New house and Power outlets

[hanersky7]

Good day,

I currently have (1) Phantom Gold and have purchased a second Phantom Gold which will arrive this weekend hopefully.

Currently, my Phantom Gold is plugged into a normal 110v @ 15AMP outlet (Normal USA outlet)

Now my question and needed opinion please.  

I'm building a new house and need to confirm is there ANY benefit to wire each phantom Gold to a 110v @ 20AMP outlet?  Or is 110v @ 15AMP outlet good enough?  At this point since no wires have been ran in my new house, I can do this with minimal cost.  

Option 1:  Keep as is and plug both Phantom Gold to the same outlet.  (That's a lot of potential power/amps drawn from one outlet
Option 2:  Plug each phantom gold into separate 110v/15amp outlet and tell my builder to wire each outlet independently
Option 3:  Same as option 2, but request my builder to make it 20AMP per independent outlet

I have to believe a 20AMP outlet will yield more power if needed, but need to confirm this ASAP since my builder is needing this information as we're about to wire the house next week.

Thank you in advance,
Heap

[Damon]

Hello and Welcome,

I'll give an opening opinion, but others will be able to give more thorough opinions.

A 15 amp. circuit will run a lot of 'stuff', so I cannot see that you will need more than that to run any normal piece of audio equipment. I'd include the Phantom in that group. I cannot see that a Phantom will draw 20 amps, but there are some very knowledgeable members here who may advise differently. Trust them.

However, I believe that if you can, it will be to your sound quality benefit to have circuits for the Phantoms that are not shared with other outlets on the same circuit. So, a circuit from a breaker to one outlet; do the same again for the other Phantom. Possibly do four isolated circuits to four outlets. The advantage to this is to keep the power to the audio gear separate from a circuit that has 'noisy' things plugged into it, such as refrigerators or things with electric motors. Digital audio seems to be (and I'm no expert) very sensitive to the quality of the power it receives.

When we renovated, I had a dedicated circuit installed. Only one outlet for this circuit and so separated, to some extent, from the other electrical appliances in the house. Every audio person I've mentioned this to has said that separate circuits, dedicated to audio power, are a good idea.

Option 2, or if you hear otherwise, Option 3.

[streamy]

In case you do not want to wire the Phantoms and the Dialog with Ethernet to a common switch the Phantoms will use the internal PLC to communicate and sync with the Dialog. So, my advise is to have all three devices plugged to the same circuit after the breaker. This can be built-in with separate wall plugs for each of the devices or by plugging all devices to the same outlet. Phantom users experienced lot of problems when they used surge isolators or other systems that are useful for making the power line cleaner. This is not necessary for the Phantoms. As said the Phantoms have a built-in PLC and take care about separating the modulated communication signal from the AC power. They anyway have a switched power supply and generate noise in your power line within the standards of CE and FCC as they are certified devices.
So for this specific case I would not follow Damon's recommendation that makes absolutely sense for standard mainly analog audio equipment, but not for PLC networked devices. PLC can handle signals that go over several breakers, but there is a loss in signal bandwith. And this can be critical for high quality and timing critical digital reproduction. Each of the Phantoms runs independently and needs to be in sync at least within 20us to not produce audible phase shifts in a stereo setup. And the Phantoms are in sync of that resolution (up to 22 Phantoms). For sure PLC will not work over galvanically isolated and therefore separated power subnets.

[hanersky7]

Okay, so let me get this straight and confirm...

Because of the integrated PLC, I should pretty much ask my electrician to make the circuit be "one" and not shared with anything else like the kitchen appliances and do this "one" circuit after the breaker.

But I can still have two independent outlets for aesthetics purposes but still making sure they're on same circuit and the PLC will operate correctly right?  I just need to make sure that those outlets are on the same circuit correct?  

At this point, the electrician stated that creating the two outlets to have 20AMPs will only cost me $150 more total.

Thank you in advance and I value everyone's opinion.
Heap

[streamy]

Okay, so let me get this straight and confirm...

Because of the integrated PLC, I should pretty much ask my electrician to make the circuit be "one" and not shared with anything else like the kitchen appliances and do this "one" circuit after the breaker.

But I can still have two independent outlets for aesthetics purposes but still making sure they're on same circuit and the PLC will operate correctly right?  I just need to make sure that those outlets are on the same circuit correct?  

Yes. And don't forget that the Dialog also needs to be on the same circuit, possibly after the same breaker. Like this you have the best bandwidth. Of course, when neighbors are also on the same circuit and also use PLCs this can have a negative influence. However in my own setup I'm using in a one family house two PLCs, the one from Devialet and another one from the IPTV provider and both work without dropouts watching HDTV and playing 24/192k music on three Phantoms at the same time.
Maybe in the future you might want to add another Phantom in an additional room. Now that you make the power cabling you might want to consider that, too.

[Damon]

Streamy's point about potential issues if Phantoms are not on the same circuit is important, and I had forgotten about that item. Others have discussed this elsewhere here; a search should find it. It is a thread with relatively recent posts.