@gphill do whatever you fell is best for you.
I'm not trying to argue with anyone here, however, ground loops occur if there is a voltage potential between the neutral and ground wires.
The only difference between the two hots coming into a home is the phase difference in the AC legs. However, when that AC is converted to DC the PHase difference goes completely away.
That is it.
As I mentioned previously, sometimes people would connect to a hot leg that has noisy equipment connected to it or the grounding scheme in some audio equipment was improperly designed which causes ground loop issues.
Dedicated lines have the hot, neutral and ground go back to the service panel without sharing. All circuit neutrals tie together at the service panel and all grounds tie together at the service panel.
If the leg has noisy components (AND) the internal power supply of certain audio equipment isn't up to snuff to eliminate noise properly, then, you MAY have noise. if the grounding scheme in a particular audio equipment isn't designed properly (star ground, etc.), then you MAY have a ground loop.
But, like I said before, connecting to two legs is okay as long as you know what is on the legs. Connecting everything to one leg is fine as long as you don't have arc welder amps that unbalance the system (noise anyone?) by drawing too much on one leg and unbalancing the system.
This is why Refrigerators, microwaves, electric washing machines, etc. as connected as balanced loads on home systems.
But I can tell you that people that claim to hear differences between all on one leg of split leg service, didn't do A/B comparisons (kind of hard to do that) and if they did, there was something else that caused the problem. like a really noisy equipment that was on that particular leg or worse, some audio component that didn't have a properly designed ground scheme.
In older equipment you would find the signal ground (for audio) and the chassis ground was connected. not a good idea is it? Many people know that now but back then? not so much. Or there were multiple signal ground points in a circuit instead of star grounding at the same point (physically). Literally asking for a ground loop or hum problem. Has nothing at all to do with which AC leg was used.
In my experience, I have never seen an issue with all low level components tied to a decent power conditioner and then to a dedicated line and separate amps tied to their own dedicated line.
I have however many times found ground loops by the following method.
unplug everything. Connecting the amp and speakers together only and turn the amp on. Noise? yes, amp is the problem. No? then connect the pre-amp to the amp/speaker combination. Noise? yes, pre-amp or (interconnect cables) is the problem. see where I'm going with this?
Anyway, enjoy you system. I know you will.
