Times are changing and our son will leave our house. I therefore have the opportunity to set up a dedicated listening room in the next few weeks and move my system from the living room to it. It needs some preparation at the beginning:
The room already has its own power circuit feeding for the two sockets in the room with a separate fuse in the fuse box in the basement. I plan to replace the standard sockets with Furutech FT-SWS NCF. I already use this socket in the living room with great success (after a long burn-in phase). However, I am unsure about the following points:
Should I replace the In-Wall power cables (e.g. with In-Wall Cable GigaWatt LC-Y EVO 3X4) or use another special cable?
Should I have the fuses in the basement replaced (currently: Hager Standard see photo Nr. 2) e.g. by Doepke DFS2 Audio and Gigawatt G16a circuit breaker?
Which In-Wall Ethernet cable would be useful, e.g. Bluejeans Cat 6a Jack-to-Jack, In-Wall Installable Cabling? So far the room is not connected to the Ethernet house wiring and to the router (with Cisco 3560 switch) in the basement. But there is an empty in Wall conduit, so retrofitting would probably be easy.
Of course, I would have all the work done by an electrician.
Further steps such as optimising the room acoustics and special equipment will come later. Now it’s first about the technical set-up. Thank you very much for your comments and tips.
The key thing with dedicated mains supplies is to run them from a small separate consumer unit by splitting the meter tails. Isolating the whole thing from the rest of your home electrics as far as possible is the real benefit.
I’d have a dedicated earth rod/plate installed. For the cost (not crazy money) you can entirely isolate the earth from household appliances. But if not possible, ensure that the earth on a dedicated circuit is not shared with other circuits enroute to the CU. It’s common for electricians in many countries to just daisy chain earth from socket to socket crossing circuit boundaries because it’s cheaper and faster and satisfies the minimum safety requirement. But from a noise perspective is awful.
Also, if you do swap out the mains cable in wall, remember that Furutech sockets only open the wire clamp to 8.2mm2, not 10mm2 as often used in the UK by enthusiasts.
Can I suggest (if you haven’t already?) that before you commit to wiring locations for the sockets/outlets, you identify where these will be best positioned within the room — as you appear to be starting from scratch?
You may find with a new environment that your 'speakers and kit need to live in different relative positions, which may not be accommodated by running 'speaker cabling differently. this is especially relevant if you are intending to use (need to?) room treatment e.g. you may need to address reflections with say 100mm deep panels behind a kit stack.
Spot on. And don’t make the mistake of putting all the plug sockets behind where you think the’t make the mistake of putting all the plug sockets behind where you think
Also Wilfred allow me to suggest ( along the lines of HL’s sensible advice) if at all possible NOT to plan to accommodate your stacks between your speakers. Great to have a dedicated space for your listening btw Enjoy Peter
Enjoy Peter