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.
It makes a difference. I had the electrician run 3 20 A circuits to Furutech outlets. The extra wire and time for 2 additional runs did not add much to the cost. I have a line for each amplifier and the 3rd for everything else. In hindsight I might have done a 4th to separate the analog and digital components.
Keep it simple, don't worry about grounding or transformers. You can always figure that out later if you want the challenge.
I just had a similar experience when I had to replace an antiquated master breaker panel. So I figured while I had 3 electricians here, I’d have them run an isolated 20A line to my listening room. I bought audiophile receptacles to fill a quad box and it all went smooth. Yes, the weirdest thing was two ground circuits (one new, one replacing the old original to meet code). I now have some very nice copper decorating the rear wall of my home.
I certainly had no idea what to expect from this move. I was really gambling a bit because it’s not cheap to do this. However, my experience over the past 50 years as an audiophile and high-end retailer has taught me the TRUTH: thatany cable change causes changes in the final signal. So I was eager to get it going.
I use a big Odyssey Stratos DM power amp with the Mk II version of the Dynaudio Contour 60’s. Peachtree pre/DAC, streaming Qobuz.
To make a long story shorter, I listened critically every day and heard a slow but unmistakable improvement in all areas of sound quality we hold dear. In particular, the noise floor dropped audibly to blacker. It took about 30 days to plateau for me. I think it’s definitely worth it if you have an excuse like I did. Any audio freak doing new construction is even more insane if she doesn’t put it in the home’s elec specs.
Incidentally, my boss electrician did look at me sideways when I first told him what I wanted, but he didn’t even peep. His helper electricians seemed to stifle a smile as they ran the lines. They had a real sucker! I can only imagine what they would have said if I had asked for Cardas copper!
First, find an electrician that understands what you need.
Second, listen to jea48. He is the resident expert here.
Third, if you can afford it, get at least two dedicated lines. I have three. One for the amp. One for the analog components, and one for digital.
I did not put the audio system back in that I had prior to the dedicated lines, so sound wise I'm not 100% sure. But I plugged my TV into one of the dedicated lines and it was pretty easy to see the improvement - I'm pretty sure that this is a significant upgrade for my audio. In this hobby, everything matters. Many write in the archives that dedicated lines make a difference. Do it. And of course, enjoy.
Ha ha, Ever notice that all of Mr. Ohm's calculations are, "Proportional"?
It is not a law. It is still an unproven theory. Like I said. And It doesn't always work either. "Which is why it will stay unproven. You guys are going to believe what you wish to believe I guess. Hee hee.
Ah, hem, a theory once proved is a law. You know, like the expansion of the universe, theory of General Relativity, Einstein’s theory of gravitation, the speed of light = c, E=mc^2 Things of that nature.
In the 1850s, Ohm’s law was known as such and was widely considered proved, and alternatives, such as "Barlow’s law", were discredited, in terms of real applications to telegraph system design, as discussed by Samuel F. B. Morse in 1855.[13]
The electron was discovered in 1897 by J. J. Thomson, and it was quickly realized that it is the particle (charge carrier) that carries electric currents in electric circuits. In 1900 the first (classical) model of electrical conduction, the Drude model, was proposed by Paul Drude, which finally gave a scientific explanation for Ohm’s law. In this model, a solid conductor consists of a stationary lattice of atoms (ions), with conduction electrons moving randomly in it. A voltage across a conductor causes an electric field, which accelerates the electrons in the direction of the electric field, causing a drift of electrons which is the electric current. However the electrons collide with and scatter off of the atoms, which randomizes their motion, thus converting the kinetic energy added to the electron by the field to heat(thermal energy). Using statistical distributions, it can be shown that the average drift velocity of the electrons, and thus the current, is proportional to the electric field, and thus the voltage, over a wide range of voltages.
Theories are never proved. Ohms law holds in a ohmic device. Calling it a "law" was simply a convention it could have been called Ohms obersvation or Ohms theory.
I have three dedicated lines in my sound room. I’m running two Krell EV 600 monoblocks. Each has its own 20 amp circuit, with hospital grade outlets and 10 gauge wire. I’ve never tripped the breakers, but am more cautious with my hearing than I used to be. The rest of my room is on another dedicated 20 amp circuit. All are wired to the same side buss. I however do not have a dedicated ground. I’ve never experience any ground loops or hum and am very thankful.
He’s Not really correct. I’ve had huge improvements going to a dedicated circuit when OTHER ITEMS on that same circuit are noisy. Fluorescent lights, hair dryers, microwaves and vacuum cleaners are quite noisy and will cause visual (TV-projector) mouse as well as audible noise. A dedicated circuit can help in those cases.
A good wiring technique (USA) is to put the noisy items on one “leg” in the electrical panel and keep the audio items on the other “leg”. (In the USA, boxes are fed with dual 120V wires or “legs”; most circuits only use one, unless they are a 220V circuit. Air conditioners, stoves, air compressors, welders are 220V and all else is 110). The wiring strategy is to keep bathroom circuits (hair dryers) and living room / bedroom / hallway circuits (vacuum cleaners) and buzzy lighting circuits (fluorescent) on one leg and audio on the other.
His assumption in needing to run a new ground is based on issues with ground loops. If the length of wiring on all audio circuits to the box is the same, ground loops are often avoided until you introduce coaxial cable into the mix. Use isolators if that happens. RCA cables (subwoofers) also cause ground loops; in that case consider higher-end gear with XLR interconnects or use isolators on the sub RCA’s.
Also, high end gear can have huge current draw, especially with Class A gear. Sharing circuits can cause tripped breakers or blown fuses. If your lights dim and flicker during loud passages, you need a dedicated circuit.
Some Laws are meant to be broken. I broke two this morning and it’s not even lunchtime yet. But some theories have passed from theory to Law. To whit, the Laws of Thermodynamics. We also have F = ma
We are in the early stages of building a home, one with a "bonus room" above the garage for my "man cave".
Since we had all sorts of options to customize, I decided to have the builder install a dedicated 20 amp circuit to where my component rack with live. I'm not sure it'll make a difference, but what the heck, it can't make things sound worse.
I have an "all digital" source system, and I have found that the better control of the AC power, the better my DAC's perform. I upgraded my power conditioner from a PS Audio P10 to a P15, when the P15 became available, and the result was and immediate and significant improvement in the clarity of the bass, improvement in the sound stage and the sound seemed a little more "relaxed"...both with my PS Audio DirectStream DAC and my Mytek Brooklyn DAC.
So, I wouldn't discount the wisdom of installing dedicated AC lines, though I can't "prove" they make a difference, my experience with power conditioning was pleasant and unexpected.
I like the added point that Dimorra made regarding separation of components onto separate legs at the breaker box. When I did my setup, we specifically put the dedicated 20A "analog" circuits onto the second leg to keep them separate from the computers, servers, and LED lights. It has also helped to have three separate panels with all kitchen appliances, HVAC, and utility room on the other two panels. In my experience, I got the most improvement by getting as much separation as possible from electrically noisy home devices.
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.
@millercarbon I know you have taken more extreme measures in obtaining as perfect sound as you can out of your system. However, why is it that the finest audio system I’ve heard (as dozens of audio critics have concurred) was at audio shows plugged into hotel power circuits with no special grounding, breakers, etc.? The $1.4 million set-up had $400,000 in cabling alone but I didn’t see any special power features (or acoustical treatments).
My own attempts at resolving electrical and acoustical issues have been expensive but inferior (10 gauge wire, separate audio only dedicated power panel, Bryston BIT 20, SR Blue outlets, SR Blue fuses, 20 amp breakers, PPT products, separate lighting HVAC on other subpanel). Sometimes, a great system can sound great without any special power treatment, but it has to be really high end SOTA to do that.
And yet, there doesn’t seem to be any reports of audiophiles burning down their houses or of exploding high end amplifiers. Imagine that. Was it a Con Job by Con Ed? Is it a big coverup? You decide.
Find another electrician. Satisfaction is almost unanimous among those who have installed a dedicated line. Note: Noise reduction at the breaker panel really helps, and this is where to install surge suppression. Don't let the surges get into the house. Your electrician mentioned a "separate ground rod". This is illegal and almost impossible. He should have said: An ADDITIONAL ground rod. And ALL the ground rods must be connected together and attached to the ground buss in the panel (per NEC code). This reduces resistance to ground, which is desirable. Avoid such over opinionated people. Use someone who works with you, not against you.
We should take into account that the power feeding your house is effected by every other household tied into the same transformer grid, even with a dedicated line you are still subject to degradation caused by other customers, especially during peak hours of electrical consumption. An isolation transformer with line conditioning would work wonders essentially isolating your home from other homes, of course this is costly, I utilized some isolation transformers with filters in a couple of my systems which helped, I was experiencing humming sounds in many of my components with torodial transformers during peak hours and detected with an oscilloscope DC voltage riding along my A/C sine wave in my house. PS Audio and several other companies have made great effort to combat such voltage pollution.
Back in the day, when I was still on the grid, I employed capacitor banks plugged into many unused wall outlets around the house with power cords. The values of these capacitors are provided on the David Magnan Audio site. I even had a bunch of humongous oil filled caps from some decommissioned Navy comm installation.
I just installed a sub panel in my dedicated audio room which is a separate building from my house. I had to isolate the neutral wires in the sub panel and install a grounding rod, should I connect the grounding rod to the grounding rod on the main panel.
I bought all used equipment, but still a lot of money to me. I do not have a surge protector, I'll have to look into that in the near future. It does have 4 feeder wires, 2 hots a neutral and equipment ground. The neutral buss is isolated from the panel and the equipment ground buss is bonded to the panel.
First off you are the customer and he should not laugh at your request. That is rude and unprofessional. The main reason to have a separate 20A is so the system does not share the feeds to other devices. I was able to get the lights on the circuit to blink in time to the bass notes when I was replacing some wiring and had to move the system to a shared circuit. Would he laugh at having an AC unit on a separate circuit..no. Same thing. it is to insure the supply to the devices. Find another electrician.
The Electrician would have a point if reproducing music was equivalent to running an electric fan... A steady continuous current draw. The flaw in his argument can be summed up in one word. "Transients". A transient response is the factor that defines the excitement and immediacy of music... The attack of a snare or blast of brass, the power and agility of an amplifier to faithfully reproduce a notes colour or character at low frequency. A transient spike requires a current spike, ergo, restricting current restricts transients. If your thing is listening to sin wave signals through your system, then it's not an issue. If you listen to music, then open up the current supply as much as possible. That is why replacing at least the bottleneck of the jug cord your amp came with, even with a budget, glorified jug cord, can make a significant difference. I don't see the necessity of driving in a 2nd earth rod but running a 20A cable and fuse for your system should be a relatively cheap exercise and well worth a punt.
It appears as if your Electrician is not familiar with mission critical installations. I wonder if he would have laughed if you told him you were going to be running a computer that required a 99999 reliability rating.
There are many electricians out there however, they all don't have the same level of experience!
I am going to call BS on this, or at least poor measurement. A 10 foot long 18awg cord at 15 amps (well over rated current) would be about 2.5V. A much more typical connection for 15A would be 14awg, and say 6 feet or about a 0.6V drop and 9 watts if running flat out. Even class-A amps at 140W would not draw 15A. If you had 40w of losses, either your cable or outlet is going to get quite warm.
AC voltage drop is the voltage dropped from the wall to the input of the equipment in use. I’ve measured a loss of 40 watts on an amp that makes 140 watts, so no-one should be surprised that that might be audible as well. I used a 3 1/2 digit DVM to measure the voltage drop and it showed around 3 volts. This was a pretty standard but inexpensive Belden cord. A more expensive Belden cord with heavier gauge showed a lessor drop and more power out of the amp. So no mystery here.
Can't agree with this either. The main limitation in high frequency power delivery is not going to be the AC cord from the wall, but the power transformer either in the equipment or outside your house. Add resistance (or inductance) in series and you are going to soften those diode switching spikes and reduce the output noise of the power supply at high frequencies which is likely to be a bigger issue for most supplies than low frequencies which feedback can usually negate. There is a reason why Pass amps and other good quality amplifiers have inductance to slow down current delivery into the power supply. If you have enough capacitance and are not nearing the voltage peak of your amps in operation, I would guarantee most amplifiers have less distortion with a bit of resistance/inductance on the line.
If the power cord limits current during this period, the performance of the circuit using the power supply might suffer, possibly due to increased IMD since the DC might have a bit more of a sawtooth on it than if the current was not limited.
Where the dedicated line mainly comes in is noise rejection from other things that could be on the line and to prevent signal injection via a case ground voltage that varies in potential to signal ground with the draw on the AC line.
I don't remember ever saying I have an audio equipment company, which is not to say I have not been involved in the research, design, measurement, and professional evaluation (and I don't mean magazine review) of acoustic, electro-acoustic and electronic products in the audio sphere.
I don't have a problem with that. If I post something similar, I hope he does the same to me.
- If you are seeing 40W of losses on a 140W output amplifier, you are either using a power cord way too small for the application and unsafe, you have some serious non-normal contact resistance that is again generating unsafe losses that could cause enough heating to melt the plastic holding the contacts, or there was measurement error or a combination there-of. I don't think many people are using 10 foot, 18awg cables with massive Class-A amplifiers drawing 15 amps continuous, so this does not sound like a "real-world" condition as I noted. With an adequate cord for the maximum draw of the amp, 1/2V or less would be more typical.
- If you were measuring 3V RMS drop, the drop during current transfer be 3x that or more if the capacitor bank is bigger. Bigger the capacitor bank, worse the THD on the AC line (baring other circuitry to improve). It would be expected there would be a reduction in Output power.
- It is most definitely not a given that increased resistance on the AC line results in more IMD, especially if the amp is not driven into clipping:
since the DC might have a bit more of a sawtooth on it than if the current was not limited.
This is not what happens. The exact opposite happens, assuming the amp is not into clipping as I noted above. Adding resistance will smooth the voltage on the bulk DC capacitance because it increases the conduction angle from the AC line. This filters out high frequencies on the power supply rail, which is beneficial, and it reduces radiated noise on the AC lines by reducing the peak current draw and frequencies. Power supply ripple generally presents itself as THD, as you get components of the power supply frequency modulating with the audio signal. You may get IMD products from other non-linearities, but again, as the power supply rail is more stable, these will also be less if you are not clipping.
millercarbon, your system is sick to say the least. Mind if I ask about your background or career? What allowed you to get so tedious with the advanced and quite expense tweaks??
heaudio123"If you are seeing 40W of losses on a 140W output amplifier, you are either using a power cord way too small for the application and unsafe, you have some serious non-normal contact resistance that is again generating unsafe losses that could cause enough heating to melt the plastic holding the contacts, or there was measurement error or a combination there-of. "
There are actually multiple other explanations, possibilities, and causes of this problem, issue, and anomoly but you’re black and white, absolute, narrow way of examining, investigating, and exploring the issue blocks you’re conscious mind from considering the alternatives and this is a common, frequent, repeated problem in your perspectives and why the conclusions you reach, develop, and promote often lead to erroneous positions that you then seek to defend against all who dare question or challenge you. Open you’re mind up perhaps would be my suggestion.
millercarbon, your system is sick to say the least. Mind if I ask about
your background or career? What allowed you to get so ingenius with the
advanced and quite expensive tweaks??
Thanks. Appreciate the compliment. And the question.
The first book I remember reading, not counting the Encyclopedia Britannica (never quite read all of that) was Red Giants and White Dwarfs by NASA scientist Robert Jastrow. Since I had started with the Encyclopedia and since A is for Atom, etc, it was fascinating to learn where stars came from, how they formed and how mass is destiny. Stars fuse hydrogen into helium releasing energy and the rate at which this happens, how long it lasts, and what happens in the end is all determined by the initial mass of the star. https://www.amazon.com/Red-Giants-White-Dwarfs-Third/dp/0393850048 The school library had just gotten it in, it was 1969, and so I would have been 12 years old.
The next year I built a 6" reflecting telescope and started hanging around with Al George and the Tacoma Astronomical Society. Around this time I was riding my bicycle to Radio Shack listening to everything and learning about audio. By Jr high I had a pretty good stereo and a room with DIY acoustic panels and some time in high school built a Dynaco ST400 amp.
After college I built Roger Sanders ESL/transmission line speakers from his design in Speaker Builder. This was 1980. Then around the 90's, prime of life and with good income came a pretty decent period of time in which I went from tournament racquetballer to USCF Cat 3 criterium racer and RAMROD rider to accomplished marine aquarist, Porsche Club President and Driving Instructor, and builder/remodeler. That last part included designing and building my current listening room.
The listening room was my dream of a lifetime. Originally sucked into all the same vortex as everyone else I wanted a 5.1 HT system and so the room was designed around that. Only when I went shopping and listening turned out HT stuff is all crap. Absolute dreck. Not that I didn't try. Put a good couple years into the effort.
Then came Stewart Marcantoni, the best dealer I ever met. I took Stewart in when he first moved out here to the PNW and introduced him to the area. Stewart took me in and mentored me in high end audio. Thanks to Stewart I was able to experience more outstanding gear than most guys can ever dream of, and was introduced to Ted Denney (Synergistic), Caelin Gabriel (Shunyata), and was even able to attend CES as a vendor one year. I knew DJ Casser and was the Washington State dealer for Black Diamond Racing for several years. More or less obsessed with audio I demo'd BDR Cones in probably 50 to 100 different peoples systems, and auditioned systems at just about every decent stereo store along the I5 corridor from Portland to north of Seattle.
All during this time thanks to my extensive and wide ranging background in science and technology it was easy to separate the wheat from the chaff and the science from the bull. Or so I thought. Sometimes the scientific explanation really does make sense and work. But then again often times not. Stewart helped me greatly in this. Time and again he would play me some insanely good sounding cable and I would ask how in the world? And he would reply very blase, "Oh he puts some dust or something in there, I don't know..." Which honestly one time was true- Caelin really did put some dust inside a conditioner! I have a bag of it at home still!
So that is my experience, Cliff Notes version. All I care about is the sound- and since I'm not made of money, how to get the very best sound for the money. When I say in my System description that its based on the philosophy that everything matters and no one component matters more than any other, that's not hyperbole or cliche. I mean every word of it. Only my understanding of what is a component drills down to every diode, cap and inch of wire.
I had a dedicated line with 14 AWG wire that I recently upgraded with a 8 AWG line and noticed very positive differences. I followed the advice of Vince Galbo of MSB (see the article here: https://www.msbtechnology.com/faq/how-to-wire-your-house-for-good-power/). He seems to know what he is talking about. I was using a Synergistic Research PC 12 SE conditioner and an Active Ground Block SE and still was able to improve on the sound. His article is very comprehensive and I can confirm his findings. The only thing I did differently is using Perfect Path Technology Total Contact instead of his recommended Silver Paste. Hope that helps.
Hi tvad i used an outlet that came with my PC 12 conditioner, they call it the black outlet. It accepts up to 10 gauge. The electrician used a reducer to go from 8 to 10 gauge. I then used a 2-gang box with a dummy outlet (not connected) to make sure I had enough room to maneuver the wires, they are really thick.
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