Let's Talk Electricity

MylesBAstor

Well-Known Member
Apr 20, 2010
11,236
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New York City
Specifically, let's talk about AC receptacles, probably one of the most cost effective upgrades one can make to their audio system.

There are a number of excellent reasons for changing your outlets. First, if you live in an older building, apt, cave, etc. those 50 cent receptacles have been in the walls for years. You can draw your own conclusion from that! I can pretty much guarantee that if you take these receptacles out of the wall, they will literally crumble in your hands. Then you will see that these receptacles are corroded, pitted and arced. (note: if not comfortable with doing this work, I strongly suggest the use of an licensed electrician to carry out the work).

Second, is the use of ferromagnetic materials eg. nickel, that add distortion to the sound (see the work of Jung and Curl on capacitors). In fact, take a magnet to all your connections, cap leads, etc. and see if they are ferromagnetic.

Third is how well the receptacle grips the cord. Just take a look at how much your heavier AC cords droop at the wall :(

Fourth, and ultimately the final arbitrar is the sound improvement. After changing receptacles, one will hear a lowered noise floor, lowered distortion, better low frequencies and soundstaging. But one must let the receptacles burn in for a while (put a light in the socket); until then, like putting in dedicated AC lines, the system will be a bit edgy (yes, edgy is like pregnant; either you are or you aren't!).

So what is everyone using for an AC receptacle nowadays?
 

Bigfish8

New Member
Apr 20, 2010
40
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0
Raleigh, NC
I installed JPS 20 amp outlets when I ran two dedicated 20 amp lines using 10 guage romex last year. The combination of the dedicated circuits and lines cost me less than a pair of Tung-Sol Round Plate tubes and the upgrade made an audible change to my system. This hobby is all about tweaks or changes which we believe improves our systems and audio grade (at least hospital grade) receptables are a low cost, effective improvement.

Ken
 

MylesBAstor

Well-Known Member
Apr 20, 2010
11,236
81
1,725
New York City
I installed JPS 20 amp outlets when I ran two dedicated 20 amp lines using 10 guage romex last year. The combination of the dedicated circuits and lines cost me less than a pair of Tung-Sol Round Plate tubes and the upgrade made an audible change to my system. This hobby is all about tweaks or changes which we believe improves our systems and audio grade (at least hospital grade) receptables are a low cost, effective improvement.

Ken

Here are two suggestions from Jim Weil of Sound Applications regarding the installation of dedicated AC lines.

Have the AC lines running to the equipment is on the same leg; otherwise the power transformers will be 180 degrees out of phase and as a result, can increase the noise floor and produce ground loop hum. Second, have the electrician to measure the power factor on the two legs and select the better of the two.
 
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Steve Williams

Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
Terrific advice. Jim has been to my house several times and on one occasion did exactly what you said. We found part of my audio gear on one side and part on another. We switched it over and far more quiet.

BTW, Bigfish8, I use one of Jim Weil's Power Line Conditioners (variation of XE-12S) for my front end components (not amps). I would recommend this without reservation but they are very expensive. Sound Application is a mom and pop organization with Jim's wife Connie the brains behind building these. She is an electrical engineer graduate of Annapolis. Jim does all of the construction.

www.soundapplication.com
 
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MylesBAstor

Well-Known Member
Apr 20, 2010
11,236
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New York City
I have heard there are some safety issues regarding having too many components on the same leg (phase). Is this true?

Sure it's not unlike putting too many toasters, etc. on the same line :) But I think there are sonic degradations that occur long before any safety issues.

Knew of one instance where someone was comparing two pretty big wattage amps and had them all plugged into the same line. Sound of the DUT was exactly as he described it; only problem was it sounded much better w/o the first amp on the same line!
 

amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
15,813
37
0
Seattle, WA
I have heard there are some safety issues regarding having too many components on the same leg (phase). Is this true?
Unless you house is wired wrong (very unlikely) it is not true. Here is a simple primer.

Your wall outlet is connect to the service panel using certain gauge wire. At the service panel, by code, there must be a fuse/breaker which disconnects the power should the current going through the wire gets close to the point of allowing the wire heat up enough as to be unsafe (i.e. risk of fire). For typical home outlet outside of kitchens, you have a 15 amp breaker protecting 14-gauge wire. In that situation, if you exceed the current rating of the outlet, the breaker will simply pop. An nice upgrade is to use 12 gauge wire and 20 amp outlets.

BTW, a bit of math may be useful. Watts = volts * current. This is not for AC current that comes to your house but close enough for us for now. The voltage is nominally 120 volts. So if you have 15 amp circuit, your max "wattage" would be 120 * 15 = 1,800 watts. This would be the continuous rating of the line supply. Derate it some to 1,500 watts and that would be the max you want to pull out of the socket.

For the engineers in the crowd itching to correct me :), as I mentioned the above math is not correct for AC. So a better terminology would be "Volt-Amp" than wattage but as I said, it is good enough for the discussion.

In audio equipment, the power consumption is very spikey. So even though you may have a 500 watt amp, its typical consumption is probably 1/10th of that peak.
 
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MylesBAstor

Well-Known Member
Apr 20, 2010
11,236
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New York City
Unless you house is wired wrong (very unlikely) it is not true. Here is a simple primer.

Your wall outlet is connect to the service panel using certain gauge wire. At the service panel, by code, there must be a fuse/breaker which disconnects the power should the current going through the wire gets close to the point of allowing the wire heat up enough as to be unsafe (i.e. risk of fire). For typical home outlet outside of kitchens, you have a 15 amp breaker protecting 14-gauge wire. In that situation, if you exceed the current rating of the outlet, the breaker will simply pop. An nice upgrade is to use 12 gauge wire and 20 amp outlets.

BTW, a bit of math may be useful. Watts = volts * current. This is not for AC current that comes to your house but close enough for us for now. The voltage is nominally 120 volts. So if you have 15 amp circuit, your max "wattage" would be 120 * 15 = 1,800 watts. This would be the continuous rating of the line supply. Derate it some to 1,500 watts and that would be the max you want to pull out of the socket.

For the engineers in the crowd itching to correct me :), as I mentioned the above math is not correct for AC. So a better terminology would be "Volt-Amp" than wattage but as I said, it is good enough for the discussion.

In audio equipment, the power consumption is very spikey. So even though you may have a 500 watt amp, its typical consumption is probably 1/10th of that peak.

Thanks Amir! I was just thinking of making the circuit breaker trip or fuse blow with too much load as unsafe :)
 

FrantzM

Member Sponsor & WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
6,455
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Hi

That is one area where my experiences as an audiophile and an engineer have reached similar conclusions. I did not care about Power Quality until I ran an ISP business in Haiti and found out networking equipment failing on a consistent basis and even computers doing strange things... Turned out after an audit from a Power Quality Engineer who was visiting us that our power was .. well dirty. I will try to be short on this with longer posts later but suffice to say that the cleanest your AC power the better your system will sound .. Using good outlets is a start but hardly sufficient. Many audiophiles talk about dedicated lines to their amps, a line with its own breaker but taken from the main panel or an auxiliary panel. The problem is that the noise is at the source and that at the main panels all of these dedicated lines share the same source! There is NO isolation between your dedicated line (s) and that of say the refrigerator , they are on different leg just are joined at the trunk, i-e the main panel .. This is better than nothing but hardly a solution ..
Some power conditionner do a decent jobs of isolating outlets or group of outlets ( Some isolate outlets labeled "Digital" from each other or Digital from analog and can do a good , measurable job ... that is often not enough ..
The best solution is to regenerate AC and there are few Audiophile solutions that regenrate AC I know of just 2: The Burmester 948 and the PS Ausdio POwer something ...there might be others. There exist extremely good solutions in that field most of these, curiously not considered or even tried by Audiophiles .. That will be the subject of subsequent posts. I might even try to address an issue which is at time maddening but very important for the best sound your system is capable of, Grounding ...
Later

Frantz


Frantz
 

rsbeck

WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
848
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One of the best upgrades I ever made in my two channel listening room in my old house was properly grounded dedicated 20 amp circuits for my amps, separate circuits for digital gear, using 10 gauge wire and hospital grade outlets. My evidence is purely anecdotal, I have nothing objective to offer as proof, but I had problematic low level humming and a grungy noise floor -- how's that for scientific jargon? And this completely solved it. I tried the flagship BPT Balanced Power Technologies power conditioner first, but that didn't work and after installing the dedicated circuits, I swapped the BPT in and out and it actually brought some of the low level humming back. My amplifiers especially didn't seem to "like" the BPT piece between them and the juice.

I was very happy with the improvement, so during construction, I had the same electricians wire the A/V circuits in my new house the same way.

I'm not exactly sure how they wired it. the first time I used them, I started to describe the problem and what I wanted and the guy not only knew exactly what I wanted to do, but he also prompted me, "you want hospital grade outlets?"

Later, he explained that a lot of houses are not really properly grounded.

In my hazy memory, I recall something about him burying a rod in the ground to properly ground my A/V circuits.

In my new house, in the theater and whole house audio distribution gear closet, in addition to the 10 gauge wire, dedicated 20 amp circuits and all, we also installed some 20 amp Furman Elite Power Conditioners.....

http://www.furmansound.com/product.php?div=02&id=ELITE-20PFi

The theater and all was up and running for a few months before the Power Conditioners (and battery back-up) went in, so I was able to get a little taste of before and after.

I'd be the first to admit it might have been just my imagination, but I thought I noticed a very slight improvement in picture and sound.

It certainly didn't hurt anything, they look pretty cool, and they give me some peace of mind with their isolation and surge protection, so I've got that going for me.

But, honestly, there was no button to click to A/B the systems with the conditioners in and out and other things were also being tweaked during the first few months, so....hard to tell if the improvement I think I noticed is real or not.
 

Steve Williams

Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
I have all 20 amp dedicated lines in my listening room/HT with the video side totally separate from the audio side. I also have 2 separate 30 am dedicated lines each with 10 gauge Romex which I use only for each Lamm power amp.
 

MylesBAstor

Well-Known Member
Apr 20, 2010
11,236
81
1,725
New York City
The best solution is to regenerate AC and there are few Audiophile solutions that regenrate AC I know of just 2: The Burmester 948 and the PS Ausdio POwer something ...there might be others. There exist extremely good solutions in that field most of these, curiously not considered or even tried by Audiophiles .. That will be the subject of subsequent posts. I might even try to address an issue which is at time maddening but very important for the best sound your system is capable of, Grounding ...
Later

Frantz


Frantz

Frantz-Lot's of good info from someone with a solid engineering perspective! Thanks.

Love to hear what you'll say about grounding because home owners have a few more options than apt. dwellars :(

My only problem is that I've not heard an AC line conditioning unit that doesn't cause some sort of unacceptable sonic aberration. The same is true for many AC power cords too-though have heard a few that are improvements.
 

es347

VIP/Donor & WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
1,577
35
970
Midwest fly over state..
Your service by code must have an earth ground at the meter/service entrance. Regarding outlets, I have two 20 amp dedicated circuits both fed via 12/2 w/grd. and shielded. Does the shielding make any difference? Probably not but I was pulling new wire so why not go totally anal? I have a 400A service = twin 200A panels. I have all my sensitive electronics on one panel that has an Intermatic Panelguard surge protector. At the wall, I used Hubbel hospital grade 20A duplexes that often are rebranded and sold for exhorbitant prices by our friendly "high end" vendors. I paid about 10 bucks apiece for these. Do they sound better? Again, who knows but they are very substantial and they do address Steve's concern regarding grip strength. You certainly don't pull your PCs out by the cord with these babies.
 
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Bruce B

WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
Apr 25, 2010
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512
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Snohomish, WA
www.pugetsoundstudios.com
This was the one thing we didn't want to cut any corners on in the studio. A custom cable was made that connected to the street and ran into an Equi=tech wall cabinet with JPS in-wall cable. Outlets were Oyaide and JPS. There are 2 "house current" outlets in the studio and whenever something gets plugged into it, you can tell right away.

Regards,
 

kach22i

WBF Founding Member
Apr 21, 2010
1,591
210
1,635
Ann Arbor, Michigan
www.kachadoorian.com
electricians ..........

Later, he explained that a lot of houses are not really properly grounded.
We had the power company come out to our house when we first moved in 16 years ago. The lights would brown when it rained. Sure enough it was bad a ground. They redid the ground and I've been happy since them.

Also had an electrician come in and put in dedicated lines for the window located A/C unit, computer and stereo.

Use a Triplite conditioner for all except the power amp.

And even have a few of those little "Quiet Line" warts by AudioPrism for good measure at various locations.

I also have my Martin Logans plugged to one of the dedicated lines.
 

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