also consider you are not only adding fuse resistance but the total holder including springs, clips whatever.  Better find gold plated holder 6 nines copper wound in golden ratios connecting wire with a teflon holder or more to match your vacuum packed battery biased cables.   ;D

The best case scenario is to drive your speakers with an amp of adequate power to drive your speakers as loud as you need without distortion.  If unable to get the volume you need and these are matched, the cheapest way to add volume is to add more amps and more speakers (remember 10 times your original power only provides minimal acual loudness boost!).  Of course this will destroy much of the original sound of your system (imaging, soundstaging, octave to octave balance, reflections, etc.)

Common sense will save more speakers than a fuse, also if you do fuse you want to use an instrument or superfast fuse, and this may not protect your speaker if the amp is very large or driven into clipping (per phase linear in answer to a letter many years ago (I think this was BC (Before Carver)  ;))

Just my thoughts, take with a grain of salt please.

PS Check out the new toys!
Dale

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Offline Reverend

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Re: Speaker fused protection ?
« Reply #10 on: April 24, 2011, 08:06:03 PM »
"PS Check out the new toys!"

Those are beautiful!  Love the latticework.

Offline confused

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Re: Speaker fused protection ?
« Reply #11 on: May 03, 2011, 07:43:18 PM »
THX Rev!  Did some more work and they look even better now.  Sound great too! ;D
Dale

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