Dedicated Lines and Wall Boxes
Dbid, Steel is CONDUCTIVE, plastic is not. That means installing more than one electrical outlet within the wall box (say 2, 3, 4 or 6 gang), grounds are not connected through the walls of the box. If you don't understand why that is bad, there are countless threads here at Audiogon about dedicated lines, dedicated and/or preferential ground and isolated ground. In addition to that, steel is magnetic and can contribute to the sound. This is why some designers of high end stereo gear use non magnetic chassis parts such as aluminum, copper and carbon fiber. |
George. They should be available, I've seen them at Home Depot. A quick search using Google I found these, brass covers If not exactly what you want, a search or two should find them. |
Marc, are you asking about room acoustics so you can place the electrical to match or what? I am no expert on acoustics. I had a lot of help with my room. I did get one piece of advice that seemed logical and everyone could try at no charge. While sitting in the preferred seat and speaker placed in ideal spot (I use George Cardas formula) have a helper slide a full length mirror along the wall. Every place you can see the speaker from your listening chair is a reflection point. Now granted that does not give you a formula to treat the room, but If your going to place absorptive panels along a wall, they should be in a spot where they stop that first reflection. As for electrical in general, is the room under construction? If so, I would add as many lines as possible. They are CHEAP when the room is open and a pain in the butt later on. |
I am not known for harsh responses and certainly did not think my reply was anything more than factual. Metal boxes conduct and plastic ones do not. Steel is magnetic and plastic is not. More specifically to your reply, what if isolated outlets are used in a steel box? Then the grounds wouldnÂ’t be sharedÂ…right? That's true, but I have not found an outlet with isolated ground that sounds as good and even if substituting isolated outlets, that still does not deal with the issue of magnetics and the sound of a steel outlet box. The magnetic part of the question is also still obscure to me. There are no complicated parts inside the outlet box and no music signal, so how does a magnetic field there affect the sound, and is there actually a magnetic field in the box? Correct, there is no music signal. However, the electricity flowing through the box, outlet and power cords is part of the power supply of your equipment. The special care and feeding via better parts in those places pays off musically. Anyway, what I was proposing was a cheap $1.69 solution by way of plastic outlet box. I stated my opinion that they had two strengths over their metal counterpoint. Granted it would make no sense to tear apart ones home and pull out metal boxes, but most of the time the topic is ADDING new dedicated lines for as stereo. Perhaps the question should be "Why do you prefer metal boxes?' My bias comes from listening to both types of boxes and dozens of outlets as I experimented with my own system. What I wound up with is 14 dedicated lines with my outlets, preferential grounds and everything (except the breaker box) installed in plastic boxes (even the 240V runs). By the way, I totally agree with your comment to Marc about getting help with his room acoustics. Acoustics is the "other half" of the stereo and can make or break all the electrical efforts. |
