[Syrah]

Hi all.  I’m writing mostly to seek the advice of Occam, who has helped me tremendously over the years – but I welcome the advice of all.

I finally bought a house and now I’m looking at my power situation.

The panel is about a 10 year old domestic Westinghouse.  It has numerous non-Westinghouse breakers, which my electrician looked at and gave a “tisk-tisk”.

I could replace it with a good one, but my electrician said that audiophile “good ones” are likely industrial ones that would not fit in to my wall – I think it’s a depth issue.  I’m torn on that one.

I am getting a proper ground put in, following the Equitech website formula.

I use a 2kv iso trannie that is wired for balanced power, following the Jon Risch recipe.  Occam has advised me regarding my set up of X and Y caps to filter the power.

My plan (subject to your thoughts) is to get the electrician do a dedicated circuit and wire up a 240v socket hooked to my new ground.  Then I’ll get a Signal Transformer SU iso trannie and step down the 240v to 60-0-60, with all my X and Y caps.

My questions are as follows:

1)   Is it worth dealing with the panel, if so what to do?

2)   Is it worth it (or even better) to switch to 240v and step it down (Equitech appears to think that it is)?  Or should I just stick with my current iso trannie?

3)   If I get a new step down iso trannie, should I go with the Signal Transformer one?  Jon Risch seem pretty confident that it is the way to go.

4)          I'm using VH Audio's star quad electrical cable as wiring, any alterate suggestions?

Thanks everyone for your thoughts.

[Christopher Witmer]

Here is one piece of advice: if you can switch any of your equipment to run directly off 240V, do that as much as possible. Drop down to 120V only for any equipment that can't be switched to run at the higher voltage. Make sure you use different plugs for 240V and 120V so there will be no accidental feeding of 240V to 120V equipment. You may find that you can get by with a smaller 60-0-60 transformer, or perhaps even eliminate it completely.

-- Chris

[Occam]

If you do consider running components off North American style split phase 240vac (balanced/technical power) directly as opposed to standard single ended 220-240vac found elsewhere in the world, put an appropriate GFCI breaker in the panel for that circuit. Most components that are wireable for 120/240 are expecting single ended power (live & neutral) and may well not fuse or switch the heretofore neutral line. The GFCI will provide personal protection against shorts, even with a faulty safety ground connection. GFCI protection is also part of the NEMA specification for balanced/technical 120vac (60-0-60).

2. Equitech's (as well as Brystron/Torus) preference for power sourced from split phase balanced/technical 240vac is based on its facilitating additional effective filtering basically for 'free' when compared to single phase power. Whether those incremental benefits are 'worth' the incremental hassle, dunno.

FWIW,
Paul