Dedicated Mains

…and 6mm and 10mm cables are for high current requirements such as cookers and showers (not lower current HiFi!). That’s controversial isn’t it! :wink:

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Any other suggestions for sockets?

I’m using MK unswitches double sockets with silver plated connections. About £30 each available on ebay. I believe they have been adspted with silver plating. That’s what I have and tbh system sounds great.

I have nothing to compare it with though. It’s not like a plug which you can easily change out. Especially getting thicker cables into terminals. Other thing to consider is can you get 10mm cables into terminals of sockets you want or are considering. It’s not easy.

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When I suggested to Naim that it would be much easier and more practical to use thinner cable, they said yes, but if you want the best performance, do whatever it takes to get a single 10mm feed for your HiFi. I did, and it worked really well compared to my previous half hearted efforts, so I’m giving them the credit for knowing what they are talking about.

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OK, fair enough.

Know you’re looking for other suggestions but just to add a bit of context, I looked up the UK version of the Furutech NCF outlet, & see you have powerlines all around. If the UK NCF version performs anything like our version, the outlet is ~1/4 the price of a powerline but its impact on sound is far greater then any powerline I’ve installed.

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From what I read the Furutech NCF will not be able to take the Naim recommend 10mm2 core especially if you have to crosswire the two sockets (• Specified for wire diameters of 2.8mm or 5.5 Sq.mm/10AWG Max. (set screw)). Russ Andrews SIGNATURE™ SOCKET claims that Terminals capable of accepting 14mm² mains wiring and it also Rhodium plated and will not require a cross-wiring between the two sockets. Does anyone know if this will give a comparable performance to the Furutech NCF Rhodium plated socket?

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I would say no chance of near comparable performance. The RA ones are just rhodium plated (upgraded) MK unswitched sockets. The RA (or MK) sockets do take in larger AWG than the Furutech ones but may be you could consider a single Furutech where you don’t have to cross connect the two sockets in the double version? In this case I believe the 10mm2 should be fine.

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I would second @garcon & also say I doubt it. For starters they use rhodium plating over phosphor bronze, this is one of the reasons why rhodium can be falsely blamed for sounding bright. Rhodium seems to be more reveling/transparent of the base metal its plated over, phosphor bronze is typically not recommended under rhodium as it can sound thin/bright. While phosphor bronze isn’t good in general, its best used when plated with gold as gold tends to be less critical & being less revealing, it does a better job of masking this.

Also it lacks NCF material, which IMO is probably one of the big reasons this outlet sounds far superior to others. There are some people that have used those powerline noise testers (the ones they use to show the effects of a power conditioner line noise) & do claim they do in fact remove line noise. I’ve never personally measured this but my ears say they do lower noise levels.

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Am I right in summising that daisy chaining a second socket with 10mm2 isn’t going to work with the Furutech? And so I’d need two runs of cable or a block?

Interesting system. Does it have fans and are they noisy?

Where did you install them?

Yes, it does have a noisy fan; however, if the power consumption is within 120W, it will remain silent.

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@anon77199223

They are in-line, so between the amp and power cord.

DG…

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A Furutech double socket is in fact two separate single sockets in one enclosure, so in any case you need to daisy chain them. I haven’t tried, so not sure if they accept larger or smaller cables that MK or other brands.

@daren_p , @garcon many thanks for the detailed explanation much appreciated.

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Ah OK. So I guess that would make daisy chaining another double socket nigh on impossible.

If the connectors will accept 10mm cable at all, I guess it should still be possible with short linking wires between the two. You certainly want the biggest back box you can find to mount it in, as fitting all those stiff, fat cables into them is always going to be a struggle.

To my mind a single socket and a mains block looks like the most elegant solution when you consider all these issues.

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As already mentioned, you can always run two or more seperate 10mm2 cables from the mains and have single Furutech wall outlets on each.

My listening room is directly over the room where the mains box is on the exterior wall.

The fuse/rcd box (whatever they call them) is on the inside wall above the mains box.

In the UK would the easiest option be to run some 10mm2 the short distance up the exterior wall from the fuse/rcd box upto the room above then back in through the wall to a wall socket?