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 jaybecker61

In my new home I first tried a sub panel with a whole house surge protector, dedicated 20 amp circuit, 12 gauge wire and Furutech receptacles, which definitely helped but got me nowhere near the black backgrounds, voltage stability and dynamics I had in a private recording studio I built years ago. 
So I did what I did in that long-gone studio and ran a dedicated 240v circuit with 6 gauge wire feeding an Equitech balanced power system sized for my system.  5kw in this case vs. the 7.5kw I had in the studio. I’m a very happy camper once again. 
If you choose to go down this path, do your own research on whether you can meet code for a “technical” balanced power installation. There is a white paper on the Equitech website. You might also talk to the guys at Vintage King about balanced power. They supply many studios with both new and classic gear. 
Just my 2 cents...