surge protection & noise?


I had my treasured ARC CD 3 fail (as Well as the Noise Harvester that was on the same outlet) and had to have 5 power supply caps replaced, I now have a Shunyata Venom Defender protecting it. Since my budget is shoe sting (right now) I have an inexpensive surge protector on the outlet for my integrated amp and also have a PS Audio Noise Harvester plugged in to it, which leads to my question. Prior to surge/spike protection my Noise Harvester would light up like a light being on (and this would happen on both outlets) but since putting the Shunyata & the surge/spike protector in I still get noise being filtered from the line BUT, the Noise Harvester DOES NOT light up anymore on a constant basis as it once did. Sure it does blink and at times rapidly but again nothing that even resembles what used to happen. The sound hasn't seemed to have changed, well not degraded that is, it sounds as good or better now, could the surge/spike protectors be making the differences or might there be a different explanation? I could use some helpful opinions, Thanks
rsjm80

Showing 1 response by lostbears


I have been giving power conditioners a lot of thought lately. I am also concerned with surge protection as well as line noise. For the last 15 years or so I have been using an Adcom ACE 515 power enhancer for my front end. This unit not only protects my gear, I think it also makes a small positive difference to the sound. But my gear has come along way since then and power conditioning probably has also. So far I am leaning toward a Furman Elite-20 PFi. The Furman conditioners seems to offer the best protection and features in the price range.

I also looked at the Shunyata Venom PS8 power strip with the Venom Defender. The PS8 is just a high quality power strip. So the only surge protection is from the Defender which is in an adjacent outlet. It just seems like the Furman offers much better surge protection for around the same price.