I’m having similar thoughts regarding a dedicated mains. We are moving into a new build house in December and I am weighing up wether or not to ask the builder to put in the dedicated mains (or at least run some 10mm cabling through the ceiling void into the living room) Or do I wait until the house is built and get an electrician in, who will probably run the cable from the garage consumer unit up the outside wall, through the loft and down other outside wall to the living room. This option may possibly have less interference from other household cables
The main obstacle is that I have no idea where the hifi will live in the living room, so no idea where the socket will go!
@naim_that_tune I would get it run in now as it can easily be hidden within the fabric of the building, whereas fitting it later will mean either having it on show or disturbing the sheet flooring which is really best avoided if possible.
As for position, I’m sure you could work out where the system will go by the layout/shape of the room. If not then just get the builder to run the cable from the consumer unit and leave plenty of cable at the lounge end so you can run it where you like (possibly in trunking if nowhere to hide it).
Its certainly an upgrade worth doing, especially while the house is being built.
So installed today and even just a 30min test run and wow! The sound was good before, but maybe a bit ‘muddled’ at certain times of day. This is something else! The clarity and precision I didn’t know was missing even when the system sounded good before. Tight, clean, precise. Still need some really critical listening, but already I would 100% recommend this. Thanks @james_n for the diagram, installed completely to spec - really helped with explanation to sparky. If you are considering dedicated mains, get yourself a quote. To me this was such a revelation. Will post more after it has all bedded in.
There is usually a couple of things it he house that have their own spur so they can have independent fusing (cooker, water heater etc) maybe try plugging into that feed with an extension cord and see if it makes any difference. It didn’t for me but YMMV…
That’s good news Steve - glad it worked well for you. Yes, utter consistency in performance, whatever is going on in the rest of the house, was one benefit for me. At least whatever you do now to the rest of the system, you know you have a solid foundation to build on. Enjoy your weekend listening
That sounds similar to my reaction when I first heard my system with improved mains, totally blown away!
There are a few more tweaks but I would let it burn in for a few weeks now. You should expect the sound to get better, then worse, then better again for a while now but don’t panic as when its finished burning in you will be left with all the good things you heard during this burn in period.
Good to know @Mrhappy - thanks. Has made me seriously consider a mains lead upgrade (currently Powerline lite) but will wait for everything to bed in and I can baseline where I’m at
It’s worth keeping an eye out in the usual places for a preloved Power-Line. I picked up 2 of them a few months back at nearly half price and they work very well with Naim kit (not surprisingly) and with non Naim kit too.
