December 30, 2016

  • Simaudio 820S, Part 6

    This is perhaps the most important, frustrating, or dangerous aspect of the Simaudio 820S, so pay attention.
    IMG_4156
    I do not know if Simaudio have updated or corrected this, but the 820S' manual erroneously states, "For the 120V version use a 0.2A slow blow (5 x 20mm)" fuse.

    Wrong, wrong, wrong. My audio friends and I lost several of these 0.2A fuses in the 820S, particularly in the F2 position.
    IMG_4151
    The 820S has two fuses. This is the F1 fuse, which is oriented left-to-right. This unit came with a 0.5A fuse. Because of the 820S' major sonic influence, fuses do matter. Once you acquire the correct fuse value, you will have to listen for yourself, which direction sounds best to you. For example, the Synergistic Research Quantum Black (above) sounds more coherent, when pointing right. Yet, that was not the case with Synergistic Research's own Quantum Red, which sounded a little less lazy, when pointing to your left. In a future post, I will cover how other fuses performed, in the F1 position.
    IMG_4152
    This is the location of the F2 fuse, which is oriented front-to-back. This is where we kept losing 0.2A fuses, such as the HFT Silverstar above. Sigh, leave it to me and my audio friends, to get to the bottom of this. Nowhere else but here, will you find this information. The 820S actually comes with a 2.0A (not 0.2A!) fuse.