All good and agreed.
To give you a little more color… I have a science background (phd in physics), and I can understand why, for example, cables would matter. But a fuse? Hmmm… I am having a little more doubts about that, especially them transforming a Rossini from a Toyota to a Ferrari.
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Be careful , some Ferraris would like to be as good as some modest Toyota GR Yaris on very twisty roads. And better don’t speak about last decade in Le Man’s 24 hours…Toyota usually wins easily as in World Rally Championship . I’m the happy owner of a Toyota GR Yaris and a dCS Bartok . Sorry for the of topic…ja,ja
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Do you believe power cables can make an audible difference?
If so, it’s not hard to understand that since power also flows through fuses, they too can have an audible effect in the same way.
Not everything is the same. A power cable can act as a filter of high frequency noise. It depends on the geometry of the cable. I have measured that actually and you can too, just use an Entech power line noise meter. In fact, power cables connected to the same power distribution act as noise sinks to other power cables. I have measured that too.
A fuse is just a little piece of wire. It is harder to conceptualize why it would matter at all. I do have some ideas: the simplest construction is a wire that has some resistance because it needs to have enough resistance to produce heat and burn with high current. I can imagine you can construct a fuse with a highly conductive wire wrapped around a more resistive wire, all tuned so that the more resistive wire burns at the given current threshold. The result might be very low resistance for the operating region with a spike and destruction when it approaches the limit current. So I think not all fuses are the same. Whether this is important in a device drawing as little power as a DAC is another question.
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The fact still remains that all power goes through that fuse.
In a very real way it’s like if you care about cables and have a very high quality interconnect between your dCS and preamp; the interconnect between your preamp and amp will moderate any benefit the one between your DAC and preamp brings.
Ultimately, however, the answer is to try it. As stated, at least Synergistic Research has a 30-day money back guarantee if you don’t hear a benefit.
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@BillK Based on my recent experience I found that power cables make a huge difference in the SQ of the Rossini. I recently decided to upgrade my power and interconnect cables to Shunyata. I was fortunate to work with a terrific dealer that had some sound recommendations on which components would likely benefit from higher grade cables. He shipped me a mix of higher end Shunyata cables (Omega QR-s) and mid-grade cables (Alpha v2 NR) so I could decide for myself. I tried the Alpha v2 NR power cable on my Rossini and the SQ was improved vs. the power cable I’ve been using. I left the Alpha power cable in my Rossini for a week. Thanks to @miguelito for the recommendation of leaving any system upgrade in place for at least a week playing a variety of musical genres before making any SQ decisions. After a week I changed the Alpha power cable to the Omega QR-s cable and quite frankly I heard the SQ improvement by playing the 1st song. It just got better and better during the week as the Omega cable settled in place.
I then took the advice of my dealer and tried the Alpha v2 NR power cables on my Gryphon Pandora preamp. (Like most Gryphon components the Pandora requires 2 power cables). After a week of listening I then switched to a pair of higher end Omega QR-s cables and couldn’t hear any SQ improvement, which was what the dealer expected to happen. After listening for a week, I decided to opt for the mid-grade Alpha v2 NR cables for my Pandora pre-amp as the dealer originally suggested.
Morals of the story, 1) the most expensive isn’t always better and 2) find a dealer that knows their craft and will work with you to make informed decisions.
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Careful auditioning is always key.
I’ve tried many ultra expensive upgrades that have had no audible effect, where more modestly priced upgrades made (to me) huge improvements.
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Damn, Miguel, you like Burgundy, too? LOL!
Been reading through his thread, your points are invariably well-taken, it’s refreshing to read the impressions of at least a handful of nerds (if I’m allowed to call a physicist that, beg your pardon!) who’ll actually listen first and measure or theorize second.
The bottom line of what I’m getting out of this thread (I have a Vivaldi stack minus transport, using Mosaic/ethernet/NAS HD playback exclusively after dabbling with the others options), is the upgrade appears to be gradual. I’ll need to hear it for myself, unfortunately that isn’t going to be easy to arrange in our neck of the woods…
Greetings from Switzerland, David.
I’m using Black Cat cables in my Vivaldi stack. Let me go count them, back in half an hour…
On a more serious note, I’m surprised they make a difference. Needless to say, I’ve been an audiophile for over forty years and should know anything might make a difference, but that is not the same as to say a relevant difference. And, as I always say, a blind test and small wager might be in order to avoid expectation bias. Having said all this, I’d put them on a short list to try and listen for yourself - especially if unlike me, you live where one can demo them. If I can at all avoid it, I’ll not buy anything without demoing, but again, it’s not always easy in our neck of the woods…
Greetings from Switzerland, David.
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“Well put. Audio. Wine. Photography. Sex. Love.”
How did this little list make it into what for a moment there I took for a discussion of blind, possibly double blind testing? ROTFL!!
I do not agree with anyone who thinks there are more quacks in one place than another, by the way. They’re omnipresent. We regularly do blind and double blind tests in our wine lovers group, and I’d do more of them again with audio gear as I used to designing and building speakers, but blind tests in audio are much more difficult to arrange, and double blind are near impossible for some types of gear (did that with a PS Audio regenerator recently, almost impossible to hide that thing from view, plus swapping cables requires turning everything off and back on, people relying on auditory memory, with time on their hands to build up expectation bias of some sort at least).
My favorite thing to do to people during crossover parts listening tests was to light a candle somewhere in the room. Cheapest audiophile upgrade in the history of audio. Success rate 100%.
Greetings from Switzerland, David.
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Agreed David; ain’t it the truth! Love the candle story.
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Hey Greg - looks like we have another Black Cat fan 
Best
Gregg
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I’m surprised we have not gotten more Apex reviews by now.
Even though my dealer has had his Vivaldi APEX for some time now, I am waiting for my unit to be updated before I comment on any differences. I just don’t see how you can make a valid comparison until you hear it in your set-up with your gear.
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“Companies use marketing to convince people that new things are better/worth it, the audio press has a (large) incentive to echo this marketing, and the consumer wants the new purchase to sound better, and therefore the entire outcome is essentially predetermined.”
This message is a given that most of us recognized – along with many other not so pleasant facts of life – when we were in our teens or shortly thereafter. If we didn’t, then we probably wouldn’t have the wherewithal to purchase the high-end audio equipment that we’re discussing.
I am unsure why invariably this sort of logic is posted in the various audio forums I frequent (much more now, than decades ago)? Perhaps after exiting a safe space, there was some sort of recent aha recognition and that motivated the post. Otherwise, I find the motivation head scratching and far too obvious and as such, not unlike the U.S. Surgeon General’s warning on a pack of cigarettes.
Is it surprising to anyone, that an unfortunate and despicable fact of human nature is that: if you have it, someone will want it and they will do whatever they can say or do, to take it, if they can’t steal it? Along with everything else, this blatant observation is applicable to marketing and one’s income. If one hasn’t been sufficiently observant to have already learned these sorts of facts (that indeed there is a wizard behind the curtain) what’s the point, in belaboring the point, especially to folks that have the wherewithal to purchase luxury items, such as the audio equipment 90+% of us own?
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Yes. I knew that about David from previous posts. In fact, it might have been David from whom I first heard about BC cables, and about which I was quite skeptical. We shall see, As I mentioned to you in DM, I’ve ordered 5 in 2m lengths. We shall see. And hear.
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Agreed — I heard a Vivaldi Apex system today at Quintessence in Chicago. It sounded wonderful. There’s a high chance that a non-Apex Vivaldi in the same system would also have sounded non-terrible 
Unless you can either hear one non-Apex and one Apex in a diff system or an Apex in your system, I would deem such comparisons unreliable. Systems, cables, rooms, etc all change the sound.
Exactly! You guys are privileged to have dealers who have both side by side in their shop, or have Apex demo models. I don’t really have an “audiophile itch” - I’m much like those IT people who keep telling me not to click on software update buttons (“Never change a running system!”) in that as long as I’m happy, I try not to give in. Having said that, it’ll probably say “Curiosity killed the cat” on my gravestone…
Greetings from Switzerland, David.