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How many dedicated lines are enough?

Until a day ago I thought two dedicated lines with 30 amp breakers, 10 guage solid core Romex was all I needed, plus a couple of Shunyata power conditioners and power cords and a few HiFI supreme fuses.

I isolate my Depth sub and Audio Aero cd player on a separate dedicated line with both plugged into a Hydra two.

The turntable, Pre/phono nand tiny 2 watt power amp were plugged into a Hydra 8 on the other line,same phase of the panel of course.

Just for something to try ,I set up a third dedicated line ,this time with a 20 amp breaker, same Romex for my 2 watt power amp.
The amp has a HiFi Supreme fuse and old vintage RCA rectifier, but other than that it's stock.The amp uses a Shunyata Annaconda Helix power cord and it's plugged into a Shunyata Venom recptacle at the end of the dedicated line.

The results were more than positive, perhaps just getting the amp out of the power conditioner, hydra 8 was the answer.I used to think the amp sounded better in the Hydra 2,but since we're only dealing with 2 watts I didn't think that there would be much difference, so my plan was to filter and isolate the CD player the way that I did and plug the amp into the Hydra 8, keeping it all analog.

I am curious if others have had similar results using numerous dedicated lines and further isolating the components?

So far for me,the cd player needs to be on it's own line,then the amp, and then a third line for everythingelse seems to be the best solution.

I did try everything plugged into the Hydra 8 on one dedicated line and didn't like it .
lacee
levy03
442 posts
 
more is always better =). unfortunately my electrician blew me away with the estimate for what i wanted. retrofitting my 50 year old house's basement with the 8 dedicated lines i had hoped for was a budget buster (new panel box and tearing up almost all the walls). ended up getting 2 installed fairly inexpensively at $800. use one for HT and the other for 2 channel. added a psa quintet to keep things as isolated as possible. i definitely noticed a difference even with two.

would have liked eight but ended up with two. still very happy.
lacee OP
811 posts
 
Thanks folks, nice to see the responses and that others have found that the minimum seems to be three lines.

I am glad I made the effort to add the extra line, it's made quite the improvement.

Too bad Levy03 can't find a less costly electrician or another way around the problem.

I know of some people who have added on a pony panel and then run dedicated short lines from it for far less money and less wall damage.
magfan
1,583 posts
 
I made do with a single additional line for amp / sub.

The other gear is plugged in thru a power conditioner with several banks of dedicated outlets, including the digital gear thru a 400va iso transformer.
tom6897's avatar
tom6897
1,484 posts
 
Levy03 give me a call,

I just put in 10 dedicated lines myself. Got the directions off of that internet....Wait what was that noise????..... I smell smoke!!!! Gotta Run! :>)
lissnr
365 posts
 
I agree with the general idea of "The more, the better". It's now common knowledge that you'll be separating digital from the rest but as others here have mentioned, giving amps their own line separate from pre-amp and other components allows high-current demands to have their own "Source-way" without interfering with all else. Also like some others I managed to create a separate sub-panel for audio use only where I have a total of 7 dedicated 20 amp lines for all audio equipment plus an additional 3 dedicated 15 amp lines for lighting, HVAC,ceiling fans, etc...anything not "component active". Plenty of fresh, clean power is always a good thing, of course! Good luck with your system.
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