Power protection. What would you do?

[Brad225]

I just purchased surge protection/filtering products from Zero Surge for all of our office equipment.

http://www.zerosurge.com/business.html

Have any you heard of or used their products.

Lately here on our property here in Florida where our office and home are the power has been less than desirable. About 5 times a day the power back up for all the computers beep momentarily to show there is a loss of power. Not enough to notice an effect the lights or trigger the generator to come on but there is obviously something going on.

The power company said there is nothing wrong with the power coming in. Obviously the power will never drop out when they are here.

I need to add protection to my audio and HT equipment. One of the features ZeroSurge has is 20 amp units. Most units I have looked at are only 15 amps.

As much as I don't want to use them on my power amps I am concerned about the damage that might be done if I don't plug everything into some protection.

My question for those more knowledgeable is: Do these units look like something you would use on your audio equipment? What pieces of equipment would you put on the same protection circuit?

I need to protect:

For HT:
60" LCD TV
Surround processor
DVD
digital drive for subs
2ch amp 100 watts per
5ch amp 300 watts per
SL3's front
Cinema center
DVR
2 subs

Music:

CDP
Preamp
2 200 watt amps (20 amp required)
CLS's
2 300 watt subs

I currently have 3 dedicated 20 amp circuits and 1-15 amp circuit that also powers the room.

At this time I use one 20 amp circuit for the amps only but the other circuits I split half with 2 channel and HT since they are not powered on at the same time.

If it were you, how many and what kind of protection would you use for this combination of equipment.

 

[DTB300]

ZeroSurge and BrickWall have always received some good talk for surge protection.

There was a thread with a reply from Cherian on power units:
http://www.martinloganowners.com/~tdacquis/forum/showpost.php?p=60912&postcount=14

Here is the complete thread:
http://www.martinloganowners.com/~tdacquis/forum/showthread.php?t=5469&highlight=www.powervar.com

And another thread:
http://www.martinloganowners.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4312&highlight=power+conditioner

 

[Gordon Gray]

Hi Brad,

PLC's are so system dependant and very subjective, regarding their effectiveness. As others have observed, audtioning the unit in your own system is imperative before deciding.

Lots of vodoo claims for this piece of hardware. Let your ears decide.

You can audition various units, with a 30 day money back gaurantee, from Audio Advisors, Music Direct, and Analogue Productions.

Good luck.

Gordon

 

[Diamonds]

Shunyata Research

 

[spectral]

I just purchased surge protection/filtering products from Zero Surge for all of our office equipment.

http://www.zerosurge.com/business.html

Have any you heard of or used their products.

Interestingly enough, I just went through the same process recently, considering the zerosurge for my audio system, until I realized from the diagrams on their web site that the filters are really in series. Then I thought about what surge protection really means, and in most cases it refers to protection from lightning - how often will that happen, and more importantly, how do I know any product will act fast enough? Surge protection does also cover sudden voltage spikes when power returns from a total back-out, and the zerosurge should protect you here to a certain degree - but you cannot really measure how well.

Because of its series architecture which can be detrimental to sound, I turned it down, opting for the MIT Z-Strip with parallel filtering plus surge protection (whatever that means). My goal there, as you can tell, was not voltage regulation, surge protection et al, but reduction of line noise that will not limit power (especially instant power demands).

I think what you describe is protection from voltage fluctuations - good products, even an APC battery backup unit that I use for my computer, will beep and intervene when voltage drops momentarily by a certain amount; this is not power loss, but instant brown out, which may be what's really affecting you.

For this type of problem, an AVR would probably be better. Incidentally, I also went through this just recently again for my video setup, and opted for an APC AVR, which boosts or attenuates voltage over and under user-defined limits by stepped, fixed amounts (i.e. +-10V, +-15V, etc). This is not optimal, and a continuously variable AVR (I believe Monster products work that way) would be far superior, as it would keep the output voltage very close to 120V all the time. This solution, however, was too expensive for me, so I rely on the TV's power supply to handle the small voltage fluctuations now.

Having said all this, I have indeed heard very good things about zerosurge products from an audio performance perspective from fellow audiophiles; they specifically report tighter and deeper bass.

Hope you can find the right solution for you.

 

[DrJRapp]

Lately here on our property here in Florida where our office and home are the power has been less than desirable. About 5 times a day the power back up for all the computers beep momentarily to show there is a loss of power. Not enough to notice an effect the lights or trigger the generator to come on but there is obviously something going on.

The power company said there is nothing wrong with the power coming in. Obviously the power will never drop out when they are here.

What you are experiencing has become more common here in South Florida as the grid, and our property ages. It's not a power dropout per se but a brownout condition where the incoming voltage momentarily drops to below the trigger point of whatever UPS you are using. FP&L can't find anything wrong because the voltage never really drops below the specifications that THEY have established. ( Something in the vacinity of 94 volts I believe).

What I use to deal with this are power regenerators on all my Audio gear. I use APC which I find to be super reliable yet bargain priced, plus they integrate cosmeticly with AV gear better than the Zerosurge.. In my dedicated theater I have a DLP overhead projector. Most OHPJ lamps are very sensitive to power fluctuations and the life of the lamp is radically shortened. For the past year I have been using an APC regenerator/ups that I obtained from Circuit City for about $500 to supply the pj, my pre-pro and source devices such as Bluray players, Sat DVR, etc. The entire load for that whole collection is about 9 amps. One doesn't need to worry as much about amps because their power supplies generally contain large energy storage devices (capacitors) that allow them to get through momentary power dropouts, and even some moderate surges, gracefully. You can test this by unplugging your amp while it is still receiving an audio signal....I call that the ultimate drop out simulation. You will hear the sound gradually diminish as the capacitors drain down. Nevertheless, my two big amps are on a 15 amp APC regen/surge Conditioner that cost about $129 at CC. Both these units are then plugged into a dedicated/isolated 20 amp circuit.

Another thing to do is to attack one source of the brownouts, which is not coming from the outside power source, but inside your office/home. Whenever a motor starts it draws vast amounts of additional current causing a momentary drop in voltage. In most homes here in S Florida we have at least 1 large motor ...yup, the air conditioning condensing unit, which will cause this syndrome. I was able to lessen those effects by having my AC service organization put "start kits" on my three condensing units. A start kit is nothing more than an energy storage device (a big capacitor again) and a relay that will supply the majority of the extra juice that the compressor needs to get going. This smooths things out quite a bit.