Dedicated Outlets - The Latest Recommendations

If you can use NM-B cable (Romex is a trade name) that seems to be the most popular. If you use NM-B cable have the electrician use plastic outlet boxes instead of steel boxes if possible.
Have the electrician keep the NM-B cables separated from one another when parallel to one another for long distances. Also try to keep them from other parallel branch circuits after he gets out the the electrical as soon as possible, within reason. Especially lighting branch circuits. (Dimmers, electronic ballasts, CFL lamps, LED lamps. All radiate RFI harmonics through the air.)

Because of the 75ft length of the branch circuits I would use #10awg solid core copper wire. Don’t let the electrician talk you out of it. Don’t let him try to talk you out of using solid core wire either. He will tell there is no difference between solid and stranded wire. LOL, for him there is, Stranded is easier to work with. Expect to pay a slightly higher labor cost though.

If conduit is used ask the electrician if he will twist the hot and neutral conductors together the entire length of the conduit run and pull the insulated equipment grounding conductor in the conduit along side the hot and neutral twisted pair. If he can not or will not, then there is a very good chance, high probability, with a 75ft run of conduit with the hot and neutral wires pulled loosely in the conduit with the equipment grounding conductor wire you will have ground loop problems, 60Hz hum.

whart
1,252 posts                                                                      09-27-2017 2:17pm

If you look for an electrical contractor that does commercial work, not just residential, you may already be in the ballpark in terms of dealing with some of this stuff (less arm-twisting). At least that’s been my experience. Good luck.

My understanding is that Romex (such as 10-2 or 10-3) can be run behind drywall and in attic areas without a conduit.  That is what I found out during electrical code research and that is actually how my house wiring is ran.  My house was built in 2000 in California.  Your local electrical code might be different.

The way I understand it, is if you use individual wires (such as TFFN/THHN copper), then they have to be run through conduit all the way. 

10 awg romex is the best in my opinion.  I think you can get larger (such as 8awg), but they are stranded.  10awg is the largest solid-core you can get.  Other people have written that the got better sound quality using 8awg or 6awg wiring to the outlets.

If you choose 10-3, you could use 2 of the insulated conductors just for "HOT" (giving you 7awg for the hot conductor).  Though, I don't know why you would really need this unless you had something like a huge Boulder amp that required a 30A circuit.

If you want to get better wire and are willing to spend more:

Audio Sensibility sells both 10-2 and 12-2 cryo treated Romex.

VH Audio sells cryo treated 10-2 Romex.  They also have a pre-burned-ind (COOKED) 250 foot roll of 10-2 Romex for a little bit extra money.

Lastly, one thing I'd like clarified from someone else....How do you define a sub-panel?  We ran a dedicated panel for my audio circuits directly off the meter loop and gave it its own ground.  When I hear "sub-panel" I assume this means it is tapped off the main panel.

We ran a dedicated panel for my audio circuits directly off the meter loop and gave it its own ground.