Hello fellow audiophiles! I am pleased to share my paper about how to vastly improve your in wall power by using heavier gauge wire and installing dedicated circuits. The details for most questions are in the paper including how to make your electrician comfortable with the concept. The paper repeats several time to get a licensed electrician to do the work. Do not attempt to do this modifications yourself. Please ask any questions and thanks for looking !
We sell it to many of our customer in Denmark and the produkts you need you it is a round 2500 € and 500 € to be instal in the house.
We only run 16 AMP fuse here.
Best upgrade you can make for yours system for sure.
And there is many ways to do it and in many levels.
Great ider to make what you have done.
Best regards
Henrik
Hi Vince,
thanks for sharing, very interesting.
Here in Europe we have 16A (230V) current for dedicated lines. I’m totally ignorant about this electrical argument but I suppose the gauge required could be different in our case.
10AWG : 20A(120V) = X : 16A(230V)
Sorry if it’s a silly question.
TIA
You cant use the same here in eu
Best
Henrik
Thanks, so what’s the recommended size/gauge of in wall wires in EU? I mean the 3 wires phase/neutral/earth.
And how to twist them along the run? Pics would be much appreciated.
Hello Henrik,
Thank you for your message. Please explain "You cant use the same here in eu” can’t use what please? thank you
Best Regards,
Vince Galbo
MSB Technology
National Sales Manager
716-688-3527
Here in EU it’s a common practics use a 6 mm2 copper wire for the main lines from the main breaker to the loads attached, because if you just apply the “Ohm Law” the wire dimension could be less than this (even in some manuals the Ampere/mm2 ratio is not always the same).
If you want to be a “little perverse”, in a good sense, use 10mm2 wires and you’ll be ok also for ease your mind.
I will be more end happy to have a call whit you about this one day if you are up to that.
We have diffence laws here in eu depends what country we live in thats why sir.
Some countrys the face chance during the Day like in Norway.
Best regards
Henrik
I have two dedicated 240V, 32A power line runs (~18m length) from the main breaker panel (Distribution Box) direct to the front hifi wall. Each dedicated run used 2Ă—4mm2 (total 8AWG) wires for the Live and Neutral poles, and 1Ă—4mm2 wire for the Ground. At the main breaker panel one dedicated double pole 63A Doepke RCCB and two single pole 32A Doepke Cryo MCB were connected directly to one of the three in-coming phases of the external mains power supply without going through the main breaker panel master power switch or the main RCCB breaker. At the hifi wall end, the 2 dedicated runs are connected to two duplex Furutech GTX-D NCF (R) receptacles with the Furutech GTX wall plates and 106-D NCF receptacle covers.
This will probably give the most direct dedicated power connections from the external mains to the hifi receptacles with their own dedicated RCCB and MCB breaker devices separate from the main house circuit breakers.
Doepke RCCB and Cryo MCB shown.
Hey Vince,
Thank you for sharing, interesting.
10mm2 might be a bit hard to connect into a wall socket…
Most Eu countries, for wall sockets you need min 2,5mm2 hard wire.
I have a Torus WM30 6,75KVA wall mount transformer behind a 40A socket. From the Torus I run 3 separate lines to my system, 2 are 4mm2 wire and 1 is a shielded 2,5mm2
the torus is separately running a 10mm2 ground wire to copper rods in the garden. so ground of the audio system is separated from the ground of the house.
Ok so I have to ask, replacing the cabling in a house unless you are in the same room as the panel is a expensive undertaking, I was given an estimate of 20-30,000 including drywalling, painting, etc soo
The largest reason is electrical cable needs to be secured every 1m (3ft) inch + next to all junction boxes or run in conduit this means you can’t fish it but rather you have to make holes in almost every section of the wall, so while I understand the benefit …
Hi Peter,
@Battles elsewhere on this forum documented doing that… I haven’t found the link
But he had to run cables 300ft from the main panel and it took a crew of 4 to 7, 4 or 5 days. Some sub-panels were involved but I don’t think drywall was so your contractors estimate might be in the ball park. Did you mention to your contractor that the cable had to have 3 twists per foot along its entire length?
He was very happy with the results.
Dan
Here you go:
Hello Dan, so the electrician is booked for 3 weeks from now, Due to the building code and cost and so on we are going for Armoured Cable so no twists for us, but 10 Gauge runs with dedicated circuits all on the same phase. Not sure if the results will be identical but it’s a compromise.
@Battles, great article @Vince_Galbo yet again thank you for sharing
I was only able to listen for about an hour after the work was done as the Cascade was being packed up but here are my initial comments/thoughts.
So after a full day of running 3 dedicated 20 amp circuits to the same phase of the panel using 8 gauge cable I honestly could not hear any real difference compared to the shared circuits, BUT and there are several buts that are possibly relevant. In my case the main system sits behind an AQ Niagra 7000, and each of the subs are connected to a AQ Niagra 3000 (one per sub) all cables are AQ Dragons and the panel has 3 separate ground rails going to 3 independent ground systems + the incoming power is very very clean (runs trough a line conditioner).
When I remove all of the AQ Niagra’s and the line conditioner I can say the dedicated circuits are better than the shared. The difference is noticeable only on music that has a LOT of high amplitude (ie loud) fast tones, Kodo drummers was better, but once I add the Niagra’s and line conditioner back the shared versus dedicated was impossible to detect.
However I quickly realized that the 7000 was happier with a dedicated 20 amp circuit, so at the end of the day it was a good and worthwhile endeavour to give the Niagra’s all the power they can take, and then some, I have no regrets about making the changes but caution those that run large power conditioners onclean circuits that they may not hear any benefit.
Not starving the amps on the other hand definitely pays off, but the power resserve on the AQ does that without the 8 gauge wire, likely a standard 12 gauge/ 20 amp circuit would have sounded the same, but the cost delta is small so
Hi Peter,
I also have 3 dedicated lines, but they are standard 12AWG Romex. Each has a Niagara plugged into it. Two 7000’s, one for each M500 amp and associated equipment, like preamp, etc. The third has a Niagara 5000 plugged into it for the turntable/phono preamp. I did not put them all on the same rail in the main panel.
When I added the Niagara’s I had audiophile friends over and they agreed with me that the Niagara’s improved the sound.
My guess is that the Niagara’s power reserve is a the game changer here… no wire gauge could provide the instantaneous 90 amp power reserve they provide.
In any case I’ve been taking a “belt and suspenders” approach to reducing noise so I doubt everything I’ve done was really necessary.
Dan
@Dan I feel the same, I would recommend to anyone thinking about redoing the wire to increase the gauge or add dedicated circuits to first try a Niagra 7000, my experience it and switching to Dragon cables were the main contributors to the improvement.
This 16 breaker capacity MCB “box” is what I’ll be using for my dedicated audio room:
Oh dang! That is a wild power distribution plate. Looks like a pretty all encompassing project!