Before you do any of this determine if you really need to. Get a good quality multimeter (Fluke) and set at a suitable scale/resolution to determine if you have any voltage drop while using your equipment. Your amp will certainly be your highest current draw AND the current draw will go up when you push the amp to high volumes especially if you have inefficient speakers. There is really not much point in turning it up to volumes that you would never listen, but if you want a good indicator - turn it up. A good amp with a good power supply and plenty of capacitor storage will handle the transients - that's part of their job. You don't need to have split second resolution, but if you see the voltage slowly dropping even a couple or few volts then you might be affecting the amps performance and a remedy might make sense. Sometimes a new, high amperage subpanel close by can be a better and easier fix especially if your main panel is a distance away. If the wire turns out to be too lite at least the electrician won't have far if the sub-panel is near by.
Installing dedicated 10 gauge lines
Everyone keeps saying how important it is to have a dedicated 10 gauge line from your breaker box to your amp (I have a Diablo 300), and a second one to your source components (primarily an InnuOS Zenith Mk 3 streamer/Roon core).
I would love to do this, but isn’t this a major expense, like $15k or more? Does all the drywall back to the breaker box need to be ripped out to install the new lines?
Sorry if these are dumb questions. If the answer to the above is yes and yes, this project definitely won’t get past my wife!
As an aside, on the same 15A circuit, I have my amp, streamer, a Mac Mini that is normally on, my TV, video game consoles, and a network switch. So, obviously not ideal but out of all of these the only things that are on while I’m listening to music, beyond my amp and streamer, are the Max Mini and the network switch which supplies network connections to my tv and game consoles.
Hoping installing the dedicated line installation somehow doesn’t require drywall ripping and replacement?
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- 43 posts total
- 43 posts total