your welcome matt, oh, if you can manage to get the furutech aluminum wall frame and cover plate and a pure teflon material comes with it, and alpha cryo treated 2" screw's come with it as well, this is a must install, believe it or not, this work's very good, I also tested screw's, the screw's affect the sound hugely, the best screw's under testing with different kind's of metal were the stainless steel none magnetic alpha cryo treated screw's that only can be had if you buy the wall frame,cheers.

audiolabyrinth January 08, 2015 09:36

Thanks. That's enormously useful info!

mattnshilp January 07, 2015 20:53

Hi Matt, I have agonized over outlet's recently, I had a Hubell industrial 20 amp, and Furutech GTX-D Gold and Rhodium, The Rhodium is far and away the best I have heard over my life time with outlet's over tha past 20 years, however, word of caution here, do not ever mix recepticles of any kind, this does not work, the sound is a wreck, I did this between 4 wpo's, the Furutech GTX Gold and Rhodium mix was the worse!, you have to go all one version through out your entire system, if it's gold or the Rhodium, I did the Rhodium with huge success, all this took me 25 or 30 times of of the outlet's going in and out the wall, every time the pure copper Rhodium plateing furutech GTX-D won!, these wpo's take 700hrs to be done with burn-in, you will notice a improvement in sound at 165 hrs though, after that, each day is an improvement with music playing time, cheers matt.

audiolabyrinth January 07, 2015 12:19

Sheetrock and spackle done.

Painting starts Monday!

mattnshilp January 03, 2015 22:45

Matt...best of luck with the finishing stages of the room. Contractors and schedules are a great frustration to say the least! I'm eager to hear about your experience with the Vicoustics treatments....WAF on traditional room treatments has been extremely low, comments like "horrible" describe to me the WAF view of my ideas to put things on ceilings, in corners, etc...again and I am looking very intently at the Vicoustics as they may be my salvation given their aesthetics and overall 'artistic value' in the room that may offset WAF veto power :-) !!!

zephyr24069 December 31, 2014 15:00

Happy holidays everyone.

The season has slowed my brisk pace to a crawl. I am hoping to have spackle and sanding done by Wednesday and painter starting Friday. Carpet maybe first week in January if possible. Then molding and done.

My Vicoustics treatments have also been delayed in transit due to the holidays. GIK order hasn't been placed just yet, even though I really want to. But the budget has been stretched very very thin and I'm forcing myself to wait until January to place my order.

I also ordered a 9 meter pair of XLR Shunyata Venom interconnects to make the long journey from side rack to front amps, replacing my 1.5m top tier XLR Zitron Anaconda interconnects currently running from pre to amps. The Venom are temporary, affordable and will still sound good. I'll replace the Venom when the rest of the room settles down.

My Shunyata Hydra AV will stay on my digital front end power circuit and the analog circuit (including pre-amp) and each of the amp circuits will run bare right now until I decide how to handle each circuit. I'm a big fan of Shunyata power cords and power filtration, so I'll likely stick with more of the same. The new Sigma power cords look awesome!

I also picked out a nice Loveseat for my listening seat. My kids join me occasionally and my trusty dog joins me regularly on my longer listening sessions.

No new photos since the room looks pretty much the same.

I'll keep you updated.

mattnshilp December 28, 2014 02:32

Wow...this is making great progress. I am very happy for you to see the progress towards your new room!!!

zephyr24069 December 17, 2014 11:10

System edited: Sheetrock done. Spackle neck, then paint, molding and carpet. Getting very excited!!

mattnshilp December 15, 2014 02:45

The GTX is pure copper with a micro thin gold or rhodium plating. The Afterburner is a fine copper alloy.

My current Power Ports are 15 coats of high purity nickel over solid copper.

Which is better? Who knows. But I'm not auditioning outlets right now. I'll upgrade to Afterburner 8, Maestro or GTX when the time comes. I'm sure all will sound fantastic.

mattnshilp December 08, 2014 12:44

Correct..they have gold or rhodium; Bybee v3 uses both in their new conditioner. I found each works well for specific types of gear. The gold is a bit warmer sounding. For my wall outlets thought I found the AFTERBURNER8 outlets (no fancy plating, just 100% pure and well done metallurgy and design) are the best I've heard (again, all IMHO)....

zephyr24069 December 08, 2014 08:15

System edited: Updated pictures. Sheetrock is going up today and this week. I'll post new pics when Sheetrock is done.

mattnshilp December 08, 2014 04:43

Gold or Rhodium I think.

mattnshilp December 07, 2014 16:33

Rhodium is very pretty, but is not a particularly good conductor, it is used mostly to prevent wear&oxydation... Does Furutech have the same outlets with different plating or no plating at all on contacts? G.

guidocorona December 07, 2014 15:34

Thanks Zephyr. It is truly a labor of love!!

I currently have four PS Audio Powerport outlets; I've had them for years. I
was thinking of going all out for the Furutech GTX-D Rhodium outlets when
I eventually upgrade. They are about $250- each but are supposedly the
absolute best there is.

I think I would get more improvement for my money by adding the 2750's
now and upgrade my outlets later.

mattnshilp December 07, 2014 14:07

You have one hell of great project going...please let us know how everything sounds when complete and you are able to finally power on the system. I think you will really like what the 2750s do for each circuit. They made one hell of a difference here! Don't forget to check out Avatar Acoustics' AFTERBURNER8 outlets; Darren will explain all that makes them special in detail if you can get him on the phone.....Enjoy!

zephyr24069 December 07, 2014 12:26

Zephyr - definitely going to do the EP-2750's for my 4 equipment circuits. I may not for my dedicated accessory circuit. Spending a lot now, so they will have to wait b

I have an equally expensive Eaton surge suppressor installed in the main panel already that makes no sense to replace. I would add the EP-2050 to my sub-panel as added protection to my prized gear as secondary insurance. I'll ask an electrician if it's safe to have 2 in parallel, installation is easy....

My Shunyata AV hydra has a Hydraulic electromagnetic breaker for surge suppression. But with dedicated circuits in my new room, I need one for each circuit now. Uh oh....

mattnshilp December 06, 2014 17:04

Sheetrock goes up Sunday and next week. All electrical is done. Then spakle, molding, paint, carpet, treatments, furniture and stereo in. Realistically hoping for a mid to late January move in.

If any news, I'll update you on the Burmester situation. Keep your fingers crossed.

Acousti treatment have been settled upon:
-GIK soffit base traps in front corners
-GIK Tri-traps in rear corners
-GIK Monster base trap in center rear wall
-Auralex WavePrism diffusors left/right straddling Monster trap on rear wall
-GIK Q7D qrd 1 dimensional diffusers on side walls (76")
-Vicoustics Wave Wood above Q7D diffusers on side walls (72")
-Vicoustics Multifuser 64 and Auralex WavePrism in center front wall
-Vicoustics WaveWood left/right straddling MF64&WP on front wall
-Vicoustics Multifuser DC2 as ceiling diffusion cloud

Mostly diffusion. Corner absorption plus a little bit here and there. It sounds like a lot but it's actually not. I'm going to install each section and then listen for improvements...

Basically treating corners, first reflection points and slap echo. Should sound awesome and look great as well.

mattnshilp December 06, 2014 14:59

I'm not an electrician so I cannot comment on whether doubling-up is safe and/or advisable. It seems to me that having an EP2050 in the main panel covers this and ground filters in the subpanel inline for each circuit should get it done so to speak. The 2050 provides clean power via regeneration and surge suppression from the point the power enters the whole-house panel. In addition, most power conditioners in our racks seem to have surge suppression (my Bybee v3 has a J. Curl-designed surge suppression layer in it according to the literature), you may already have a plan to has 2 layers of surge suppression inherent in it....

zephyr24069 December 05, 2014 11:37

Zephyr- why not double up and put a power surge protection unit in my sub-panel? I'm American, isn't more always better?

mattnshilp December 05, 2014 04:04

Opinions on type of diffuser for 1st reflection on side walls? RPG skyline type omnidirectional diffusion vs Vertical Slot diffusion like the GIK Q7D style which only diffuses horizontally? I have read that vertical slot diffusion is ideal for the side walls and the skyline type diffusion is best for front wall, ceiling and rear wall to reduce slap echo.

thoughts?

mattnshilp December 02, 2014 18:04

Matt: Apologies for the delay in responding as I just noticed your questions.....

I agree with the folks about that electricians would prefer not to work with 10-gauge but frankly, 3rd listening room in, I'll tell you I've tried the 'recommended' 12-gauge runs for 20-amp circuits as well as 10-gauge and with 2 rooms wired with 10-gauge instead of 12, I will tell you there is a difference that can be enjoyed especially in demanding passages. It could be my amp(s) and my gear over the years but the more headroom this equipment has, the better it likes it so I'm sticking with 10-gauge for 20-amp circuits. I also found an electrician who had wired other HT and 2-channel rooms who agreed with this practice and said everyone he'd wired appreciated the difference when it was all said and done.

The main panel in the latest house is a Cutler-Hammer monster with copper busbars. The sub-panel is a 12 circuit GE that I found that also has copper busbars and a very solid feeling bolt-in circuit breaker insert. I am very happy with this subpanel; I looked at a lot of boxes while looking for SquareD and others recommended here and for some reason, the only SquareDs I could easily lay my hands on at the local Home Depot or Lowes are the ones that don't have copper bus bars. I could have had a SquareD or Cutler-Hammer subpanel with copper busbars if I had waited but I would have missed the window when the electrician I wanted to utilize was readily available. The subpanel and main panel are tied together using massive 6-gauge conduit as side note.....

If you have surge suppression already on your main panel, you should not (IMHO) install a 2nd device that also serves that function unless you remove the first and put in the Environmental Potentials to get both Surge Suppression and Wave Form correction (I would....). The EP unit's regenerative effects could be heard and seen throughout the house as my UHD-4K LED panel proved; as soon as the house came back online, the video was markedly improved and my audio system sounded better (more black backgrounds, etc...), even better after a couple of weeks of breaking in the new conduit in the walls.

Regardless whether you put the in the EP Waveform+Surge Protect unit in the main panel I would recommend you should definitely put one EP ground filter on each of your dedicated circuits. The effect of these in my system is readily noticed from first power-up and ever since. They are remarkable little devices and for about $175 are probably one of those outstanding values in audio that I'll never live without again.

Outlets (after many years of expense, trial and error with several other SOTA outlets) are Avatar Audio's AFTERBURNER8 outlets. Darren has real credentials in metallurgical sciences, engineering and is a die hard audiophile. These outlets amazed me and again, this is one of those things I won't be living without in my system. They worked wonders even over and above my favorites that I'd had in my system (Oyaide R1s cryo’ed) for several years after trying many others....

I have tried both separating my digital gear, analog gear and amps and various combinations as well as having them all on the same circuit. If you are going to spread across 2 or more dedicated circuits, it's absolutely essential that you have perfect and equal ground reference on all of them. Believe it or not, my best results have been (to-date, this could change) with all my gear seeing the same ground reference through the use of a single dedicated circuit with the EP filters and WaveForm correction installed all running into a Bybee Stealth 3.0 unit and tied together (ground-ref) with a Granite Audio Ground Zero star-grounding scheme.

I'm still experimenting and will continue to do so, but this is where I'm at to-date on all of this; very happy with the current state of things and looking forward to a lot more great listening.

Let me know how else I can help…”Obsessed Again”…definitely can relate!

zephyr24069 December 02, 2014 10:56

Room is framed, wired and insulated. I just wired the sub panel into the main today. I ran 4/3 Romex from sub to main. Did I complain about working with 10/2??? Once working with 4/3, 10/2 is cake!

The sub panel is a 125 amp, 20 breaker Square D panel running through the 4/3 with a 70 amp double breaker in my main commercial grade GE box. The Square D panel has 5 dedicated 20 amp circuits all from the same Line to maintain phase. I wired my 5 PS Audio outlets into their dedicated 20 amp circuits, labeled them accordingly and tested the entire room; utility outlets (running from the main panel), overhead lights (running from the main panel) and my dedicated circuits all functioning and no arcing seen. Phew!

I left the top 4 spots (2 on each side) to put a surge protection device in Line as the first circuits after the tie in off the main. The main panel has a whole house SPD, but I'm putting a second on on my sub-panel to be totally safe. This way I feel super comfortable running my amps straight into the outlet with no power conditioner/surge protection needed other then my Shunyata power cords.

I know its not DAC related, but I have learned a TON doing this and am more then happy to share my newly learned knowledge with any who have questions. It's not hard, you just need to be super meticulous.

Sheetrock next. Picking colors and carpet next week.

Trying to decide what treatments I'm doing now and later. Definitely corner base traps and first reflection diffusers. Probably something subtle on front and back to reduce slap echo.

mattnshilp November 30, 2014 02:00

Well said Gooose. I agree with Richard V. Speaker palacement is critical and is a 2-3 man job

agear November 16, 2014 17:10

Matt,

Spent an interesting afternoon with Richard Vandersteen and the topic of room treatments came up. His advise is to go slow and don't go overboard with absorption. Treating the first reflection points with diffusion is a good strategy. One of his points is the room treatment guys are in the business of selling room treatments so you need to be prudent about their advise. On another note, I have never been a big fan of the foam type of diffusers and prefer wood. Our audio club just moved to a new location and the new room is a challenge with the acoustics. After bringing in all kinds of tube traps, acoustic panels, diffusers etc. the biggest effect on getting decent sound was the actual placement of the speakers in the room. We tried multiple set-ups with and without treatments. Go figure.

goose November 16, 2014 15:45

Yup, you can hold up a bridge with 10ga.. that's why most electricians will tell you 12a is fine.. they hate to work with 10ga too!

erikminer November 15, 2014 05:11