More studio power questions:
“Do you suggest having 220V outlet providing power to your home studio, or is there an easier way of providing good power using several 120V outlets and a distribution scheme? Will using 220V help prohibit studio hum’s?”
There’s no real advantage to 220v power other than it generally can deliver more power in high demand applications (which most studios are not), and in typical household wiring it is a balanced power source. Balanced Power has a number of potential advantages, especially for reducing ground loops, but unless your gear can run directly off of the 220v lines (which presumably isn’t the case) it isn’t going to do you much good. Breaking standard household 220 out into separate 110-volt legs effectively unbalances it. Balanced power supply devices for use with standard 110-volt service are growing in popularity these days. They can clean up a lot of ills in the wiring of a studio. As a general rule we recommend running your entire studio off of one central electrical outlet when possible. This does as much as anything to minimize hum, and it’s free. Most home studios don’t draw anywhere near 20 amps of current so this is immanently doable. If your situation is more complex than that it may be best to seek the advice of a consultant.
Studio wiring in general is a very complex subject with many subtle variables. Unfortunately the scope of inSync is too limited to allow us to dig deeply into this subject in one issue, but over the course of the next few weeks and months we will continue to revisit these subjects, adding new info as we go. There’s already a pretty good amount of information available in the WFTD library and in the TTOTD archives so it’s worth some time to peruse those. There is also some great info to be had at the Furman and Equi=Tech Web sites. Between those four sources you can learn all of the basics. From there it’s just a matter of specific implementation and your Sweetwater Sales Engineer can help you with that.