Electrician Coming Over What to Do?

I'm an Electrician by trade and basically I agree with everything Natalie said.

I sold a couple pricey power conditioners after putting in six dedicated I.G. 20 amp circuits in my home.

If you want to know what else I think on this subject matter do a search on some of my "tech talk" threads.

Be forewarned I only have 20+ years of experience and can't compete with others having infinite knowledge of this subject matter.

Hey Natalie how long have you been an electrician?

Stehno, If you feel a power conditioner is still needed then your Electricain did not do a good job.
The point of an dedicated line is to have power with no noise on the circuit from other gear. So once this is done. What will the conditioner do. Make the power 1% better Maybe.
I have heard many a great system without the aid Of Power Conditioning. If your gear needs it to sound good I would suggest Better made Gear.

Natalie, I was the electrician for most of the work done. I noticed vast improvements with each incremental step. More than I thought possible.

So what did I do wrong?

Several weeks ago, I removed my amplifier's passive in-line power conditioner (an LC-2 by Foundation Research which retails for $900) from the mix. In place, I removed the outlet pulled my 10 gauge 99.95% OFC romex about 3 feet out of the wall and attached a cryo dipped Hubbell 20 amp IEC to the end and plugged it directly into the amp. Service Panel, 10gauge romex, hubbell audio grade IEC, amp. It doesn't get much more streamlined than that.

Immediately, I noticed an increase in sibilance, a raised noise floor, and slightly less purity to the higher frequencies. I undid the mod and put the Foundation Research LC-2 back into place between the outlet and the amp. Everything was better.

So tell me: What did I do wrong? I'm all ears.

Unless somebody is getting extremely clean AC from the pole(which is almost nobody), a GOOD power conditioner will always benefit.

Now, to give you a little credit: If one does not have dedicated lines, then it is easier to compare the difference between conditioned and non-conditioned AC. The dedicated lines do help minimize noise from appliances, dimmers, and digital sources, etc..

You may have heard 'many a great system without the aid of Power Conditioning', but I am confident in saying that without power conditioning alls you were hearing was a decent sound coming from a great system. Now to your ears maybe they sounded great too. But without proper AC conditioning, you were not hearing all that they had to offer.

But I still go back to my earlier statement about those who claim power conditioners do nothing for dedicated lines. 1. They either don't know what they are talking about. AND/OR 2. Their equipment is such that they really cannot tell the difference. Okay maybe a 3rd item. Perhaps their power conditioner isn't all that it was cracked up to be.

Can you guess which one I think you qualify for?

-IME

Glen I am Not. I am a Technical Sales Rep Selling goods that need clean power to operate properly. Mostly common sense.

I don't know how I missed Sean's post? Perhaps we were typing at the same time? Anyway I agree with a lot of what Sean has to say except for the one paragraph about putting all the audio gear on one phase and re-arranging the panel to suit.

Re-arrange breakers in a panel can create an unbalanced load on the neutral. This is a known cause of electrical fires. Many times circuits are brought out of a panel in pairs utilizing one neutral (i.e. 12/3 romex)

When you start swapping things around in a panel it is easy to accidentally put two circuits that are sharing one neutral on the same phase. A neutral that was once engineered to carry the unbalanced load of two circuits is now carry the full load of the same two circuits (this is pretty basic theory) and can easily exceed it's ampere rating.

Most thorough electricians will run a dedicated neutral with each hot eliminating the need to gang all circuits on one phase or juggle circuits in the panel. I personally always pull two grounds in order to maintain the integrity of the I.G. system too.

Other than that I think Sean makes some good suggestions.

Hey where's Bob and Albert this threads starting to heat up :^)