Dedicated Mains / Memera / Roy K Riches
- Thread starter strummer
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Mike Reed
pfm Member
Gosh ! Eight times 16mm2 ! This must be a first with this sized cable, surely ! Do you have the individual 32 amp. RCBOs in the Memera?
Sincerely hope you don't compromise things be having sockets, plugs and (ugh !) fuses.
Would be interested to know what kit this is feeding.
I was lucky enough to plan my new extension with the hifi situated right on the other side of the wall to where I put the new Memera CU. Sparky charged £10/hour for the work which was done within a day with about 2 or 3 metres of cable at the very most. Got the unit and breakers off ebay. Total cost about £150 for me.
Hard to tell what difference it made to my system as a whole though as I changed speakers at the same time, moved into a different room with speakers at the correct distance apart etc instaed of either side of the telly like they were previously. Couldn't give a sh!t as to what the contribution was to be honest as the itch is now scratched and I can sleep easier now that the neurotic voice in my head can only nag that I didn't use 16mm2 cable instaed of 10mm2 over that 300mm cable length.
I sleep easy now, honest.
Hard to tell what difference it made to my system as a whole though as I changed speakers at the same time, moved into a different room with speakers at the correct distance apart etc instaed of either side of the telly like they were previously. Couldn't give a sh!t as to what the contribution was to be honest as the itch is now scratched and I can sleep easier now that the neurotic voice in my head can only nag that I didn't use 16mm2 cable instaed of 10mm2 over that 300mm cable length.
I sleep easy now, honest.
Cereal Killer
432
Well my 2x6mm2 runs which are about 15m and 10m each. Both come direct from there own Square-D CU unit with 32amp breakers, the whole house is very well earthed with a 4ft copper earth rod. All sounds excellent. I'm using MK switched sockets ATM.
Mike Reed
pfm Member
Gentlemaen. This mention of 'breakers' is a bit confusing.
One either has MCBs (presumably with a single RCD for a number of MCBs) or RCBOs, which are a combination of breaker and earth trip. Usually for this kind of RKR installation they'd be rated at 32 amps but this is variable.
The latter is preferable for radial circuits, I gather.
ALEX As far as I know, RKR is huntin' and fishin' as usual; however, he may have inadvertently caught an electric eel, I s'pose
One either has MCBs (presumably with a single RCD for a number of MCBs) or RCBOs, which are a combination of breaker and earth trip. Usually for this kind of RKR installation they'd be rated at 32 amps but this is variable.
The latter is preferable for radial circuits, I gather.
ALEX As far as I know, RKR is huntin' and fishin' as usual; however, he may have inadvertently caught an electric eel, I s'pose
oceanobsession
pfm Member
How would a 32amp rcbo protect your equipment its much to high a rating
or am i missing something here.
or am i missing something here.
Robert M
pfm Member
Cereal Killer
432
Gentlemaen. This mention of 'breakers' is a bit confusing.
One either has MCBs (presumably with a single RCD for a number of MCBs) or RCBOs, which are a combination of breaker and earth trip. Usually for this kind of RKR installation they'd be rated at 32 amps but this is variable.
The latter is preferable for radial circuits, I gather.
ALEX As far as I know, RKR is huntin' and fishin' as usual; however, he may have inadvertently caught an electric eel, I s'pose
MCB's. 2 32Amp 6mm2 rated single runs to each socket.
Whoops, looking at my post now, it looks like I'm crowing about 16mm2 vs 10mm2. Of course, I have no idea if it's better than 10mm2 and there's no way of proving it either way unless some people are radical enough to rip out a perfectly good 10mm2 RKR setup and replace with 16mm2. I'd guess what works for who is down to length of cable runs (voltage drop directly proportional to length) and how much current your kit pulls. So I'm sure 6mm is great in the right situation, especially if the runs are short - less than 20% of my runs in your case, Sul.
Mike, yes I think the 16mm might be a first - guess I'm the only guy bonkers enough to try. And Sul, you nailed me bang on - with best part of 20m in the tails and 18m in all the radials (you're right about spurs vs. radials), I didn't want to lie awake at night wondering if I should have gone to 16mm2. Given that 95% of the pain is in the installation, I just couldn't talk myself out of 16mm, althought my sparky tried very hard - sore thumbs etc.
Yes, I do have the full setup with 100A junction boxes with beasts hard-wired into them. I'm using a Memera AD12 with 32A RCBOs. Being a bit nervous about hard-wiring (and giving up my investment in quite pricy mains cables), I ran my installation to allow both hard wiring and 13A unswitched sockets. I did this by putting sockets 6" beneath each 100 junction box, with a short hop of 16mm cable runing from junction box to socket. I was hoping not to hear a big change going from sockets to hard-wired, but there it was big and undeniable, so that was that. My nice silver-plated sockets are now out of circuit and the beasts have taken over my nice branded power cords. More tears, but reality won the day. I knew Roy was right deep down, but it's always hard to turn over your own preconceptions, until you hear the difference.
By the way, I've got some very nice power cords and conditioners if anybody wants them To be fair to them, they did a great job of patching up a crap mains supply.
Spacey, yes, Roy made a big point about all radial having to be right length. I had to roll each run out in the car park back of my block and measure each one out. I then made sure that if I did any cutting, I took the same amount of each radial (means you have to layout end to end before cutting and think hard before you cut).
Mike, I do plan to put in a dedicated earth - it's just quite a big job for me being on top floor. In the initial install, we put in a new 10mm earth cable all the way from the earth braid of the 3-phase cable head to CU. Not the same as a dedicated earth with its own spikes, I know.
Andy, good to hear you found the same thing as me - I was only really expecting a big change in dynamics, but the change in detail and musicality were every bit as big.
Mike, yes I think the 16mm might be a first - guess I'm the only guy bonkers enough to try. And Sul, you nailed me bang on - with best part of 20m in the tails and 18m in all the radials (you're right about spurs vs. radials), I didn't want to lie awake at night wondering if I should have gone to 16mm2. Given that 95% of the pain is in the installation, I just couldn't talk myself out of 16mm, althought my sparky tried very hard - sore thumbs etc.
Yes, I do have the full setup with 100A junction boxes with beasts hard-wired into them. I'm using a Memera AD12 with 32A RCBOs. Being a bit nervous about hard-wiring (and giving up my investment in quite pricy mains cables), I ran my installation to allow both hard wiring and 13A unswitched sockets. I did this by putting sockets 6" beneath each 100 junction box, with a short hop of 16mm cable runing from junction box to socket. I was hoping not to hear a big change going from sockets to hard-wired, but there it was big and undeniable, so that was that. My nice silver-plated sockets are now out of circuit and the beasts have taken over my nice branded power cords. More tears, but reality won the day. I knew Roy was right deep down, but it's always hard to turn over your own preconceptions, until you hear the difference.
By the way, I've got some very nice power cords and conditioners if anybody wants them
To be fair to them, they did a great job of patching up a crap mains supply.Spacey, yes, Roy made a big point about all radial having to be right length. I had to roll each run out in the car park back of my block and measure each one out. I then made sure that if I did any cutting, I took the same amount of each radial (means you have to layout end to end before cutting and think hard before you cut).
Mike, I do plan to put in a dedicated earth - it's just quite a big job for me being on top floor. In the initial install, we put in a new 10mm earth cable all the way from the earth braid of the 3-phase cable head to CU. Not the same as a dedicated earth with its own spikes, I know.
Andy, good to hear you found the same thing as me - I was only really expecting a big change in dynamics, but the change in detail and musicality were every bit as big.
I did a fair bit of searching on best possible wall sockets and eventually went with high quality silver plated un-switched MK sockets from Missing Link. The plugs I had on my posh power cords are also silver plated, so it made sense.
But as per earlier post, the difference when I tried out hard-wired beasts was too big for me to go back. There was just no question about it.
Cereal Killer
432
The 32A rating on the RCBO doesn't mean it won't trip until there is 32A of fault current. RCBOs look at the difference between live and return path currents and I think the Memera 32A RCBOs kick out at something well under 30mA. More importantly, they do that much faster than a standard slow-blow internal case fuse or 13A mains fuse, so the RCBOs are giving a higher lvel of kit protection and safety that the 13A socket fuse can can deliver.
Roy knows far more about this than I do, so I'd suggest asking him if you need more info.
Dave
Mike Reed
pfm Member
DAVECH
Why didn't you take the plugs off your 'branded' mains leads? It sounds as if you replaced them with Beasts (and they bloody well are !).
I had R A Ref's all round, plus a couple of Beasts, which I subsequently sold (had too many)
I am further amazed that you did all this to a top floor flat ! Most people don't bother when they own their own house.
One thing for sure, though; whether there's a demonstrable difference in 16mm2 and 10mm2 (and who cares at that level?), the impedance should be lower. As you have such long lengths, that's no bad thing.
The earth spike could be a problem, especially if it's a communal garden (or none at all !). Your fault for living so far from Earth, as it were.
Still wondering what kit deserves (and benefits from) this massive undertaking.
Why didn't you take the plugs off your 'branded' mains leads? It sounds as if you replaced them with Beasts (and they bloody well are !).
I had R A Ref's all round, plus a couple of Beasts, which I subsequently sold (had too many)
I am further amazed that you did all this to a top floor flat ! Most people don't bother when they own their own house.
One thing for sure, though; whether there's a demonstrable difference in 16mm2 and 10mm2 (and who cares at that level?), the impedance should be lower. As you have such long lengths, that's no bad thing.
The earth spike could be a problem, especially if it's a communal garden (or none at all !
). Your fault for living so far from Earth, as it were.Still wondering what kit deserves (and benefits from) this massive undertaking.
Mike Reed
pfm Member
Yes. I had this tested last year when the power supply in my (Naim) 552 pre. had a funny turn overnight. It instantly tripped the RCD part of the RCBO. Nothing else was affected, of course. Turned it back on; no problem since (or for ten years prior to that).
A common or garden fuse, whether case or plug, is a blunt instrument and takes time to blow. However, I believe, and I could stand to be corrected on this, that the fuse, or MCB, only operates on a surge condition; in plugs, it's to protect the wiring from overheating/loading. It's the RCD which is the real safety device.
Hi Mike,
I I have Vertex AQ kit, which is very good and honest, if not cheap. I have one serious, Reference power lead and I did take the lead off of this to feed my CD player. Haven't yet tried de-wiring the other two, but will do as soon as I'm home. I'm working in Africa now and won't be home full time til start of July. The Vertex cords do an interesting thing in 'sucking' out mechanical energy andI'm pretty sure there is some upside over Beasts, but of course, I the cable area is much lower. As for why I've not pulled plugs off earlier, all the cords I have are made with high purity silver (both soft and relatively stiff), so clamping the bare ends in the junction boxes has to be done carefull, with the silver kept behind the 16mm cables, so screws don't touch them. All no excuse of course - it will be very interesting to hear the difference between them hardwired and the Beasts.
You're right about the flat thing, but it's a big period flat, which I love. The disruption to the rest of the building was close to zero - all the pain was in my flat. Yes, being at such altitude does generally complicate things like earth spikes. We have a large communal garden at front, which my listening room faces onto (albeit 60 ft up). To get similarly generous rooms in a house, I'd need to swing some very serious cash, which I don't have yet.
Sorry, I missed your earlier question. I have a Meridian 808.2i feeding Meridian DSP7200s. I got the 808.2i back in mid 2009, when I still had Merlin VSM MMe speakers (very nice), but the sound that setup made was not close the big, smooth and three-dimensional sound that the 808.2i / 7200 system makes. The overriding impression with this system is that it sounds very close to good vinyl in the smoothness, fullness and solidity of soundstage. I've found Meridian kit to be about musicality, flow lovely tonal balance over the years, but I'd say it's not up with the best on dynamics and snap - but I guess this system is now more dynamic than any other pure Meridian system out there.
Dave
I I have Vertex AQ kit, which is very good and honest, if not cheap. I have one serious, Reference power lead and I did take the lead off of this to feed my CD player. Haven't yet tried de-wiring the other two, but will do as soon as I'm home. I'm working in Africa now and won't be home full time til start of July. The Vertex cords do an interesting thing in 'sucking' out mechanical energy andI'm pretty sure there is some upside over Beasts, but of course, I the cable area is much lower. As for why I've not pulled plugs off earlier, all the cords I have are made with high purity silver (both soft and relatively stiff), so clamping the bare ends in the junction boxes has to be done carefull, with the silver kept behind the 16mm cables, so screws don't touch them. All no excuse of course - it will be very interesting to hear the difference between them hardwired and the Beasts.
You're right about the flat thing, but it's a big period flat, which I love. The disruption to the rest of the building was close to zero - all the pain was in my flat. Yes, being at such altitude does generally complicate things like earth spikes. We have a large communal garden at front, which my listening room faces onto (albeit 60 ft up). To get similarly generous rooms in a house, I'd need to swing some very serious cash, which I don't have yet.
Sorry, I missed your earlier question. I have a Meridian 808.2i feeding Meridian DSP7200s. I got the 808.2i back in mid 2009, when I still had Merlin VSM MMe speakers (very nice), but the sound that setup made was not close the big, smooth and three-dimensional sound that the 808.2i / 7200 system makes. The overriding impression with this system is that it sounds very close to good vinyl in the smoothness, fullness and solidity of soundstage. I've found Meridian kit to be about musicality, flow lovely tonal balance over the years, but I'd say it's not up with the best on dynamics and snap - but I guess this system is now more dynamic than any other pure Meridian system out there.
Dave
Mike Reed
pfm Member
What 13 amp sockets? Actually it's the plugs which have the fuses. However, above discussions have mentioned 'hard-wired' more than once. This entirely obviates the need for plugs and sockets, f.y.i. (except for the kit, of course).