Surge Suppressor and clean power????

[Christcorp]

OK, just looking for people's $0.02 to the $1,000,000 question. Concerning Surge Suppressors. In ya'alls opinion, are there any REAL advantages to Surge Suppressors like Monster and Panamax compared to the $30-$40 ones you can buy at Wal-Mart or K-Mart?????

Monster Power, and other major players speak of CLEAN POWER 1-5 and similar abilities. I've read what their difference in Clean Power Levels are, BUT do these really do anything noticable or is the power in the U.S.A. good enough that there is no benefit?????

IF, there IS an advantage to Monster and Panamax compared to the Normal Surge Suppressors, which one is recommended??? Especially within their own line of suppressors. Example, Monster HTS1000 compared to Monster Power Bar 1100. Except for the Power bar handling HIGHER Joules, the only difference seems to be the $50 price. Same with the HTS2500 compared to the Power Bar 2100 or the HTS2000. $50 difference between the HTS2000 and the Power Bar 2100, another $50 difference between that and the 2500. Other than a few more joules, what seems to be the differences?????

Is most of what there is JUST HYPE????? Am I better off buying the MOST EXPENSIVE SURGE SUPPRESSOR AT WAL-MART??? And spending what I save, on beer and dvd's????? ALL OPINIONS ARE WELCOMED... Thx... Mike...

[fl_newbie]

Do searches on "exactpower" (no space) and "power conditioning" for more information than you care to have.

[Christcorp]

I've searched "power Conditioning" and other similar phrases. I've come up with all the different companies. 1st off, I can't take a Companie's opinion of the "good, bad, and the ugly". They are obviously biased. 2nd, I'm not really looking for any particular company over another. UNLESS THEY REALLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

There's no question that surge protection is important. I, nor anyone else disputes that. My question was more generic. 1st part, DOES THE BIG DOLLAR PROTECTION OFFERED BY MONSTER, PANAMAX, EXACTPOWER, ETC... DIFFER FROM THE $30-$40 PROTECTION OFFERED BY A SURGE SUPPRESSOR OFFERED AT WAL-MART?????

2ND Part, IF THE HIGH COST COMPANIES LIKE MONSTER, PANAMAX, EXACTPOWER DO..... MAKE A DIFFERENCE COMPARED TO THE GENERIC SURGE SUPPRESSORS, WHAT IS THE BASIC DIFFERENCE WITHIN THEIR OWN MODELS I SHOULD BE LOOKING AT???? They offer so many models each... All opinions welcomed....

Thx... Mike...

[Jbach]

Unless I am reading it wrong, I think FL is suggesting you search the AVS forum for those phrases. There you will hear the valuable opinions of folks here, which are hardly those of the companies (or not soley those).

[htwaits]

You also need to get a grip on the terms you are using. Line conditioning and surge suppression are two very different things.

The first provides power within a range of close tolerances. The second protects you from the destructive effects of massive power spikes which could fry your equipment. I wouldn't rely on WalMart for either one.

[frankmrt]

A surge suppressor guards against overvoltage. A power line conditioner guards against both overvoltage and under voltage.

[Christcorp]

I'm really sorry if I seem to be making this question difficult. That's not my intention. I will try once more to explain my question. I know what a Surge Suppressor is and does. I know what a power line conditioner is and what it does. I have surfed the forums and the net for information. Most answers are either manufacturer biased, uninformed opinions. Thus, the reason I'm asking the forum.

My question simply is,,,, Do the high priced surge suppressors like Monster HTS1000 or the Panamax 4300 provide any better protection of suppressing surges compared to a $30 surge suppressor from wal-mart??? Also, some like the Monster claim that they clean the power up. Again is all this valid or is it a marketing hype???

IF they DO provide a noticable improvement and difference, then WHAT should I be looking for in one of these high priced Surge Suppressors??? Thx... Mike...

[htwaits]

Originally posted by Christcorp
My question simply is,,,, Do the high priced surge suppressors like Monster HTS1000 or the Panamax 4300 provide any better protection of suppressing surges compared to a $30 surge suppressor from wal-mart??? Also, some like the Monster claim that they clean the power up. Again is all this valid or is it a marketing hype???

IF they DO provide a noticeable improvement and difference, then WHAT should I be looking for in one of these high priced Surge Suppressors??? Thx... Mike...

The choices are not Monster or WalMart. A $30 surge suppressor from any retailer is going to provide a small amount of protection from voltage spikes. I do more than that to protect my PC.

You might find more interest in your questions in the three front projector forums. I'm sure that they have had a lot of discussion (debate) about the effects of power quality on performance of video and sound equipment.

You might also want to take into consideration the vast range of power quality issues that come up in different areas of the country -- brown outs, power failures followed by voltage spikes, voltage fluctuation, the effects of electric motors, lightning, and on and on and on.

[leesweet]

YMMV, but I've put all my PCs and TVs (Tosh RPTV and normal CRTs) on APC UPSs. I once lived in a part of the country where power was crummy, as mentioned above, and you'd get brownouts, spikes, etc. (All my good stereo amp equipment is also on the one the RPTV is on.) I once lost several tube (CRT) sets during a lightning storm, and decided that the insurance of the UPSs was worth it to protect them.

A good UPS will stop surges, correct brownouts (for as long as the battery can boose the power!), and have a guarantee for replacing anything damaged by lightning or other over-voltage problems.

No 'power strip' surge protector can 'condition' power beyond clamping the spikes down (and some/most are blown after they do it once!).

People have UPS preferences as to brand, but I've used APC (www.apcc.com) for many years (with PCs on 24/7, for example) and have never had a PC or TV failure, even through lightning storms when the power in the house fluctuated, flashed, and came back. Still watching TV in the dark and had time to turn the PCs and the TV off 'nicely'!

If you're looking at a muli-thousand $ TV, $100-$300 for a good UPS is as much a good insurance policy as an extended warranty (but let's not open the warranty can of worms!).

(And, of course, I have no connection to APC except as a happy customer!)

-Lee

[htwaits]

Originally posted by leesweet
YMMV, but I've put all my PCs and TVs (Tosh RPTV and normal CRTs) on APC UPSs. -Lee

I have the same setup. Here in California, thanks to Enron and their friends, we have the possibility of brown outs and rolling outages during peak use periods. My UPS cost about $170 and it also provides an opportunity for a bulb type RPTV to be turned off normally during a power outage.

[RDaneel]

If you don't want to venture into the intimidating world of line conditioning and its voodoo, but want good quality surge protection, you might look into the brickwall units. They supposedly last darn near forever (10 year warranty!) because they are made of components that don't wear over time like cheap surge suppressors. I bought one (haven't used it yet), and it seems very well built. You can get an 8 outlet version for about $200, a little less than retail from sellcom.com. I have no affiliation with brickwall or sellcom, except as a customer, just making a suggestion.

Cheers,
RDaneel

[tammes]

Get a TrippLite. Top rated by
Consumer Reports.

http://www.tripplite.com/

[Mfusick]

Originally posted by tammes
Get a TrippLite. Top rated by
Consumer Reports.

http://www.tripplite.com/

Top rated by consumer reports is usually a reason not to buy.


Consumer reports collectively could not be any stupider if someone drilled large holes in all their heads.

[tammes]

We have several at the computer center
(a university) that I work at...
Never a problem...
Have one at home with (almost)
everything hooked into it...

[John Mason]

A search in Home Theater General and Tweaks DIY (normal search) for the term "power" in TITLES only, with no date limit on when posted, brings up a lot of threads in this area. -- John

[umr]

Oscilloscope Traces

[umr]

More Traces

[iboon]

On the one hand, I've heard people complain about how things are built to fail. The other hand contains those who complain about how many brownouts and power outages they have. The two have to be related, especially since the people who complain about build quality invariably are the ones that buy cheap crap. You have a dishwasher, clothes dryer, fridge, A/C, etc. These all send cute little spikes through your gear all day, if not protected all day. You filter water because it tastes like shizz otherwise. Power is very similar. Buy a noise sniffer and plug it into your wall. Then, plug the sniffer into a Monster power center; anything over stage 1 will eliminate the noise to the point of being undetectable. Other digital components will also interfere with each other, furthering noise issues. Stage 3 and higher centers also eliminate those. My advice is to look at the rack units, as opposed to the power bars that are geared to the HTIB and 27" Panasonic user.

[keith jay]

you can e-mail monster power and ask them all the questions you want about their different products, your set up, and their reccomendations. you may learn something, or not, but doesn't hurt to ask. i'm buying hts5100 just for peace of mind. aloha keith

[merryamber]

Home Theatre PowerCenter™ HT 800 with Clean Power™ Stage 1 v2.0

This is $79.95 and can be viewed at monstercable.com.....or better....click on the link that McFusick sent in the other thread entitled, "Power Supply for Hitachi 57XWX".
I'm figuring the best way to know whether it will make a difference is to try it, but only buy it if it can be returned.
I noticed in the room where my TV is, when I plug in my laptop the screen is dimmer than it was on the battery....maybe that's a sign that my power isn't good? I'll post if I buy this and find out anything. Good luck.

[RDaneel]

Monster's markup is huge. As with any high markup item, the place to go to buy is ebay, where people sell Monster stuff closer to wholesale... just FYI.

Once you decide to spend more than $100, the BrickWall really starts to make sense... I love mine.

Cheers,
RDaneel

[zxe018]

I also use a brickwall unit as my surge supressor. Got it over year ago because of the rolling black outs here in Cali., and haven't seen any problems with surges on my equipment. I also use the brickwall unit in front of an isolation transformer (bpt-2 ultra from www.b-p-t.com), which provides balanced power to my equipment.

Brickwall was a special guest here at the special guest forum. You might want to do a search there to get more info.

I figure if you're spending a good amount of hard-earned money on your system, spending just under $200 for a good surge supressor is worth while and shouldn't put that much of a dent in your pocket.

[Mayor McCheese]

Honestly, you are probably better off getting "Whole House" surge protection that protects ALL your electronics and appliances by providing protection at the service entrance. A UPS definitely makes sense for most RPTVs though.

[Doug Deacon]

There are only two technologies widely available for surge/spike protection. Once you understand the differences between them, the decision about which technology to buy is trivially easy.

Metal Oxide Varistor (MOV) surge suppressors
MOV's are used in products sold by Monster, APC, Walmart, Radio Shack and nearly every other surge suppressor and UPS on the market. MOV's have three features you need to know about:

1. They all have a finite clamping speed, some of the surge gets through before the rest is shunted to ground. Your "protected" equipment takes a constant series of mini-spikes. Nothing you'll notice, nothing to invoke the $5MM equipment replacement warranty, but not good for delicate circuits either.

2. MOV's work by shunting excess voltage to ground, which contaminates the ground of all circuits that share the same ground. Electrical grunge and screwed up voltage for the whole system.

3. MOV's are all designed to fail. They are a consumable. Every spike they shunt, whether large or small, degrades them. That's what "joules ratings" are for, they indicate how many joules the MOV can shunt before failing.

Once an MOV fails, and they all will, they provide no more protection. Zero. If your unit doesn't have some kind of warning indicator (most don't, unfortunately) you'll find out when the next spike comes through and fries your equipment.

UPDATE: a few lucky users will find out immediately when their MOV takes its final hit, since they've been known to ignite. That's right, a fire in your HT rack! To be honest, this is fairly rare... feel better?

Not interested in MOV-based "protection"? Keep reading.

Series Mode (SM) surge suppressors
These were originally designed for the Dept. of Defense, which wasn't happy with the limitations of MOV-based protectors. They are far more reliable and robust than MOV's:

1. SM suppressors have virtually instantaneous reaction speed, nothing gets through above the threshold.

2. Excess voltage is never shunted to ground where it can contaminate the system. When a spike comes in the SM device just opens the circuit. No circuit, no surge.

3. A SM suppressor will probably not wear out in your lifetime. They are not designed-to-fail consumables. SM surge suppressors have no joules ratings because, realistically speaking, they have no capacity limits. There is no practical way to measure the total joules these devices can handle. It would be like trying to measure the amount of water you can pour into a bottomless cup.

For more details about SM surge suppressors:
http://www.digitaltechonline.com/surgeprotect.asp

AFAIK, they are available from just four commercial sources. Compared with the value of your equipment they're not very expensive. I have one on the dedicated circuit that runs my entire HT setup. Cost me about $250 plus an electrician to wire it in. If you prefer a unit that you can just plug into the wall, or even a whole-house unit, they make those too.

Sources for SM surge suppressors:
ZeroSurge (the inventor of the technology)
BrickWall (good value and a sponsor of this forum)
Surgex (wall-based units like mine)
Adcom (audio components with SM protection)

NOTE: your coax lines (cable/sat/antenna) are also pathways for electrical surges. No matter how well-protected your AC lines are, a nearby lightning strike could reach any equipment connected, directly or indirectly, to these other paths. The Adcom units linked above already include coax protection of a kind similar to the units described below. If you chose a ZeroSurge, Brickwall or Surgex you should get one of the following...

AVSForum member jkhome found a $5 coax surge suppressor. Like an MOV, this device apparently takes a limited number of hits before dying but, here's the key, when it does reach its limit it stops passing signal. This is the opposite of what MOV's do, and is much safer for your equipment. Product details are at:

Surgender coax surge suppressor

Video321 adds that, "Radio Shack has an add-on coax surge protector for $10. The model # is 15-1110. The surge life is 5x that of the Surgender and also lists a frequency range of 5 to 2050MHz."

Either of these seems like a good investment if you choose a SM line protector other than an Adcom.

Disclaimer: I don't have trouble changing light bulbs, but I am not an electrician or electrically qualified in any way. The above is based on a lot of careful research when looking for my own surge protection devices.

[RDaneel]

Doug - that link doesn't seem to work. Do you have another? I'm interested in the other suppliers, and how they compare price-wise to BrickWall.

Thanks,
RD

[zvogt]

Thanks to this thread I just placed my order for a brickwall.
My former employer had two fires in a short window of time
before they traced the problem back to MOV failure.
But until today I had no idea there was a "better way".
I wasn't even in the market for surge protection, but after
reading the info at the above links I was sold on the product.
And I'm even more interested in the conditioning features
than I am in it surge suppression capabilities.

If I catch any flack for the expenditure I'll just tell the gf
to talk to you, Doug. OK?

[Doug Deacon]

posted by zvogt
My former employer had two fires in a short window of time
before they traced the problem back to MOV failure.

Wow! And you needed my advice to avoid MOV's? I must really be gettin' up there.

If you're plugging power amps into the Brickwall make sure you get one that handles plenty of amperage. I'd forgotten that Brickwall included some line conditioning. Let us know what that does for you. The AC in CT is so unreliable that I needed more than just filtering. Since I wanted a surge protector wired into the circuit near the panel I bought a Surgex, which just does protection. I did my conditioning with a seperate unit.

Just tell your gf that your nutty East coast advisor spent 7x the cost of his Surgex on his AC power conditioner, and he loves it! Should calm her right down.

[Doug Deacon]

I was reading a review of some audio equipment last week, don't remember just what or where. The reviewer unplugged a $5K power amp from his Brickwall in order to have an outlet for the component under review, and plugged the amp straight into the wall.

You know what happened two days later. Thunderstorm passes through while he's away. Everything on the Brickwall is unfazed. $5K power amp is now 80 lbs. of slag going back to the factory for a mucho expensive rebuild. True story.

[zvogt]

"Let us know what that does for you."

I suspect it won't really DO anything.
I'm not a "golden ear", and my viewing/listening
environment isn't particularly ideal.
I don't expect to experience anything different
in terms of system performance.

The only thing I've really purchased was
peace of mind... and who knows, I may have
been able to find that with some magic beans
if your salesmanship was good enough. :P

[tmila]

Originally posted by zvogt
Thanks to this thread I just placed my order for a brickwall.
My former employer had two fires in a short window of time
before they traced the problem back to MOV failure.
But until today I had no idea there was a "better way".
I wasn't even in the market for surge protection, but after
reading the info at the above links I was sold on the product.
And I'm even more interested in the conditioning features
than I am in it surge suppression capabilities.

If I catch any flack for the expenditure I'll just tell the gf
to talk to you, Doug. OK?

Damn this thread. Zvogt, which one did you get?