As I and many others with more gravitas than I have written, getting good, clean power to your gear can pay big dividends in improving the sound quality of your system.   While I had a couple of “decent” wall outlets for my amps and front-end gear, I decided to go ahead and get what could be the best outlets available. 

Before plowing ahead, let’s take a quick step back to let you know what got me going on this little journey.  After procrastinating for a while, I finally decided to contact an electrician to run some dedicated, 20A circuits to my listening room.   In preparation for the circuit installation, I reviewed Vince Galbo’s excellent write up on how to get the best power to your system (Better Power Link). 

While waiting to hear back from the electrician (and still waiting), I decided to go ahead and put in a new 15A circuit breaker with the silver paste recommended by Vince (Silver Paste Link).  I also ordered some Furutech GTX-D NCF (R) outlets from Eigen Audio run by our friend Joe Hakim (joe@eigenaudio.com). 

The new circuit breaker was a $7 Siemens 15A breaker from Ace that replaced a nearly 20-year-old GE breaker.  So, nothing really special there, other than making sure the contacts were clean and making a good connection.  With that completed, there was some apparent improvement in clarity, nothing huge, but it also gave me the peace of mind that the circuit breaker was not going to be an issue in the power delivery chain. 

I received the Furutech outlets in less than a week and installed them right away.  I installed one outlet at the front of the room for the amps that are located between the speakers and one on the side wall where the racks reside with the remaining components.  I used the silver paste on the wires attaching to the outlets (I’m hoping I don’t have to make this clear, but yes, do turn off the power before attempting to swap out the outlets!) and took off the wire nuts in the electrical boxes and added a little silver paste to the connecting wires for this single 15A service. 

After completing the installation of the outlets, flipping on the circuit breaker, getting everything plugged back in and turned on I was simply amazed at the sonic improvement by these outlets.  This was no “well I might notice some slight change” or “if I listen very carefully . . .”, this was wow, increased depth and 3-dimensionality and, at the risk of sounding trite, it was like a veil was lifted allowing more detail and clarity through.  As Vince describes in his article about improving power quality, this improvement in sound quality is on the order of a component replacement.  Relatively speaking these are expensive outlets compared to hardware store outlets, but a bargain when compared to replacing an amp or preamp. 

When or if the electrician is able to add new 20A circuits I’ll definitely provide an update, until then I’m a happy camper.