Outlets and Wire Gauge? - Please help!

cleeds, et al.,

Mia culpa, you certainly may run 10awg wire from a 20 amp breaker to a special 20 amp outlet that will accommodate that wire size.  You will not gain any more amperage as the circuit breaker will only allow roughly 20 amps.  If your wire run is really long, you will have less voltage loss with 10awg.  A 50-foot run of 12awg will lose 3.95V, while the same length of 10awg will lose 2.49V.  I overstated/misstated the safety issue. 

Cheers

This is just basic outlet wiring practices and how to follow electrical codes.

A 15-amp circuit should be wired with 14 ga. only.  Using larger ga. wire is a fools errand.  In this situation, you can basically overload the circuit and not trip your protective circuit breaker in your service panel.

A 20-amp circuit should be wired with 12 ga. only.  Same thing applies as above.

Whether or not an outlet can physically be wired with a larger conductor/gauge wire is unsafe and is an electrical code violation.

Using multiple outlets to the same room location on different circuits is an invitation for ground loops.  In an attempt to avoid ground loops, you should locate those circuit breakers on different bus locations in your service panel prior to finalizing their locations.  You may need to re-arrange them, so leave the service panel cover off until you ensure that you don't have a ground loop.  If/when you are successful, then you can break-off the service panel breaker covers at their finalized locations.

Just because someone else wires their breakers/outlets with oversized wire doesn't make it right.

izjjzi,

I am running all audio equipment on a regular 12awg/20 amp circuit with the following:

2 mono blocks with power output specs of 350W @ 8ohms/540W @ 4ohms. They each can swing 40 amps symmetrical & 52.6V RMS @8ohms. These are plugged in to the same duplex outlet.

A subwoofer via a class D amp, Preamplifier, HDA PC, Turntable, etc.  All on the same circuit.

You can do this!

invalid,

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..."A 20 amp circuit can handle a lot more than 20 amps for short durations of time, which is why 10awg wire works better especially for high powered amplifiers that can cause the voltage to drop considerably."

I would agree with half of the above statement.  The 10awg wire can certainly handle more than 20 amps but not so much for the 20 amp breaker.  There probably is a +margin for amperage draw but not much.  Fortunately for my purpose, I did install a typical dedicated 20 amp outlet in my listening room.  This run from service panel to outlet is only 25'.  I have never detected any sign of low voltage behavior.  

You may have equipment that is more susceptible to voltage supply demands or the like.  I am certain that your power set-up gives you some confidence and that does matter.  That checks off that box!

Best listening!

Thanks for your input

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A significant and possibly not discussed/presented in this discussion thread is the relative amount of AC power draw from the AC mains line of the power amplifiers in use.  As we all realize, the amplifiers each of us use are not created equal in this regard. In "erik_squires" latest post stated " My modest 100WPC integrated just doesn't stress the circuit very much."

This is so true; I am fortunate to be operating a pair of mono blocks that their AC power draw from the AC mains line is relatively small.  

I would encourage "izjjzi" to investigate his amplifier(s) power draw with his loud speakers.