Dedicated 20 amp circuit - Electrician laughed!

It matters, but not quite the way you think. No system really needs the extra amps. One 20A line is plenty. Going to 30 might be better but in terms of sound quality is really splitting hairs. Not only the breaker but the wire changes, and then outlets, and its just a whole lot easier to stick with the 20 and put your time and money into other things like power cords that make a whole lot more difference. 

This from a guy who has wired his room several different ways and heard and knows whereof he speaks.

millercarbon, your system is sick to say the least. Mind if I ask about your background or career? What allowed you to get so ingenius with the advanced and quite expensive tweaks??

Thanks. Appreciate the compliment. And the question.

The first book I remember reading, not counting the Encyclopedia Britannica (never quite read all of that) was Red Giants and White Dwarfs by NASA scientist Robert Jastrow. Since I had started with the Encyclopedia and since A is for Atom, etc, it was fascinating to learn where stars came from, how they formed and how mass is destiny. Stars fuse hydrogen into helium releasing energy and the rate at which this happens, how long it lasts, and what happens in the end is all determined by the initial mass of the star. https://www.amazon.com/Red-Giants-White-Dwarfs-Third/dp/0393850048 The school library had just gotten it in, it was 1969, and so I would have been 12 years old.

The next year I built a 6" reflecting telescope and started hanging around with Al George and the Tacoma Astronomical Society. Around this time I was riding my bicycle to Radio Shack listening to everything and learning about audio. By Jr high I had a pretty good stereo and a room with DIY acoustic panels and some time in high school built a Dynaco ST400 amp.

After college I built Roger Sanders ESL/transmission line speakers from his design in Speaker Builder. This was 1980. Then around the 90's, prime of life and with good income came a pretty decent period of time in which I went from tournament racquetballer to USCF Cat 3 criterium racer and RAMROD rider to accomplished marine aquarist, Porsche Club President and Driving Instructor, and builder/remodeler. That last part included designing and building my current listening room.  

The listening room was my dream of a lifetime. Originally sucked into all the same vortex as everyone else I wanted a 5.1 HT system and so the room was designed around that. Only when I went shopping and listening turned out HT stuff is all crap. Absolute dreck. Not that I didn't try. Put a good couple years into the effort.

Then came Stewart Marcantoni, the best dealer I ever met. I took Stewart in when he first moved out here to the PNW and introduced him to the area. Stewart took me in and mentored me in high end audio. Thanks to Stewart I was able to experience more outstanding gear than most guys can ever dream of, and was introduced to Ted Denney (Synergistic), Caelin Gabriel (Shunyata), and was even able to attend CES as a vendor one year. I knew DJ Casser and was the Washington State dealer for Black Diamond Racing for several years. More or less obsessed with audio I demo'd BDR Cones in probably 50 to 100 different peoples systems, and auditioned systems at just about every decent stereo store along the I5 corridor from Portland to north of Seattle.

All during this time thanks to my extensive and wide ranging background in science and technology it was easy to separate the wheat from the chaff and the science from the bull. Or so I thought. Sometimes the scientific explanation really does make sense and work. But then again often times not. Stewart helped me greatly in this. Time and again he would play me some insanely good sounding cable and I would ask how in the world? And he would reply very blase, "Oh he puts some dust or something in there, I don't know..." Which honestly one time was true- Caelin really did put some dust inside a conditioner! I have a bag of it at home still!

So that is my experience, Cliff Notes version. All I care about is the sound- and since I'm not made of money, how to get the very best sound for the money. When I say in my System description that its based on the philosophy that everything matters and no one component matters more than any other, that's not hyperbole or cliche. I mean every word of it. Only my understanding of what is a component drills down to every diode, cap and inch of wire.

A separate grounding electrode is legal per NEC 250.54

Well that's a relief. 

but ultimately the separate electrode must be connected to the ground of the main service per NEC 250.4 (A)(5).

So... the electrode that goes into the ground must be connected to.... the electrode that goes into the ground. 

I must admit it sounds a whole lot more official with a bunch of letters and numbers but in plain English: 2 ground rods connected together. Right?

Why not an isolation transformer? 

Good one. Anyone care to explain exactly what is isolating about a transformer?

The ground is a great idea.

Well. It certainly is a great.... idea.

Remember above where I said

Grounds are funny. I could write double this amount on grounds alone. Its nowhere near as simple as its made out to be.

Well, there’s a reason I said that: grounds really are funny. I really could write twice as much just about grounds. But don’t worry, I’m getting even sicker of writing than you are of reading.

Cliff Notes version: Tried it every way you can think of. Only thing made any real difference was using the (easily triggered? Stop reading now!) Synergistic Research ground. No not the SR grounding block, just the ground connection they provide on the Euphoria Level III IC. Instead of the expensive SR grounding block I connect it to my own (possibly safe to start reading again) DIY grounding block, also known as a bolt with nuts and washers.

So unless you are fond of using the world’s best wire made by the only man known to trigger more people than me I would move the ground rod a little further on down the list.

What you said tvad sounds perfectly reasonable but its not like that at all. You’re thinking the electrician works for the customer. In reality the electrician works for the government, in the form of the functionaries who came up with all the codes, and in particular the inspector who is the one who has to sign off on his work- or he never gets paid. Its just the average person never learns enough about how any of it works or sees it in action to understand that’s really the way it is.

Actually, amazingly, he's right. While the DC from a battery is as clean as clean can be, all our equipment uses power supplies designed to run on AC. So the DC must first be converted to AC, and it is very hard to have this be better quality than regular old utility AC. 

The exception is components designed to run on DC. Usually these are limited to components that need really clean power but not a lot of it. Phono stages, turntable motors. That's about it.

Would a power regenerator like those from PS Audio not negate this need?

No.

If I get a power regenerator, it’s totally regenerating clean power so is there still a benefit to having a dedicated circuit?

Yes.

Now listen close, because this stuff does not work the way you’re being told. Its hard to understand mostly because almost everyone is getting it wrong- and almost everyone is getting it wrong mostly because instead of doing and finding out they accept the same old same old as everyone else. So please read my system description and consider every word very carefully. https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367 Unfortunately you cannot hear it, not without coming to Seattle, but you can look and see pretty much every single little thing in that system from the panel to the speaker cones has been tweaked or modified in one way or another. What you can’t see are all the countless things that were tried and discarded.

Everyone wants to think one and done. "I got a conditioner." One and done. Does not work like that.

When it says in my system description that everything matters, and no one thing is any more or less important than any other, I mean every single thing. Otherwise I would have said amplifier, speaker, etc. Everything means everything. Every single inch of every single wire, all of it.

You can get your conditioner, great. If its a good one it will by definition be an improvement. But no matter how good it is, and I do mean no matter how good it is, you will still be able to improve the sound by improving the first foot of wire coming out of the panel. And the last foot of wire going into the panel. And every foot in between. And the last foot of internal speaker wire. Every stinking inch of it matters.

Not like you’ve been told? Sorry. Truth. Only way I roll.

Yes dtximages my electrician had the same reaction. This was back when my listening room was being built as part of a major remodel. This was also nearly 30 years ago. Didn’t know near what I do now. It wouldn’t have added much cost either in wire or labor at that point but even so he convinced me its just not worth it. Not at all. So I didn’t do it.

Well, he was wrong. Your electrician is wrong. I know they are wrong because I have actually compared side by side. And it is not exactly night and day but neither is it nothing like they say. It is obvious and very easy to hear the difference. For a while I even had the two lines- one continuous dedicated, the other identical but wired normally- coming in to where they could be compared by simply unplugging from one and into the other. Normal (rolling their eyes doubting type) people, they could all hear the difference.

Search around this website, let me know when you find someone who actually has experience with this stuff to know what they’re talking about like I do. Maybe someone does. If so I just haven’t seen it.

I’m not done. I’m just getting going.

The first improvement that is noticeable is simply from eliminating all the outlet to outlet connections electricians think is harmless. If that’s all you do, run one standard gauge dedicated circuit, you will hear it and it will be worth the extra line.

Next after learning that actually does matter I decided to run a larger 4 ga line. This was better still. Although I will tell you it is a hassle, hard work, and you can forget it unless DIY because of the difficulty of doing to code. 4ga is as thick as a pencil, does not even fit into normal outlets, requires junction boxes, etc. But I did it. Like I said, try and find someone....

Next I found a used Audio Consulting pure silver step down transformer. This allowed me to run 240V most of the way to the room, step down to 120V, so the lower voltage only has to travel about 5 to 7 feet to the system. This was better still! But even more hassle, and again DIY or fuggetaboutit.

Still not done. Then I found a local cryo tank. Pulled all the wire, had everything cryo’d. Better still!

And remember, all these changes, they are all being done in the same room with the same system, which I am intimately familiar with because its all done slowly over a period of several years. These are not snap decisions. These are as solid a comparison as you ever will get.

Along the way a separate dedicated ground rod was driven into the ground right below the room and next to the stepdown transformer. Everything in the system has been run a variety of ways- regular ground, floating ground, dedicated ground. Grounds are funny. I could write double this amount on grounds alone. Its nowhere near as simple as its made out to be. None of this is. Almost everything you will hear is BS. Because it comes from people who are merely repeating what they have heard, and do not really know because they have not done. Pay attention to those who have done, and are accomplished audiophiles- ie have a proven track record of actually being able to hear. Otherwise, no matter how sure they sound, they are clueless.

There must be at least a half a dozen people here who according to their (I can’t use the correct word) opinion I have killed myself, destroyed my system, burned down the house, the whole neighborhood, and probably Puget Power if not the entire Pacific NW. So be aware, there are a lot of awfully ignorant people out there- including a great many with "electrician" on their resume.

Now, what you really want to know: is it worth it???

Running one normal dedicated line is relatively cheap and totally worth it. All the other stuff like I did is totally worth it- but only in light of all the other similarly minor things that also make a difference. Almost all of which are a whole lot easier and should be done first. Unless you are doing it as part of new construction. These details matter.

Anyone building new I would totally advise to do what I did. Anyone seriously skilled and motivated enough to DIY and is dedicated to having a bona fide audiophile nirvana system I would recommend they do it all too. Average guy, especially if paying an electrician, forget it.

Its not snake oil. Its for real. Check it out.
https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367