Hi Dcase...; I'm not an expert here, but recently I had a dedicated AC and ground system run into my stereo room (by electricians). From my main breaker box, I used 50 ft. of 6 gauge 3 wire from a 50 amp breaker, and ran it to a submain box with 4 20amp breakers. From the submain, they then ran 4 dedicated lines to Hubbell duplex outlets. My main breaker box is also Square D, and I just used standard 20 amp breakers in my submain box. I did replace the old original 50 amp breaker with a new one. Dedicated lines have some pitfalls: 1. The mainline cable from main to submain is directional, ie it will sound better running one direction than the other. And the only way you can find this out is by trying it each direction-- I learned this from Redkiwi. Well, I tried it and one direction music was excessively soft, flat, dull, and uninvolving (Redkiwi found one way to be too bright), but the other direction was much more natural, live, and involving. I first ran the mainline outside the wall/attic to do this testing before having it final wired in. Redkiwi also recommended using the old style ceramic fuses instead of breakers, and I tried them first, but music character was really strange, ie this set-up produced a distinct midbass hump and the mid-range was shelved downward, in short tonal balance was not right. Going back to standard 20 amp breakers corrected this, and music sounded natural (here in USA I had to step down from 220 volt/50 amp at the submain box-- and obviously this is a significant difference from NZ). BTW, Redkiwi is from New Zealand, and they use 230/240 volt there, but I learned much in the way of general principals from him. Use good quality outlets-- I used audiophile grade Hubbells (from the Cable Co.), do not use any surge protection or filters-- that's what you're trying to get away from. For ground, I had 3 six ft. copper rods driven in the ground within 10 ft. of dedicated sub-main. A stout ground wire was run from sub-main to ground, so each outlet does not have a dedicated ground. One other thing that is important: a dedicated system will cause your system to be too bright, caused by the stock, inexpensive power cords. Replacing your stock cords with good quality custom cords will probably be necessary. I learned this from Redkiwi also, and found it to be true. I put Syn. Res. Master Couplers on my amp amd pre-amp, and that got rid of the brightness. I have on order SR-MCs for my CD transport and DAC (hope it's not too much of a good thing). When all done (and tweaked), this was a significant upgrade-- noise floor dropped dramatically and music was more clear, detailed, live, and natural. I found out the hard way that some of this can be a big pain, but in the end it was worth it. Best of Luck. Craig.
