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Dedicated 20 amp circuit - Electrician laughed!

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. 
dtximages
frubes
1 posts
 
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.
fleschler
2,021 posts
 

@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.
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
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.
rilbr
100 posts
 
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. 
alexaudio
1 posts
 
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.
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