How do fuses affect the sound quality?

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Typical voltage drop across a fuse at rated current is around 0.1 volts RMS. So if you know the amperage of the fuse and the impedance of the load you can estimate the distortion of a fuse outside the feedback loop. This will be mostly intermodulation distortion.

If you size an external fuse to protect the tweeter in a full range loudspeaker you will most likely be at a worst case value.

So a 1 amp fuse inline with an 8 ohm loudspeaker would drop 0.1 volts at a signal voltage of 8 volts. Or .1/8 which would be 1.25% distortion.

Inside a feedback loop the distortion would be reduced by the amount of small signal feedback at the frequency of interest. This could be several thousand at low frequency and might drop by half for each octave of frequency increase.

So a feedback of 1000 at 20 hertz would run out of corrective steam by 10,000 hertz. Good thing most amplifiers are better than that.

Also consider that at full power output all the other distortions creep up.

So it is possible that a fuse in an amplifier even feeding the mains rail can be perceived depending on the design.

It is likely that replacing fuses with copper slugs will reduce that distortion at the modest risk of allowing the gear to destroy itself or even burning down your abode.
 
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Audio signal is analogue. Any item (or connection) placed in the signal path will degrade the signal to a lesser or greater degree.

If you change an inexpensive component for a better quality one and don't hear a difference it's likely that component isn't the one restricting the quality of your signal.
 
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