As part of my new adventure in to Linn hi-fi I am refurbishing our largest bedroom into an entertainment space.

The room is end terrace directly above our kitchen where the electric board located. I will be getting an electrician in to add sockets to the far end of the room but I'm wondering whether I would benefit much by having him put a dedicated mains ring for sockets to drive the hi-fi.

The electric board will be around 5m from where the sockets will be going. Also any gain going single rather than double outlets?

I'm looking at sockets for a Majik DSM, M6100, NAS, PS4 & TV. If singles I'd probably ask for a total of 6 or if doubles a total of 8 outlets (4 doubles). I doubt I will ever upgrade past Majik (at least not in this Lifetime).

Any knowledge on this subject then let me know.

Duplicate

Hi Ray, I had two fused spurs installed, one 2.5mm and the other 4mm. They are both better sound, but musically worse than my normal ring main. It could be because the sparky ran the cable (off the drum) from the socket to the fuse-board, instead of the opposite way around. Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do about it now. Or else, it could be something entirely different such as some kind of hierarchy within the fuse-box. I've still not got him back to try some ideas out.

As for sockets, sure, go for it, but you might find a single socket with very basic extension block sounds better. I don't have enough wall sockets to compare, so just took advise from Fredrik and others on that one. The order in which you connect the components to the extension block is also important, with pre>source>power being the consensus but you should also compare to source>pre>power. The source/pre goes closest to the cable entering the block and so on.

Not sure which country you're in but I use this UK extension block (the simpler the better, as members predicted - I tried half a dozon or so):
https://www.robertdyas.co.uk/connect-it ... m-ext-lead

Wow.

I'm confused haha.

I mean really I've read here about power leads (and that blew my mind) but then to be plugging it all in to an extension block(adding more boxes in) and a super cheap one at that is simply just witchcraft to me.

Thanks for the input.

Raylogic wrote:I mean really I've read here about power leads (and that blew my mind) but then to be plugging it all in to an extension block(adding more boxes in) and a super cheap one at that is simply just witchcraft to me.

I think the issue is surge protection circuits fitted inside most extension blocks. To be fair, I have not splashed out on super expensive audiophile blocks so don't know what they have to offer.

I recall back in the 80s that Uxbridge Audio used to modify basic extension blocks to sell onto customers. They definitely used to cut out the LED and I think soldered some of the internal connections too.

I’ve been experimenting with the mains supply for years and, due mainly to a lack of a truly rigorous approach, I’m still non the wiser!

I’ve tried a 4mm twin & earth radial, which I thought was OK. It was nearly 30 years ago, so I can’t remember what, or if, I compared it against, so a bit useless as a recommendation!

I extended the 4mm t&e when the system was moved into another room. This was a total disaster and sounded much worse than the existing 2.5mm t&a which fed the whole of the ground floor. I put this down to the 4mm radial being extended, but because of my unscientific approach I don’t really know!

Next, I tried a 10mm t&e radial, which again sounded poor. This was replaced by a 6mm t&e radial, which was better but still not as good as the 2.5mm t&e ring.

Before trying 4mm t&e again, I had the idea of using a flex, based on proper research into a cables ability to reject noise, with the twisted cores of a flex being superior to the parallel cores of t&e. I already had some 2.5 mm arctic flex, so I bought some 4 & 6mm arctic flex.The 6mm arctic flex didn’t sound good, but the 4mm arctic flex was an improvement on the 2.5mm t&e ring. Remember, my 2.5mm t&e ring fed the whole ground floor, so wasn’t a ring just for the HiFi.

I’ve since moved house and have only had the opportunity to compare the 4mm arctic flex radial with a 2.5mm arctic flex radial. The 4mm cable was easily better. But, I didn’t check for direction!!! Meaning that I still can’t say for sure what is the best way of powering a system!

I need to experiment with different combinations of 4mm/t&e/flex/2.5mm ring again, but this time listen for direction first! I’ll be doing this over the next couple of months.

What I can say is though, the electrical wiring to a HiFi system is very important and clearly affects its performance - usually for the worse and sometimes for the better!

Ok I will be watching out for your findings. Unfortunately for me I think I need to have the electrics done around the 1st week of March.

OK. I’ve got a deadline then! I’ll post some clips of the sound too.

Hey

How you getting on?

R.

Doesn’t time fly!

I’ll be able to post a couple of vids on Sunday.

Evening :)

It's not Sunday evening there yet? ;-)

Haha

Raylogic wrote:Hey

How you getting on?

R.

Not very well, I’m afraid!

What I thought would be a simple task has turned out to be quite involved. I’ve realised that my ring and radial differ by more than just the wiring topology. That is, 1) The consumer units, 2) The breaker manufacturers and, 3) The power socket manufacturers. Therefore I’m not in any position to understand what effect the wiring topology (and only that!) has on the sound. I’ll get round to it, but not anytime soon.

Update: My sparky is putting in a ring main off my HiFi consumer unit tomorrow so I’ll be able to do a direct comparison of 4mm flex v 2.5mm ring sooner than expected.

Just spoken to Sparks and he’s agreed to temporarily fit a ring with one 7m leg and one 18m leg. We’ll listen for directionality, then reduce the long leg down to 7m in 0.5m increments. It’ll be interesting to see what emerges.

Exciting stuff I've got enough other stuff to be keeping me going (plumbing,joinery, and so on) for a few weeks so I'll keep an eye out!!

Spannko wrote:Just spoken to Sparks and he’s agreed to temporarily fit a ring with one 7m leg and one 18m leg. We’ll listen for directionality, then reduce the long leg down to 7m in 0.5m increments. It’ll be interesting to see what emerges.

Dedication to the task!

I love it.

lejonklou wrote:

Spannko wrote:Just spoken to Sparks and he’s agreed to temporarily fit a ring with one 7m leg and one 18m leg. We’ll listen for directionality, then reduce the long leg down to 7m in 0.5m increments. It’ll be interesting to see what emerges.

Dedication to the task!

I love it.

It does sound pretty cool, but I hope you have a third length of wire as the system you mention almost guarantees you will end up with a wire .5m shorter than optimum.

ThomasOK wrote:

lejonklou wrote:

Spannko wrote:Just spoken to Sparks and he’s agreed to temporarily fit a ring with one 7m leg and one 18m leg. We’ll listen for directionality, then reduce the long leg down to 7m in 0.5m increments. It’ll be interesting to see what emerges.

Dedication to the task!

I love it.

It does sound pretty cool, but I hope you have a third length of wire as the system you mention almost guarantees you will end up with a wire .5m shorter than optimum.

True! I’m following Roy Gandhi’s recommendation of not cutting the ring and just looping the cable into the socket. When I know which length sounds best, I’ll have to have a whole new cable fitted. Hopefully it’ll be worth all the trouble!

Spannko wrote: ↑2018-03-09 01:35

ThomasOK wrote:

lejonklou wrote: Dedication to the task!

I love it.

It does sound pretty cool, but I hope you have a third length of wire as the system you mention almost guarantees you will end up with a wire .5m shorter than optimum.

True! I’m following Roy Gandhi’s recommendation of not cutting the ring and just looping the cable into the socket. When I know which length sounds best, I’ll have to have a whole new cable fitted. Hopefully it’ll be worth all the trouble!

What was the outcome?

R.

A dedicated ring was slightly better than the house ring.

Then we compared the dedicated ring to various radially wired cables. The decicated ring was better than most radially wired cables (T&E, arctic cable, generic YY cables, solid core and stranded) except for Lapp Kabel Classic 110 control cable, which was better than the 2.5mm T&E ring, regardless of the CSA. I’ve recently compared the 4mm2, 6mm2 and 10mm2 Classic 110 and feel that the sound & musicality improve as the CSA increases.

I need to get round to recording some videos to see if people agree with me!