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Dedicated 20 amp circuit - Electrician laughed!

I brought my electrician out to my house today to show him where I would like to install a dedicated 20a circuit for my system.  He laughed and said that's the stupidest thing he's heard and laughs when people talk about it.  It said, if you're going to do it, you have to have it separately grounded (shoving a new 8 foot rod into the ground) but even then, he sees no way there can be an audible improvement.

Now, he's not just an electrician though. He rebuilds tube amps on the side and tears apart amps and such all the time so he's quite well versed in audio electronics and how they operate.

He basically said anyone who thinks they hear a difference is fooling themselves.  

Personally, I'm still not sure, I'm no engineer, my room's not perfect, and I can't spend hours on end critical listening...  But, he does kinda pull me farther to the "snake oil" side and the "suggestive hearing" side (aka, you hear an improvement because you want to hear it).

I'm not taking a side here but I thought it was interesting how definitive he was that this not only WILL not make a difference but ALMOST CANNOT make a difference. 
dtximages

Showing 1 response by frubes

frubes
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I had an upgraded home theater power line put in when we bought our 1962 house a year ago.  We had to replace the whole electrical wiring system based on age: NOWHERE near current code; age of the wires and the breaker box; size of the wires, nothing but the breaker box was grounded, most outlets had only two prongs, those with 3 weren't grounded!.  <shudder> Scary!

We ran 20A Romex everywhere for the 110VAC, but used 15A breakers, except the home theater got a 20A breaker.  I don't know if there is an audible difference because all the work was done before we moved in last year.  But I know the shared 15A circuit we had in my condo wasn't cutting it.  I had to make sure the lamps, clocks, everything and anything else was on a different circuit to keep from popping the breaker.  Movies or music, no problems.  And since it was done as part of the whole house rebuild (power, water, HVAC), the cost of one breaker upgrade is insignificant.
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