One would think spending money on dedicated lines to your audio gear is foolish and the last thing you want to spend money on but I would recommend it to be first inline. Sure it’s easy to purchase cables and whatever else imaginable and I’m certainly in the same league. But what I can say is after chasing what’s going to make a difference, I found you have to start with the source. If your gear isn’t happy with a good feed, you’ll never notice any other changes you make(at least to a lesser degree). I just had an electrician run 2 dedicated circuits with solid copper awg10 and I connected them to Maestro outlets and initially I thought it was a waste of money. Well, it took about an hour before the new circuits started to settle in and that’s when the magic started to happen. There was more separation between the instruments, everything sounded more real and lifelike and dynamic. It appeared as though the overall volume was a bit less but really what I heard is less background “hash” which makes for a more enjoyable listening experience. Certain instruments have more attack and separation. Bass is tighter and seems to dig a bit deeper. I know this sounds crazy but I think my amp is now very happy with a good solid power source and now I think changing cables may make more of a difference.

Rick

I've been preaching about this for years. I did it because I happened to have a dedicated conduit going from a new(ish) circuit breaker to my Home Theater/Listening room, and I decided to run a dedicated 10AWG home run to a dedicated lab grade orange outlet. I stumbled into a good deal on a spool of the same wire that Steve uses in his Zen Styx speaker wire, except 10AWG (Steve uses 8awg), so I ran all the lines using that.

The improvement was immediate - I was kind of stunned at how blacker the background seemed to be in my music, in what I already thought was a very black background.

My electrician friend looked at me like I was crazy when I asked to run 3/4" conduit and explained I was going to run 10AWG Silver plated wire all for a 30watt amp and Blu-Ray player - but he did the work.

Later I asked another electrician (actually a few) to measure my impedance to ground at the circuit panel, and help me add a second (or even third) grounding rod in the yard closer to the lower portion of soil that's always damp, then re-measure the impedance; Two rolled their eyes at me and stopped returning my calls, and the third scowled at me while scolding me for wasting his time and stomped off.  I guess they were so against what I was trying to do, they wouldn't even take money to do it!

Anyways, I found that improving the ground bonding between your panel and ground (most houses just have a tiny wire going to a water pipe), as well as adding grounding rods in damp soil, lowers your impedance to ground, and gives the noise a path of least resistance *away* from your gear lowering your noise floor.

I still want to add another grounding Rod, but moving the panel grounding off the corroded pipes and onto a proper ground rod made a noticeable improvement. I just have no measurements to prove it was better than before due to lack of help from actual electricians.

Just from what I read that 10awg is recommended. I have no real explanation because it seems overkill but if you’re paying an electrician labor to pull the cable, he don’t care what the gauge is you just pay a little more for heavier copper. Yeah and of course you have to deal with a glazed stare from the electrician as to why 10awg on an amp that only draws a few amps. My electrician told me stranded is better in transferring current which it may very well be but I had him run solid copper. He also said the 10awg won’t fit the outlets. I handed him the Maestros and said “it will fit these”.  Anyway, I always wanted to upgrade my fuse box with breakers and so I thought this is my opportunity to add the dedicated circuits. No regrets here, it’s that noticeable of a difference.

Rick

a separate ground from the main ground can actually cause whole house ground loop problems, and I remember reading somewhere can cause Electrical Code issues in some places.

If it works for your setup, then stick with it, just know it can cause problems.

Actually, I have to agree with that LR. The house AC ground should/must be referenced to one ground only. I remember discussing this with an electrical engineer long ago. Giving more than one path to ground could work against the idea of having a breaker would react properly or at all in some situations.

You will get no argument from me. In my Lino Lakes house...I had a dedicated line with Hubbell receptacle box....their was a difference.

I will know come Spring if I'm heading to McAllen TX to wear flip flops in my version of Margaritaville, .....so a dedicated line goes in there or here next summer.

1) Though I agree that the P10 may be "overkill" in some ways it does produce a much, much lower output impedance. That made a big sonic difference in my system compared to a Power Plant Premier or P5, both of which I lived with for considerable stretches of time. Sound with the P10 was significantly better.

My mistake, the resistance is measured between the neutral and ground. Another phone call to Alan and he said it should be way less than 1 ohm. Like .01 or even better .001 ohms. I measured .1 ohms. He also said to measure for leakage voltage on the neutral so if you measure voltage from neutral to ground it should be minimal. I have 325 millivolts ac riding on my neutral which he said is not too bad. I didn’t ask if I should be looking at ac or dc volts. Lol. Seems like I’ve opened a can of worms here that can really require a lot more testing than most people are able to test with a simple meter. Alan suggested I try his RFI EMI wraps around the pipe that the incoming ac lines to the house come in before they feed the circuit box. Seems like he has some interesting noise reduction products but without really having a good technical procedure to follow, it may seem like I’m just trying various things that should reduce noise in the power feeding the gear.  :-?

Rick

I'm not doubting the benefit, and I've also heard this advice from another audiophile, but I'm wondering exactly why this helps so and why this is better than an APC SmartUPS, which I have and could use for the Decware Rachael amp.  I guess another similar one is Panamax which may be more of a power conditioner than an UPS and put out a better sine wave than an APC SmartUPS.

Even with a dedicated circuit, if the A/C starts and the water heater kicks in at the very same time, won't there be a fluctuation?  I do understand the benefit of upgrading the wire.  The electrician here understood the benefit of over-sizing wire, he told me the amount of electricity wasted in all the homes because of the wiring is enormous, so I had a higher gauge than called for with the A/C and the water heater and my 5kw PV system, but that was for efficiency.

I also have an analogy that works for my brain. I have tried a few electric welders over the years, and ended up with a preference that is a unit that is overbuilt for my needs. 100% duty cycle, and quality throughout allow me not to think too much about the machine, but concentrate on the job at hand. Sure the lesser units will do the job, but there is a difference in the final product in more than one way.

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What little I know about electric comes from household needs.  I was under the impression that a 20 amp circuit, i.e., 20 amp breaker, would trip somewhere in that vicinity.  I keep hearing about huge audio peaks but if they draw more than the 20 amps, won't the breaker trip?

You guys are mixing up the difference between constant power requirements, and transient power needs.

A quick burst of power from a big amp and impactful musical hit, could easily go over 20amp draw. But it's not long enough to blow a fuse or trip a circuit breaker.

Why do you think people notice a difference in amps that have big caps over small caps in the PS? It's those transients. Same reason guys like Lon hear a difference between a PS Audio P10 and a PS Audio P5 Power Regen - the P10 has 70 Amps of power for those fast impactful hits...and it doesn't blow circuits...hmmm.

All that said, I doubt even Steve's big monoblocks tax a 20 amp circuit on big hits...but that's not to say a piece of hardware, like a battery backup isn't struggling to keep up with a ZMA's power demands. It's all about the design - and battery backups are made to smooth things out and squash sudden draws and dips, not give out juice to them. When you start up a big server on a battery backup, you see the lights and meters go OH CRAP for a second during that initial draw of power up and that's it. An amp cranked with a tympany hitting every fourth 90 bpm is a completely different animal.

Lon quoted this from the Torii Jr manual in another context:  

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I'm just trying to understand.  If the Torii Jr has a 3 amp fast blow fuse, why would I need a dedicated power source with super peak amp capacity?  (e.g., over-sized wire)  It seems that the Torii Jr only draws 3 amps or less from the mains -- regardless of any peaks in the internal power supply.  

The quote is in error.  The TORII JR uses a 6.3 Amp fuse, but in some cases even that is not enough to handle the turn on surge of the large power transformer.  The fuse size can be increased to 8 Amps if needed.

I may have figured out part of the answer to my question as far as my understanding goes.  With extension cords for power tools, the longer the cord, the larger the recommended wire.  This is to avoid excessive voltage drop which is related to resistance/heat and motor performance in that application.  I'm sure that we ideally want ZERO voltage drop for HiFi.  My run to my panel is short in my system so I likely don't need the extra large wires that are mentioned.  Other's might have a relatively long run and would need big wire despite "Code" required amp/gage sizing.

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I meant what the amp is asking for at the outlet.

Using Steve's example above, the Torii Jr could even use an 8amp fuse for that power on surge - that's an extreme example because it's an amp starting from dead zero and saying GIMMY JUICE!  But that little amp is still asking for 6+ amps, right?  Imagine what a bigger amp is asking for with a big musical impact?  That's the kind of thing I'm concerned about;
a battery backup made for computers could be choking/limiting your transients. A device like the PS Audio Regenerator is built to address those sudden pulls and give the juice with the least resistance to allow your music to flow as best as the amp can physically take the juice and churn out the waveforms.

Again, it's all about keeping the resistance low.

Regarding the amp drawing transient spikes spikes of current during impactful portions of music. I did some measurements and am not seeing them at all on a Mini or Torii MK4, or even a 300 watt sub. The Mini and Torii draw a bit more current when first turned on, but after that they are very stable regardless if silent or at full volume with dynamic music. The sub’s current demand was constantly changing, though within a very limited range and never spiking dramatically no matter the music or volume. It would simply draw around a tenth of amp more when pushed. Not to say there aren’t amplifiers that have huge brief current demands, I just haven’t seen it on the ones I’ve measured.

For measuring the amperage I used a Fluke 87 V, which can measure spikes as fast as 250 micro seconds.

That being said I’m still a big fan of dedicated circuits for a variety of reasons, and having your house properly grounded should be a given and not just for audio quality.

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That was going to be my next Question. I think I have a Fluke capable of measuring as yours does. I never really learned to use my Flukes very well.

4krow I’m generally a fan of overbuilding too.

LR if your meter has the peak min max function then it may be able to, as for the speed of it you’d have to look in the manual. The 87V is pretty high end and can do some impressive stuff most other meters can’t.

I have dedicated circuits in dedicated conduit going to most of my amps, even my home theater. I used 10 gauge for the hifi stuff, 12 for everything else, all solid. I wouldn’t consider using 14 for anything. I’ll add at least one more 10 gauge circuit for another amp. I also have the hospital grade outlets on the hifi circuits, a new panel, new ground, and new wire all the way out to the pole, plus nice DIY power cords. I’d recommend solid 10 gauge to anyone thinking about doing a dedicated hifi circuit, I couldn’t be happier with mine. Just because I measured and didn’t find any spikes in current doesn’t mean I concluded (or suggested) that 10 gauge doesn’t have value and possible sonic benefits. I was always skeptical of amplifiers having huge spike current demands anyway, so it had nothing to do with my wiring decisions to begin with, and still doesn’t.

So, driving home tonight I notice a whole bunch of my neighborhood is without power. I get home, and I have power, but my cable internet and TV are out - checking my phone, sure enough Comcast says outages in my area.

So I decide to put some music on, and DAMN it sounds good!

I'm playing ALT-J from my library on random, and all of it pops, has speed, and black, black background.

So yeah, most of the neighborhood out must equal quiet smooth power for me! LOL