AC Dedicated Line

he reworked the single panel, keeping the larger draw appliances "away" from the music lines in, on the opposite side of the panel.

Well, that’s a new one.

Behind the panel where most never look are two great big bus bars. All the breakers attach to the bus bars. These things are so thick it can’t matter where on the bar you take off.

Regardless of which side of the panel they are mounted on all 240V breakers are run off of both bars. Otherwise they would be 120 instead of 240. That’s just how it works.

All the circuits, every single one of them, they are all just as electrically connected to every other circuit on one side as on another. The only thing putting a lot of them on one leg can accomplish is to draw more from that leg. This won’t have any effect, except for one thing- some amps have transformers that are susceptible to noise caused by DC on the line. Having less active drawing circuits on the system side might- might!- help lower this DC offset and lessen the liklihood of getting this kind of DC offset transformer hum.

The biggie though with panels is the RFI they bring into the system. I didn’t believe this until a simple test proved it. First I flipped all the breakers to every circuit except for my system. This is the only way to break the electrical connection between all the circuits. The sound with everything disconnected like this is like the sound you get late at night when the grid is quiet- blacker backgrounds, greater effortless detail, much less grain and glare.

This is different than turning everything off. Turn something off, it is still connected to the wires, to the panel, and back to your system. Don’t believe me, do like I did, try it both ways. Turn everything off and listen. Then flip the breakers off and listen.

Or do the other test I did, which is to flip off all the breakers with things that are running and listen. Then flip off the breakers with things that are NOT running and listen. Even disconnecting things that are turned off makes an improvement. Therefore it has to be that the wires themselves are acting like antennas bringing RFI into the system. Its not just EMF etc from running appliances. Its the wires.

I sound like Mark Wahlberg in that stupid MKnightSham I am movie, "Its the trees!"

Pretty sure this is the big secret that accounts for at least some of why The Gate works so well. Anyway, you want to hear what all those circuits are doing to your sound? Go flip em off.

Yes it would be hard the normal way, pulled through holes drilled in studs. Would also use more wire. Mine is hung under the floor in almost a straight line and through just two holes, one at either end. 

Current definitely does drop with load. I don't deny it. Why? All you have to do is watch the light dim when you turn a blow drier on to know there's a drop with load. The question is, does it then sound better to use thicker wire to get more current? Sure didn't sound like it to me. I mean it did sound better. Just not anywhere near what you'd think for such a huge increase in gauge.

Its a common misconception, that the big benefit of the dedicated line is current. It sure does not seem that way to me. And I think I've done the comparisons that would show this to be the case if it were.

Originally, thanks to my electrician/contractor/FIL who insisted, my room was a normal 15A circuit. Normal in gauge. Normal in the circuit running from outlet to outlet, four or five of them, including lights, with my system outlet sort of in the middle of this mess. Pretty much like every normal house.

When I replaced this with one wire run directly to the one system outlet the improvement was huge, obvious, unambiguous. Even though it was the same breaker, same wire. Only thing different, one continuous wire not going outlet to outlet with multiple connections at each.

Next I replaced the normal gauge (10/2 I think, whatever) with overkill 4 ga. Many times thicker, mega overkill, never would do it today but didn't know as much back then. Thought it would be mega better. It was only barely better. 

Again, almost all the improvement with a dedicated circuit comes from eliminating extra connections. Connections. Not current.

For my next trick I found a local guy with a cryo tank, chatted him up, learned more than you can imagine about cryo, had all my wire done. Yes I pulled the wire out of my house and had it cryo'd.

Cryo makes a lot more improvement than anything you can do with gauge or voltage or whatever.

Finally, or close enough, I changed the same wire from 120V to 240V and added a crazy overkill silver wire step down transformer. Thought it would be mega, turned out minor. 

By far the biggest benefit is to just run one wire direct to your system outlet. Next after that, cryo. Anything beyond that gets into a whole lot more time and money and work and yes it is better but not by much.

plga

I just measured last week my system and the subs consumption and, even at loud volume, more than what I hear normally, my system didnt consumed more than 1 amp and neither did the subs.

At first I thought the meter was wrong, but then I remembered that the DC Blocker had also a meter and I saw it measured very similar to the external meter.

rbstehno

I don’t agree that running 1 - 20amp circuit is all you need. Without knowing all the equipment you have today or you will get in the future, why only put in 1 circuit when running wire for 2 or more circuits isn’t that much more?

Here we see the difference between people who actually know what they’re talking about and flat out unsubstantiated opinion. Just like I said, now confirmed (and the best kind of confirmation, objectively measured, twice) audio circuits do indeed draw a whole lot less power than people think. Even I would never have said so little but there you go. Measured. Twice.

Well again max power draw occurs most often when devices are first turned on and the empty caps are charging. After that its pretty minimal, even at full volume.

plga again

The main power of my home is triphasic and, from the main board, all the monophasic circuits are connected to somehow balance each phase with similar current.

Thanks for that. We have three phase here in the US as well but here its mostly used commercially and residentially only when people request and pay for it. I know one guy with a killer wood shop running three phase. That’s it.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Not for what you’re doing. The advantage of three phase is its cheaper because it allows transmission of twice the electricity with the same amount of conductor material. Once it gets to your house panel though then you work with it just the same as our two phase AC. The panels in all our homes have two rows of breakers, one for each phase. Yours has three. Looks different but really the same. Because in both cases each circuit runs from one of the hot phases to neutral.

So you can do everything just like I said. Only little wrinkle would be you want to pull your hot from whichever one of the three has the least draw already on it. In other words try and keep it balanced. Same as you would here.

Probably should mention, I got a PM about this, the biggest best value of all this is if before installing you have all your wire cryo’d. Anyone with liquid nitrogen and a chest freezer can do this for you. Don’t pay a lot and don’t pay shipping. Find someone local or don’t bother. For sure don’t waste your money on anyone touting special audiophile treatment. They are full of it. But do cryo if you can. Huge improvement.

Okay, actual experience here. Installed panels, drilled holes, run wires, done it all. Run my system off the conventional wiring, then ran my own dedicated line, upgraded that with a transformer, built my own- well you get it. I know what I'm talking about.

The 3 circuits you are planning are almost guaranteed to be a waste of time and money and even worse than that create more hum. Electricity always seeks the least resistance. The subs and all the rest of your system are all connected together. If it all has one ground on one circuit no problem. Using three there will be three paths to ground which almost guarantees hum.

One mistake often made is to take the wattage or amperage of each component and add them all up and assume that is how much power you need the circuit to handle. But almost never do any of them draw full power. And even less often do they draw it all at once. People think of playing full volume. When in fact the greatest power draw is usually right when first turned on. That is when the component power supply is empty and so that is when it draws full power for a second or two as the caps charge. So worst case is not blasting full power music. Worst case is having everything turned on and plugged into one switch and then you flip the switch. Even then worst that happens it trips a breaker.

Hope I made the point. You will get by just fine with one circuit. One 20A for sure. According to the interweb Argentina uses 220-240V so using a 20A with 240V is equivalent to a 40A with the 120V we have here in the States. My whole system runs on the equivalent of one 15A circuit so for sure you will be okay with 20A. 10A even should do you fine.

Whatever you decide, use whatever gauge wire and breaker Argentina code says is required for that load. 

Ideally you would run the one circuit to your system, connect a power conditioner, and plug everything into the conditioner. 

The extra dedicated earth ground may or may not help. My system uses one but it also uses a step-down transformer so its a special case. Before that when it was on a dedicated circuit, everything the same except the transformer, I used it both ways- common house ground and dedicated system ground. Never did notice the ground made any difference. It has however been reported to cause problems for some people. If it was me I would not go to the trouble unless there were ground/noise problems. Even then I would do my best to eliminate all other causes first.

So run just one circuit for your system. Then run another circuit for everything else in the room- lights, outlets, etc. As long as you are careful to make sure nothing connected to your system gets plugged into any of those outlets you should be fine.