Hello all,
I'm going to be buying a 950 + 755 + 2-200's and I'm in the process of making the cables to prepare for them... So.. I think I'm all squared away on the interconnects now my big dilemma is about what to do for power..

I've got an older house and there's one non-grounded plug running into the living room... So I'm going to add probably 2 separate grounded lines in there.. one either 15 or 20 amp for the amps and one 15 amp for the sources and 950...

Here's thought number 1... I've got an open 50amp breaker in a box that was added for some new wiring... I could add another (50 amp) breaker box in the attic fairly near where the living room wall is and connect that to the outside box with really large gage wire and then run the home theater plugs off of the breaker in the attic.. This way for the 20amp line it would be much easier to run 2 wires of the 3 pair 14 ga. stuff to the outlet and significantly reduce the voltage drop at the outlet.. the only drawback may be that if I sell the house the people that buy it will wonder what in the world I was thinking when I did this ......

Thought 2 is similar to the above but use a lot longer run of the 14 ga wires and change out the 50 amp breaker for a 20 and a 15 and possibly use an AC capacitor somewhere close to the plug.. as long as that won't arc like mad whenever something is plugged into it

Then there's the whole issue of the type of plug to use (if you're wondering I work from home and have a lot of time to think and plan this and scare my wife ) Is there any advantage to using the locking type plugs?


And on another note... Am I going way off the deep end? Will I notice anything by going to these extreme lengths to get clean power to the living room? (I'm not so sure the power I've got there now is so bad... it seems to always be right at 122V) so would it make more sense just to add one 20amp plug with standard romex and just forget about all this madness?

Either way you do it, you are going to get the same power, dirty or not. I would just go with the easiest connection. Also keep in mind the electrical codes in your area, which may not effect you but could effect resale value if the wiring has to be re-done later. Locking connectors are not really much use unless you are planning on tugging on the AC cords A HT amplifier draws a surprisingly small amount of current most of the time, nothing like what it would draw if it were being tested on a bench at full power in all channels continously. The real world power demands are transient, not sustained like a test signal. I have a 1926 house, and before I built my dedicated room I just plugged into the existing knob&tube original wiring - and this was with tube amps that draw much more AC current than a solid state amp would. I had no problems whatsoever.

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The Soundhound Theater

Ok.. the other thing I'm considering doing is building my own power cords using that shielded stuff... I've got a suspicion that the only use that does is to keep some of the AC noise from bleeding into other interconnects / speaker wire... Or does it really help (distort less) the sound in the end?

Building your own AC cords is a good option as long as you use cable that is meant to be used in this application! Just be ultra careful when doing the wiring of the plugs that no stray strands of wire can potentially touch each other. I don't think the use of shielded AC wire would make much difference - the shielding is more useful for the receiving end, i.e. low level interconnects. However if you can get a bunch of shielded AC wire of high quality for not much money, I guess there's no hurt in using it. Just please be careful - 120VAC can be "uncomfortable".

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The Soundhound Theater

460VAC is even worse. Ouch!

Interestingly most industrial 480 volt systems run on what is called a floating or ungrounded secondary, so unless there is a ground in the plant, or you actually manage to get across two of the legs, you're 'only' getting about 277 volts - it still hurts though.

[This message has been edited by charlie (edited February 18, 2003).]

I've been doing little electronic things for a while and have added several outlets to our house (1 outside with burried wire) I'm no eeediot .. one of the best things to be is a little afraid of AC current...

Ok.. so I think I'm going to add 1 new 20 amp outlet and probably feed my eccentricity by grounding it to a separate grounding rod, and make 4 power cables based off of the tnt-audio TTS (http://www.tnt-audio.com)

Just remember a 20 amp circuit needs 12 ga wire not 14.

And a 20 amp receptacle

if you have a 50amp open circuit, why not run 220v to the room. split from that the 110 sides and everything has the same length ground run. i did that when i remodeled this 1930's house...for the washer/dryer, tho..not the stereo..the previous owner had already built the a/v room and put in plenty of outlets that all lead back to the breaker box at about the same distance. i was using a conditioner but then i went and bought a big ol alchemy dual mono block. i still like to use the conditioner on the video, tho. i'm an engineer but didn't expect that kind of a difference in the picture! some of the newer designs are really really good at what they do...and they also protect your investments. one on the puter is necessary! at work we have walls of em and can run massive amounts of equipment for over an hour if the power company blacks out on us. of course at the mother-ship a few miles away, we use HUGE generators. the phone company uses HUGE batteries that kick on automatically till the generator (or turbine) auto kicks in. the batteries have to be able to run for 8 hours and be able to power the entire phone building. quite cool...i put in bunches of em at microwave sites all over da south. wish i coulda snuck one home! my boss has a 10k,super quiet honda that kicks on at his house if power goes out there. another guy i work with has a 4 or 6k that he dedicated to heat and air and frig and tv and such. i am planning on doing that to my next place soon as this one sells. probably will get a six to power the system and frig..maybe the heat, too. it's really worth it. you can do it cheaper with a manual changeover switch or go for the bucks and have it auto change.


[This message has been edited by thigg (edited February 22, 2003).]

Well, it's done

Here's what I've done... I've got 12 ga standard romex running into the attic from a 15 amp breaker in the fuse box and this line also has it's own ground rod... in the attic is a small junction where the 14ga shielded stuff runs down the wall into the recepticle.... All the amps (200's and 755) are running off of that plug and the sources (950, dvd, vcr, cd player, etc) are running off the old wiring...

I'm also using my own power cords on the 200's and the 950 made out of that same shielded stuff.. the 755 is using the stock cable cuz I don't have the right end for the amp..

I had had a problem with my center chanel interconnect picking up emi or rfi, but once I switched that to shielded it became silent.... Everything works wonderfully the system is completely silent on any source when paused, muted, when no signal is present, anything... no hiss no nothing.. But I don't know if the wiring is doing any good at all since I changed absolutely everthing at once (speaker cables, interconnects, preamp, amp.. all of it)..

[This message has been edited by Unferth (edited March 08, 2003).]

oops

[This message has been edited by Unferth (edited March 08, 2003).]

It's nice when a job is done! Because you've run a piece of #12 romex, you can put the wire on a 20 amp breaker if you choose. By being on a 15 amp breaker their isn't any harm.

I went overboard on my installation of power for my system. Even though it hasn't any effect on the power coming into the house I ran 8 dedicated circuits with metal clad cable. This is to supress any transient noises generated in the house from getting on the lines.

I posted elsewhere in the group about a whole house surge supressor at Home Depot for 40 dollars