Dedicated Mains Spur - best of breed?

In a few months I’ll be moving from a lovely, but impractical, stone cottage into a “normal” full sized house. Apart from gaining my own “music and study” room, I’m finally in a position to plan a dedicated main spurs for my hi-fi. So I’ll be able to compare the value of dedicated spur versus my power conditioner, and whether the power conditioner can further improve on the dedicated spur.

 But what is the best way of doing it? From my limited dabbling with cables, fuses and power conditioner, I’ve concluded that details are important, but I don’t want to spend loads on audiophile stuff if I can help it. From trawling the web, I’ve found primarily two sources of information: Russ Andrews, who advocates a ring being better than a spur, and Roy “RKR” from a Naim-based forum, who has spent years comparing different Consumer Units (CU, i.e. the main fuse box) and methods. He reckons spur is better than ring, and the fatter the wire the better, and best if every component has it’s own spur, which must be all be exactly equal length (!). Luckily, Roy recommends standard house wire. He reckons MCBs sound better than fuses, and RCDs are bad for SQ, but good for keeping you alive. And Both Russ and Roy recommend a separate earth rod stuck into the garden.

The TYPICAL starting point for a UK house is a PME supply into the house (earth and neutral common), and earth is split from neutral at the CU. From the CU, a number of 2.5mm wire rings, each protected by a 32A MCB, power most of the house, with a 6mm spur powering the cooker, and a 10mm spur powering a 10KW power shower.  For me, a 6mm twin+earth cable is pretty unwieldy and a 10mm is just horrible to work with, but the latter’s the one Roy reckons sounds the best.

So, my start point for a dedicated spur is a Memera CU (Never heard of it before, but Roy’s favourite and apparently the most robustly engineered - and a step above next best MK). From this I will have two 6mm spurs going to the hi-fi area. One for source and one for headphone amp. Each spur will be protected by an RCBO (combined RCD and MCB) at the CU. I haven’t gone into the safety regulations yet of exactly what is allowed, but if I do get a garden earth, it’s much more convenient if the earth is connected to the CU rather than the hi-fi end.

So, any opinions on improvements, or simplifications to that?

BTW, I’m just planning it – I will of course get a qualified electrician to actually install it. 

Thanks Uncle Erik. The two areas I have particular reservations about are earth grounding rod and isolation transformers.

Earth grounding rod simply because it appears to be a bit of a fuss to install. Depending on ground moisture characteristics, I've read you may need to install more than one rod in star formation and may even need to water the patch in dry conditions - all in order the get a consistently low impedance connection. And then there's a few feet of possibly hard rock to break through. I'll see what the electrician says.

I've read that isolation transformers can have down sides to negate their obvious theoretical advantages. For  example, I just googled the term and came to this site http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?458-Another-dedicated-line-question.

An excerpt from above:

"But the problem with isolation transformers is their inductance; they all affect the sound to some extent. One of the big problems with ITs is they squash dynamics, soundspace, and upper octave extension-esp. with large wattage amps. In yesteryear, the cure was worse than the disease as when I played with the Tice Power Block/Titan. Nowadays though, designers have changed their power supply design in an attempt to address the same issues--and the cure is now worse than the disease."

Actually that looks like a useful site in general (am I allowed to say that here?) and yes, they too have arguments about DBT and cables in the audio section