will
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I agree, electricity is so fluid, including “adopting” and passing around junk it picks up, a dedicated line and good connections throughout can be big deals. My house got better after I tightened receptacles and circuit breakers.
But in my experience, the many ways wiring and noisy things on the wires can hurt your audio are relative depending on original power quality, wiring quality and tightness, design setup, what else is on the circuits, filters used and where, grounding, etc. With a bad combination of these I suppose it could be hard to hear receptacles!
In my setups, my power was so clean in general, that when I finally figured out that sort of wide voltage level shifts were making it hard to tune the system sound with reliable consistency, higher voltage thickening/darkening, and lower leaning the sound, I had to address it. 119 sounded much different than at 123! So I got a PSAudio P5 and have come to like it set at 118. Now that voltage is controllable I can adjust voltage to tastes and tune with relative reliability for consistent sound. But even with much less push on the tubes, transparency-wise the P5 was a downgrade for me. Though creating pretty smooth and well organized power, the design and parts the P5 is made with effect its sound like anything else in revealing audio, including the receptacles used in it… like changing resistors, caps, wires and connectors in amps can make pretty big differences.
Speaking of the relativity of the electrical quality we start with ….though I have thought a lot about it, I don't have a dedicated line, yet I can hear about any change in my system pretty clearly and the sound is really good.
We live in an adobe house with three different "flat roof" ceiling levels between the utility room and the music room receptacle. With some creative time and effort, I may be able to get a wire across through the small spaces between each of these ceiling and roof levels, but it will take tearing away and rebuilding, or going up through the roof and back with conduit may be needed. So between pretty clean power, and the difficulty of a dedicated line, I have let it slide.
My audio receptacle is the first of 5 outlets in the room, one in the middle with my main desktop computer on it, a couple with walls warts, and one where my wife plugs in her power brick for her laptop....Scary right?
But starting pretty clean; having done progressive power cleaning house-wide; having strengthened the ground; and finally gotten the regenerator and other filters directly in the audio system...power seems good. Differences with noisy things on the lines are pretty subtle. I can hear it at the listening seat with my computer on compared to off, but it is subtle enough that I don’t notice it at my computer chair, loving the music from there too. And before most of my progressive power explorations, the system was quite revealing, though thicker in general from higher voltage, and with a little more obvious noise at times, reducing smooth liquidity some....but it was quite good with rudimentary filtering. This is not to say it would not be better with a dedicated line, I have no doubt it would...have to look more at solving that puzzle.
But if power is good, the system refined and revealing, and if we are used to picking out differences in sound, chances of hearing receptacles seem pretty good. And if power can be improved, including a dedicated line if a good option, receptacle differences will show more.
Hospital grade are better than standard for sure. The Mapleshade I am using now is $70, as is the Furutech I used. So about 50 more than a Hospital grade receptacle...the cost of many single NOS tubes, and much less than many. The Pass Seymour, not sure. I got mine from PiAudio, and guess they are 35 or so now.... So my cost-to-effect tolerance is perhaps a little looser, but if a better receptacle can improve the sound in a particular setting, it could do so for many years.
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