whole house surge protector?


I have dedicated lines (nice improvment). We are now in a situation of having to upgrade our circuit box (heavy up).

The electrician is recommending a whole house surge protector which many on this site have recommended. It is not a particularly costly item.

I use power conditioners in my system (Adept Response) both because they have improved the sound AND the offer surge protection.

Several audiophile friends and retailers have suggested I try my tubed preamp and my amplifiers plugged directly into the wall. I have never been willing to try this as we have a terrible power grid here in Washington DC suburbs (Maryland) and there are lots of surges and we lose power all the time with thunder storms and ice storms and.... you name it.

So: two questions (1) does a whole house surge protector harm sonics in any way; (2) if I have a whole house surge protector, at that point, it seems the experiment (plugging components directly into the wall and seeing if the power conditioners are really helpful or harmful) is feasible.

Does this make sense?

Thanks for your help.

--dan
dgaylin
Check out an Environmental Potentials (I think the model is) 2050. Installed on your panel it not only protects your audio equipment (and every other thing that is plugged in at home) but also eliminates hash and grunge in your AC lines. I have one installed on my 200amp panel with a dedicated 20amp line to a spread of four Porter Ports behind my rack. All my equipment gets plugged directly into the outlets--no conditioner, no nothing, sounds great. The EP ain't cheap though--about $500.
Like the two previous posters, I strongly recommend the EP-2050. In addition to protecting against surges it lowers the noise floor by removing hash and other distortion coming in on the lines as well as the stuff placed on your house lines by the various and many in-house devices that are plugged in. In addition, I use several parallel filters and passive conditioners and have found Alan Maher's circuit breaker filters quite effective.

If I were limited to a single device, it would be the EP-2050.

I can't believe I am just noticing this:

so it sounds like the EP 2050 - if claims are true - renders high priced tweaky power line conditioners obsolete?

Re "aint cheap" I thought people around here spent hundreds if not thousands on voodoo conditioning and surge protection sold by audiophile brands.

Count me in for an EP2050 if all true.