I designed the electrical distribution for Fremers house. I have done as such for 80 or so houses. There is a lot of correct information in this thread. And some that is wrong. Jea48 is correct on most everything he says. You have to look at it from a Code perspective. Mikelavigne setup using Equitech is code legal and very safe. It is not in a residence. A residence is any structure where sleeping, bathing and cooking are available. Mikes stand alone structure only has sleeping and bathing so its not a residence. As such he does not need AFCI. There is no kitchen in the listening room so he does not need GFCI. Technical power 60/60 is not legal in a residence, but it can be used in non residential structures. The outlets are supposed to have a label stating their is voltage on the neutral to keep an electrician safe who might otherwise feel it is not a live wire.
I fully agree a good isolation transformer is a must for most all high quality installation. I am a representative for Torus Power. It is the only product line I carry outside the panels and grain oriented twisted wire I make. I selected Torus as their isolation transformers have 120 or 240 volt in and 120 or 240 volt out, up to 100Amps.
I am going to circle around a little here. As for Fremers with a single leg of power to your gear. You absolutely only want to use 1 leg to ensure the voltage to all equipment is exactly the same. It is very audible when 1 leg is used compared to 2. If you look at the way electricity works in a wire, there is a halo of magnetism and electrons that emanate out from the wire. EMF. That halo will interact with any other wire with voltage and current in close proximity or with magnetic metal such as a steel beam, steel gas pipe, steel wall framing, EMT tubing, Steel MC cable jacket. I don't want a second wire in a pvc pipe that is not going to be used interacting with the primary phase conductor and neutral, so I left it out a Fremers. I was not able to get a letter from SqD stating their panel is rated to operate at 120 volt only, so we put it in later. In response to this hickup, I now have a fully custom panel manufactured for me that is pure uncoated copper on the phase, neutral and ground and the panel is listed and UL labeled for 120 volt only. You can not put 240 volt to this panel.
Circling back around to isolation transformers. This is the perfect marriage of technology. Torus makes a large 100A isolation transformer that puts out a single leg of 120 volts with a neutral and ground that feed directly to my all copper panel that is listed and labeled for 225A at 120 volts only. This is also important in that, lets say every 120 volt breaker in your house has to be an AFCI. There is no AFCI that is rated for 60/60 technical power. I believe there are GFCI that are rated for 60/60 volts. They defiantly work at 240 volt as that is what powers my hot tub. It really comes down to, is there enough demand the manufacturer will spend the money to get it tested and listed, and can they sell enough to make it worth their while.
I do not like multiple isolation transformers. You will never have the exact same voltage out of 2 separate transformers. You might at well run 2 phases. And from extensive testing in the field, I can tell you, you only want 1 phase. Period.
I really don't understand where Erik gets the idea the grounding I did was extravagant. Its code??????? Go read NEC Article 250.
I started my business for a couple reasons. The first was I am an audiophile and I was seeing so much Crap misinformation on the internet if pissed me off. I wanted to set people straight and get correct information out there.
The second was the level of performance gains I was able to get at my own and at friends houses. I have been an electrician since 1995. I have worked in hospitals, data centers, towers, industrial facility. I have been a PM and estimator for a large union contractor. I have worked for Square D and still have good friend there. I have owned my own union electrical shop and employed people wiring restaurants and high end residential homes. I have been around a bit. As such, I was able to start tweaking the power to my stereo and listening to the results. Once I had a good bearing and assumptions of what and why certain techniques worked better than other, I took the lessons to friends houses. I would apply changes one at a time and have the owner listen. Then I would come back and make another, and so on. Through about 5 houses I validated some fundamental techniques that brought very high performance to their audio and video systems. They always noted on the side their TV were much more vivid and alive.
Don't think I am doing this all on my own either. Technically all I have done is drill down on precision installation of fundamental principals of electron flow. I have read countless white papers and books on the subject. I have take specialized classes on grounding. I do what I can to keep up to date with code changes and what manufacture are producing that work well with my techniques. There is nothing vodo or tweak in what I do. It is applying stringent techniques that are based on fundamental electron theory formulated over hundreds of years by people such as Edison and Tesla. Then refined by people such as Bill Whitlock or Ralph Morrison.
Fremers electrical kicks butt. He had Gryphon monoblocks there to review and the Gryphon rep said his was one of the only rooms he has been in that the amps were not starved. Fremer also has grain oriented solid core 10 awg branch wire. I heard about this wire through Garth Powell. Garth made the wire for Fremers room. I looked into what it was and why it occurs. I kept some left over wire from Fremers and made a tool with it where I can test wire myself and determine the crystal structure in it as pulled through dies and sized to its final gauge.
All things matter to some degree or anther in audio. Some more so than others. If you want to say its all hogwash and power your system of a 14 awg wire that feeds the whole living room and maybe the lights too, go ahead. You can still enjoy your stereo. If you just put a 12 awg dedicated wire to the rack you will hear it. Make it a 10 you will hear it again. Grain orient and twist it and you will hear it again. If you house is grounded per code minimum by a guy who did not really think through grounding, and 0 electrician have, you might hear a large difference when its done right. Or, you might hear little to nothing. It depends on how poorly it was done in the first place. When I design a house I look at everything. I look at the service strike, the meter equipment on the wall, the panels, how those panels are made up, the grounding, the branch circuits, how they are run, the boxes in the wall (what and how they are landed) the duplex wiring, the integration of data for streaming. Get any of this less than ideal and sure, its going to work. But your leaving a little performance here and there. Leave enough out or make mistakes and you could end up develop ground loops or injected noise issues you don't want.
Per the OP post, the grounding I did is code minimum, but applied very well. If you have a stereo with a stand alone preamp, amps, server, DAC, phono equipment, you want it all on 1 phase. If you only have a headphone rig or an integrated unit and speaker, then you only have 1 plug. It does not matter the phase you select. Most of the noise is on the neutral so all this talk about finding the quiet phase is kind of mute. Ground the house properly and you will shunt most noise to earth. Yes you can get rid of noise. Noise is not just RF. Its Milivolts and possibly volts of current riding around on your equipment. That noise and some RF will go to earth if you put your panels together, ground and run your branches properly.
Rex
