Large amplifiers and dedicated circuits

Serendipity

Recently I visited a few high-end stores and am planning my next upgrade, a pair of Parasound HALO amplifiers which draw approximately 12A each. As I currently have dedicated circuits for my gear, I brought this up and was advised by the store owner to put both amps on a single 20A circuit to avoid ground loops.

As I understand the potential for ground loops can arise from using different sides of the split phase in my panel, wouldn't moving all the audio gear onto one side (alternating breakers) and separating the video gear be essentially the same?

Dealer says the Parasound HALO A21 and JC1 amps all have no problems being run on the same circuit, i.e. you can run two A21 and two JC1 because of the soft-start circuitry and power them on at the same time.

Which would be better and why? Just looking for a second (or third) opinion.

bmor

You have to understand the nature of your loads when you decide to load a circuit and breaker. Without getting into the details of continuous and non-continuous loads, most electrical codes allow standard circuit breakers to run at 80% of their rating, unless specifically rated for 100% operation. So your 20A circuit has 20A wiring but the load should be limited to 16A.

The A21 spec says full power requirement into 4 ohms is 1500W. If you put both amps on the single circuit, I guess it would depend how hard and how long you drove them before the breaker would trip. You might be deaf before that happened

I can't comment on moving your circuits to one phase of your panel, I've never had to deal with ground loop issues on my equipment. If you do move things around, make sure the two circuits you're moving on to one phase are not sharing a neutral, as this could overload it.

unc2701

There's more to ground loops than the phase, but if you have dedicated circuits and the pre is on one of the same circuits, you're probably fine. You can also tie the grounds of the two outlets at the room end (as opposed to how they're already tied in the box) to reduce ground loop potential. Don't tie the neutral wires since that'll pop an Arc fault if you've got that in the box- or someone installs it in the future (I think they're required in all bedrooms per NEC as of ?2004? ish).

On the other hand, as bmor notes, you'd have to be running sine waves at high volume to truly pull that much current after the caps are charged.

DarqueKnight

I have three 20A AC circuits feeding my two channel system: one each for the Parasound JC 1 amps and a third circuit for the preamps and source components. The JC 1 circuits are on different sides (legs). No problems with ground loops.