How to protect my amp without changing the sound?


My house has terrible power surges. One surge fried my former system with all Cary Audio electronics and speakers. Everything was fried from the amp, preamp, speakers to the speaker wires and interconnects.

Now I've replaced much of it with a Wadia Intuition amp/preamp/DAC unit. But for obvious reasons can't consider plugging it directly into the wall.

I started off with a Furman power strip/surge suppressor which really throttled the output. Made my $15K system sound like $3K.

Next I tried a Brickwall surge suppressor which really opened up the sound (getting more current through) but drained warmth and musicality from the sound.

I broke down and bought a Furman 16A power conditioner that is warmer sounding but still doesn't compare to plugging the amp directly in the wall.

What do I do? Keep moving up the Furman line?

Power conditioning isn't absolutely necessary, but strong surge protection is. And I'm no fan of MOV's. Any ideas?
larrybou
Thankyou Kijanki, very helpful and interesting, do you get any better sound with your system useing this siemens surge arrester with this ground scheme?
No, I could not detect any difference with arrester. Furman with its tight, strong, non-sacrificial under/overvoltage protection and build in circuit breaker is probably enough but double protection sounds better. In addition I've already lost garage door opener (Chamberlain) due to the voltage spike. Chamberlain service lady explained to me, that during winter spikes are very common, recommended local Chamberlain protector and sent me brand new circuit board under warranty. This event proved that voltage spikes are common and dangerous even without thunderstorm.
You may want to do some research on Environmental Potentials products. I ended up purchasing a EP-2500 Waveform Corrector and a EP-2775 Ground Filter. These items are not cheap and require an electrician to install. However, when comparing the risk of loosing nearly $200,000 of equipment, what's another couple thousand?

Check the Audiogon archives and you will find quite a bit of discussion on their products. After I had the EP-2500 & EP-2775 installed, I could not detect any difference in the sound of my audio system, or in the picture quality of the projection system (thank God!).

Here's an interesting youtube link you may want to watch:

https://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play;_ylt=AwrTcdU5mpNUVbEACUUPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTBsOXB2YTRjBHNlYwNzYwRjb2xvA2dxMQR2dGlkAw--?p=ENVIRONMENTAL+POTENTIALS+youtube&tnr=21&vid=EBCBFAE3D09161E52A29EBCBFAE3D09161E52A29&l=272&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts4.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DUN.608056142745044051%26pid%3D15.1&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D7SnyGCeju34&sigr=11aupo1lk&tt=b&tit=Environmental+Potentials+|+An+overview+from+Border+States&sigt=11plqnl22&back=https%3A%2F%2Fsearch.yahoo.com%2Fyhs%2Fsearch%3Fp%3DENVIRONMENTAL%2BPOTENTIALS%2Butube%26ei%3DUTF-8%26hsimp%3Dyhs-001%26hspart%3Dmozilla&sigb=13a16vl3h&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-001

Good luck on your search!
Ken G.
KiJanki, Do you mind me asking where you live?, I do not get power spikes like that here in Mobile,Al U.S.A., once in awhile, we may loose power on a sunny day, nothing has ever been damaged though, likly because I keep my equipment un-pluged when not in use, once the dropped power happened when my system was on, when the power come right back on, my amp simply was on stand-by instead of full power on, digital was simply off, all turned out good.
Audiolabyrinth, I live in Chicago suburb. My part of the neighborhood has power lines underground. We have rarely any power disruption.