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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
jea48
4,425 posts
 
the_treble_with_tribbles38 posts  

05-14-2020  
 8:24pm


@jea48 mentioned using Al wire instead of Cu, I would be interested to learn why.
@ the_treble_with_tribbles

Copy of post please.


Jim
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falconquest's avatar
falconquest
1,108 posts
 
I had the Romex wire from some long ago project on the basement shelf. I knew the work involved so one day I found some ambition, drilled the necessary holes and pulled the wire. I then bought the best breaker I could find and connected it to the panel. I used a good quality outlet and had my own dedicated 20 amp circuit for the cost of the outlet and the breaker. Oh, and lots of sweat and sawdust all over me (and the clean-up). I run my system through a balanced power unit which cleans up the AC and supplies consistent pure power to my system. it is dead quiet. I consider myself lucky that I am able to this but it is not hard. Most of it is just plain old manual labor. If you want to hear a bunch of discussion about N.E.C. just mention balanced power and electricians go crazy. I just smile and hit play! 
djones51
4,947 posts
 
Aluminum wire is used mostly in large guages into the main panel or a subpanel. You need to use a grease on it as well. Aluminum was used for a time during the 1960's wiring entire houses, copper was scarce because of the Vietnam war. I used to own a house built in 1967 wired entirely with aluminum wire. 
jhills
615 posts
 
Don't get me wrong, I completely believe that Audio components should not be in a circuit that is shared by appliances. I also believe high current amps usually work best plugged directly into a wall receptacle and on a dedicated circuit, or at least one shared by only a few low current devices. Follow your manufactures recommendations, but generally (unless you have old or bad and not up to code wiring) you do not need to re-wire your house to find a clean circuit/circuits to run your audio gear...Jim 
jhills
615 posts
 
Back in the old days (I can say that now) in the early 50s, our family home was wired with old stranded aluminum, textile insulated wires; one hot and one neutral with no ground. They all ran under the house from joist to joist through glass insulators. Every time we ran the toaster and about anything else, it would blow one of the old screw in fuses and dad would have to go to the basement with a flash light and screw in a new fuse. Sometime around the mid 60s I helped my father and uncle re-wire the whole house and put in a 30A, 220V (back then actually was 220V) circuit for mom's new dryer  - Thank God and science for Romex....Jim  
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