I was recently redoing my audio system and, when putting everthing back together, temporarily plugged my Bryston B60R Integrated Amp directly into the wall outlet instead of the Zero Surge suppressor. I checked everything out and let the system settle in over the next two days.
I then noticed that non-musical sounds would pop out of the speakers from time to time. In particular, a loud thump occurred when the ceiling fan in the room was turned off. It suddenly dawned on me that the Bryston was not plugged into the suppressor. Motors are known for generating back EMF and I was surprised that the internal power supply in the Bryston was not rejecting it. With the Zero Surge unit in place, the internal reactor took care of the problem very nicely. Cheap surge suppressors using "sacrificial" metal-oxide varistors (MOVs), however, would not have done the job.
Reportedly, 80% of all surges/transients in a home's electrical system are generated by appliances in the home. Anything with a motor is suspect. I believe that continuous "hits" with surges and transients will shorten the life of the equipment. If you value your equipment, consider the protection offered by a good series-mode suppressor. Reasonably-priced units are available from Zero Surge, SurgeX and Brickwall with audiophile versions (Audioquest Niagra, etc.) costing considerably more.
Those with large, power-hungry amps have complained that dynamics are affected by suppressors compared to plugging directly into a wall outlet. That may well be the case in some installations but protecting expensive equipment may be a worthwhile trade-off.
I was hit by a major surge caused by a lightning storm. It came in via the main power lines through my service entrance. The surge took out my entire sound system along with a lot of other electrical appliances, it also melted a number of outlets in some rooms and blew the plastic cover plates into pieces, burnt ones at that. I am not sure if a brickwall surge protector would do the job in such a situation, but I bought one after replacing all of my gear. My two Anthem M1 monoblocks are each plugged directly into dedicated 240 v/15 amp outlets, however I unplug the amps after each use, they are never allowed to be plugged in when not in use; that is the best protection. All of my other pieces are plugged into the Brickwall, which is the same thing as Zero Surge and thus far, no issues. My main service entrance had one leg of the power drop melted at the cable clamp! I had the entire service entrance replaced with a new one with all copper busses. BTW, running all copper busses made a huge improvement in system performance; there is no resistive voltage drops as can happen with aluminum due to oxidation. A whole house surge protection device was installed at the service entrance too.
I had a whole house surge protector installed in the main box after a spike took out a Vandersteen amp.....reasonable repair cost and now I'm sleeping well.
@52356 - If you're talking about the Shunyata Venom Defender, you might want to check the Failure indicator light to make sure that it's still protecting your equipment.
In the mountains of Colorado our house has surge protection. This summer a rogue lightening storm, (few clouds, no rain) hit our house...this was the western side of our house. Most storms will give some warning but not this one. We lost two computers, two televisions, a microwave, an iron, two clocks and a couple of light fixtures. I run into my stereo room cursing and found my Magnepan 1.7i, Parasound Halo 21+amp and PrimaLuna Evo 300 pre amp (all recent purchases) all unscathed. I believe I need to thank my Shunyata Venom package. Yes the stereo room is on the eastern side but I believe my high quality surge protector and line conditioner saved my electronics.
It's excellent posts like these, where people like oldhvyec and gdnrbob chime in with the OP on important to all of us issues.
It was posts like this one that brought to my attention issues I'd never really considered, and make perfect sense. When I was looking for a good conditioner, and I did like one, which reviewed very well, it was surge protection I also sought, because of threads like this. I didn't respond much in those threads, just read about things I didn't know, or hadn't considered.
I still was very interested in one product, until another Agoner posted and responded to my PM, he introduced me to a product not even on my radar. What I purchased implemented the same technology as the one I had been looking at, and it also offered surge protection and removing DC from the AC. This was the one for me, because of Agoners who posted threads like this one, I believe I was able to make a more educated purchase choice.
In terms of audiophile cred, series mode suppressors have the best noise reduction. Starts around 3 kHz. For a passive system, that's a lot better than the MOV based units, not quite as good as the regenerators though.
Nice story. Sacrificial is good enough to save my little used Synology that already has given up it's HD to lightning once. But $200 is cheap insurance for the stereo that's worth more than the rest of the house electronics together. Of course it starts with getting all of the fans and motors on the opposite power leg from the HiFi circuit.
I would suggest anyone with electrical wiring issues to PM Audiogon member Jea48. He is the most knowledgeble member here on Audiogon with things related to electrical wiring. IMHO. And, he's a nice guy, too. B
gdnrbob3,374 posts08-21-2020 1:40pm"If you own you own home, I suggest installing a whole house surge protector."
Service entrance (whole house) protection is quite valuable in lightning-prone areas (Florida, in particular). However, most manufacturers recommend addition point-of-use protection. Also, the whole house protectors (large MOVs) typically have a clamp voltage of 330-400 volts and simply don't provide the in-home, localized protection of good series-mode suppressors.
In my particular case, a whole home protector would NOT have eliminated the speaker thump when the ceiling fan was turned off.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I don't have a surge protector on my amp, but leaving a piece of gear costing thousands of dollars to the mercies of the local utility does worry me.
First rule, safety first Second rule, surge protection Third rule, maintain constant voltages for the gear (some older only 117 Vac MAX), All new gear 120 Vac.
The purpose is not to sound better, BUT if conditioning VAC results in better sound, GOOD.
GREAT gear normally has less problem with VAC. They normally have better designed power supplies. You get what you pay for, when it comes to most of that stuff..
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