I'm very happy with my current playback system, with one major exception, and I don't really know what the problem is, so I thought I'd see if you guys had some ideas to check...
I have a 64 bit XP media PC > Benchmark DAC1 USB > Audio Research D120 > (new transparent speaker cables, wooo!) > Maggie 12's.
I live in a house built in the early 1920s, with updating wiring in the late 80's (guess, but that looks like the right timeline to me). There's only 100 amps coming into the house at the main breaker. If I have my system on, and playing, when the A/C kicks on for the house, I drop the USB connection to the DAC1. I have to unplug the DAC, close my media app, and reopen it to continue listening. Once the A/C is running, it's not a problem, and it's not even every time it kicks on, just sometimes. Sometimes it's even the dishwasher that causes it to drop out. It never trips a breaker in the panel, but then again, I have 18 breakers in the panel, ranging from 15 - 30 amps each, and only 100 coming in.
My gut feeling is that I need more than 100 amps coming into the house, but I don't really know how to confirm that without paying some electrician 2k to upgrade my panel to 200 amps. Perhaps a power conditioner on the DAC & Amplifier would help, but again, not really sure what's happening in the background when I lose the USB connection.
Anyone have an idea I could try to help me figure out what's going on? This is the last piece of my playback system that irks me, since I just got kick ass cables and sent the Maggies on for a small rebuild...
Thanks!
--Ryan