It was suggested to me that 2 bars would mitigate the effects of the pull of current from the circuits closest to the feed - and it would have been a very cheap change. Perhaps hokum, perhaps not.
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Yes - that’s what I was hoping for it to be.
IME as soon as you mention the need for ‘making good’ with some trades (e.g. sparks/plumbers), the appetite to do the work can subside/price escalates abnormally. Understandable, as this part of the job can be onerous - the moreso, if they cannot immediately see how they are going to un things in with little fuss and mess. Just a thought.
£200 all in with materials, two new light fittings, a new external joint box and a new socket for the fridge.
Yes, agreed.
That’s why I didn’t ask any of the 4 sparks to quote for plastering or making good, or even sweeping up!
That was spontaneously added by the one who did quote.
But he lives about 100 miles away, so perhaps didn’t want the job unless it was for a very high fee.
My first quote was double that @JimDog … from the sparks who put in my LAN.
The sparks who put mine in took two days to do the work, mainly putting in the external trunking.
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It’s impossible for anyone to judge whether or not that’s a fair price without seeing how long the cable run is, how difficult it is to pull, how much plastering there is to do, etc. Having said that, I’ve seen some spectacularly incompetent attempts at ‘making good’ by electricians, and unless they are quoting for getting a plasterer in to do it, I find it can be better to ask them for a cheaper quote and do the repairs yourself.
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Things used to be so cheap in the days you were allowed to DIY!
Actually, in all seriousness, you can DIY, quite legally (at least in UK) and safely, though an electrician will still be needed at the end, simply with a lot less to do so cheaper. And DIY is easiest of all with a separate CU: You install everything from sockets up to and including the CU, even a connector box (aka Henley block), and get an electrician to just check and test the circuit and then connect the meter tails and re-route the main CU to the connector block, giving you a certificate of compliance when done. Obviously a charge, but far less than paying for the whole job, as a single run to just a pair of double sockets is quick and simple for him/her to check and the connection very quick - you’ll have done the awkward bits if there are any, but also you will have been able to decide on certain routing detail, and take care to minimise the degree of making good needed etc. (You still need to know what you’re doing, as if you get it wrong the electrician will fail it and charge for fixing.) That’s what I would do (where a few years ago I’d have done the connection as well).
Re my problem, there have been lots of suggestions all of which are valid. Probably the best way to describe the change I noticed is that it sounds tight and constrained. Back on the old plugs, on the ring, it sounds free. Is it possible that the cause may be the cable? I didn’t specify anything in particular. Indeed it may take time tto burn in, but can inferior cable be a root cause?
What I mean is, can standard electrical cable be inferior, or is it all the same?
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I use standard twin and earth cable, whichever make our wholesalers have in stock. It normally sounds bad to start with but it does improve dramatically with burn in over a few weeks. Leave everything alone for a few weeks and see what happens, what have you got to lose?
Thanks Mrhappy, I’ll give it a go. Will leaving something running all the time on the sockets, say a lamps or a computer, hasten the process?
Yes, the points need to be passing an electrical current.
OK, great, thought I’d take advantage of the hiatus to re-decorate.
I am struggling to cope with the concept of burn-in of cable - all the more so a thick cable that is highly over-specified for the current it will carry. A more likely explanation is getting used to the sound, and learning to like it having determined to persevere…
I also can’t see the cable itself being the issue (as opposed to bypassing the rest of the house wiring, which might, depending on the house wiring and what is on it. But any dodgy connections could be an issue, whether poorly seated and tightened terminations at either end of the cable, poor contacts in the circuit breaker, or poor joints or contact surfaces within the sockets.
That is assuming it is not a case of you simply liking the sound caused by the RF interference etc superimosed on the house circuit, and so disliking without it!! I thought your description didn’t really fit that, though it seems others think it might…
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Lots of views on this - but what you report is exactly what I also found when I put in a dedicated radial circuit - clean, lean and clinical. Fortunately I also put in a parallel dedicated ring circuit alongside the radial - both fed by their own breakers, so I could compare: the ring was better - nicer more rounded in a way I liked and less negatively analytic, also more low-level detail and a fuller more engaging sound that connects to you rather than is thrown at you - so I use the ring. I still have the radial sitting next to it on separate wall sockets but it does not get used.
IMO the new circuit should be immediately and obviously better than what you had before - or it is not actually better. I’m pretty alone in preferring a dedicated HiFi ring circuit over a single run radial, but I definitely prefer it.
And no special heavy-gauge wires of separate consumer units - just standard UK ‘thin’ mains wiring - I deliberately did this as I wanted the extra inductance and resistance to stand the HiFi off from the Mains entering the house and make an island for the HiFi. Then where the HiFi all plugs-in use a combination of mains socket dis-boards and wall-sockets to ‘daisy-chain’ all your HiFi box mains leads source to Power Amp with the latter on the wall socket and the sources farthest away.
The main ‘noise’ comes from three places:
- Your HiFi Power Supplies themselves - they rectify the mains and are locally more noisy than anything.
- Other things in your house plugged-in, so a separated HiFi circuit with some distance from all the other stuff is useful at attenuating noise.
- RF pick-up from wiring in the HiFi - so grouping all the local HiFi equipment mains leads close and not allowing a large cross-section to be made of it minimizes that - the same with speaker wiring to an extent.
I get good results I’m happy with.
Just for information.
DB.
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I must say that the feedback on this Forum gives plenty of food for thought - an excellent place and experience for me for my first time! I have to say that DB’s contribution makes some sense. Can I ask DB what extension boards you recommend? Regarding getting used to the new sound, I only added the XPS to the CDX2 a couple of months ago and the leap in sound after listening to a bare CDX2 for 2 years was instant - fabulous, gains in all the right directions, the best I’ve heard it. I find it hard to grasp that a change to a dedicated circuit might actually have improved it further, when to my ears it has removed all those gains and some, to the point that I find it unlistenable.
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I use a Wireworld Matrix 6-way. In your case I’d use a double wall-socket and plug the Power Amp into one wall socket and the extension board lead into the other wall socket - then use the extension board to effect the daisy-chain by plugging the Pre first then source next to pre - and any remaining digital supplies at the far-end.
I deliberately avoided any star-earth or star-wire config boxes - tried them and didn’t like them - as the sequential daisy-chain is exactly what I want.
Any non-switched sequential-wired HiFi mains block would be better than the normal consumer ones - avoid LEDs and switches and if possible extra fuses. I feed my Block with a Naim Powerline - then all the HiFi boxes also use Powerlines.
The first version from Wireworld was defective and fell-apart after a couple of years but they seemed to learn and I got a free replacement so I still use that as it does what I want so far.
There may be better Mains blocks and I have in mind to design one specific to my needs with my Active system peculiarities someday - but never seem to get round to it!
To be clear I’m not saying the Wireworld is best or even close to that - just that I borrowed it from the Dealer and I liked its clean no-nonsense results once I’d got the plug-in sequence right.
I’ve since borrowed ‘better’ ones that cost a lot more but did not sound better in my system.
DB.
So DB in my situation the daisy chain would be Hi-cap first, then XPS, then Napsc? Or the last two reversed?
I will experiment with this and all the suggestions I have had!
An experiment, try just using one socket of your new radial and plug the cheap multiway block you’ve been using into that rather than the ring. That will be making only one change from your old arrangement so it will test just the radial against the ring.