Dedicated 20 amp circuit - Electrician laughed!

I don't have a problem with that. If I post something similar, I hope he does the same to me.

- If you are seeing 40W of losses on a 140W output amplifier, you are either using a power cord way too small for the application and unsafe, you have some serious non-normal contact resistance that is again generating unsafe losses that could cause enough heating to melt the plastic holding the contacts, or there was measurement error or a combination there-of. I don't think many people are using 10 foot, 18awg cables with massive Class-A amplifiers drawing 15 amps continuous, so this does not sound like a "real-world" condition as I noted. With an adequate cord for the maximum draw of the amp, 1/2V or less would be more typical.


- If you were measuring 3V RMS drop, the drop during current transfer be 3x that or more if the capacitor bank is bigger. Bigger the capacitor bank, worse the THD on the AC line (baring other circuitry to improve). It would be expected there would be a reduction in Output power.

- It is most definitely not a given that increased resistance on the AC line results in more IMD, especially if the amp is not driven into clipping:

since the DC might have a bit more of a sawtooth on it than if the current was not limited.

This is not what happens. The exact opposite happens, assuming the amp is not into clipping as I noted above. Adding resistance will smooth the voltage on the bulk DC capacitance because it increases the conduction angle from the AC line. This filters out high frequencies on the power supply rail, which is beneficial, and it reduces radiated noise on the AC lines by reducing the peak current draw and frequencies. Power supply ripple generally presents itself as THD, as you get components of the power supply frequency modulating with the audio signal. You may get IMD products from other non-linearities, but again, as the power supply rail is more stable, these will also be less if you are not clipping.

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

heaudio123"If you are seeing 40W of losses on a 140W output amplifier, you are either using a power cord way too small for the application and unsafe, you have some serious non-normal contact resistance that is again generating unsafe losses that could cause enough heating to melt the plastic holding the contacts, or there was measurement error or a combination there-of. "


There are actually multiple other explanations, possibilities, and causes of this problem, issue, and anomoly but you’re black and white, absolute, narrow way of examining, investigating, and exploring the issue blocks you’re conscious mind from considering the alternatives and this is a common, frequent, repeated problem in your perspectives and why the conclusions you reach, develop, and promote often lead to erroneous positions that you then seek to defend against all who dare question or challenge you. Open you’re mind up perhaps would be my suggestion.

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.