An AV surge protector will protect your valuable equipment from the threat of power surges. Lightning and other types of damaging surges can disrupt proper functioning and outright destroy electrical equipment. It doesn’t have to be a large surge as even the smallest rise in current from your AC wall outlets is enough to wear down electrical components and microprocessors, ruining the performance of your devices over time.
During a surge in power, harmful electrical spikes enter the AC power and coaxial connectors of electrical appliances crippling them in a short amount of time or in one stroke. It’s not only lightning that causes the surges; even high-powered appliances in your home, like garage door openers, heavy duty power tools, large appliances such as refrigerators and air conditioners and things you wouldn’t even consider like fluorescent lighting can all cause surges in electricity running through your home. The surge will travel through AC lines and cables and overwork components that require minimal current exposure.
Often, people purchase power strips not realizing that what they need is a quality surge protector to provide the needed protection to AV components. Power cords don’t provide protection, they offer convenient ways to plug in many appliances to one outlet. Even with cheap surge protectors, you run the risk of losing twenty to thirty decibels of signal loss that may affect the performance of your coaxial connectors. Audio components are exceptionally susceptible to damaging effects of power surges coming in to the coax connection. You can avert permanent damage altogether by installing a well-branded surge protection device.
Brands that get the job done are reputable manufacturers of AV surge protectors, like Monster and APC. Often, the products of these companies exceed the protection levels required by UL ratings, offering several levels of protection in one device. Industrial-quality MOVs respond to surges in less than a nanosecond (that’s one-billionth of a second, to give you an idea of the speed of the MOVs, or metal oxide varistors). This results in the incoming surge diverting to the ground wire, rendering it powerless and preventing any damage to your audio equipment. You can also look into a Belkin Pure AV surge protector
Using a flat plug surge protector can let you put your equipment in an area where you can hide the plug behind objects such as chairs or sofas without having to pull them away from the wall to make room. With a Monster surge protector, the outlets are color-coded to help identify which appliance plugs into which outlet.
Standard features on all upcoming quality surge protection devices include indicator lights using LED technology to help identify that your AV surge protector is working properly, resettable circuit breakers that protect you from fuse burnout, Ethernet line protection, cable line and phone line protection as well. One thing about the LED indicator lights is that there are usually two that help you identify that your unit is on and that it is working as it should to protect your equipment. Catastrophic event protection in surge protectors is more common today too. What this does is shuts down the power flow to your appliances in the event that the AV surge protector is damaged beyond protecting you.
