Your One Bullet Point Solution; Electrical Upgrade

ELECTRICIANS and owners of the whole house meter surge suppressor devices, I need your help on a particular point of information.

My local utility does not offer the house/meter surge suppressors.

I see one made by Leviton. I get the idea.

Question: I believe my electrician could install it. They seem to have a shelf life. What happens when a surge hits? Do they reset automatically? Are you without power until reset? How do you reset them?  

Any superior, great brand to recommend?

TIA

I think there is an important element missing here because no one is talking about local codes. If you upgrade your service I can't imagine any local code allowing only 100A service. The minimum where I live is 200A and that may be outdated as well by now. A sub-panel is added when you run out of space for more breakers in your current panel. There should be no benefit to your audio system by installing a separate sub panel. As a matter of fact, once you upgrade to 200A (or whatever service your local code calls for) you may need to eliminate your sub-panel. Your electrician will know the current code. There is no problem upgrading to the better panel, you simply have to meet minimum code requirements so that is a good recommendation. Your electrician may tell you that it is unnecessary to spend the extra money but it will be worth it. Please correct me if any of my statements are wrong. 

Doug- presumably, your electrician opened an application so that the work done will be inspected by the local authority. If he hadn’t planned on doing that, ask. (I was in a small town in West Texas at Christmas time and what I saw in the hotel would have caused an electrical inspector to have a heart attack-- my suspicion was there was nobody who had that job in town).
Whole house is type 1 (at the meter, it is my understanding that you need to get the power company to shut off the power to have this installed) and type 2- at the service panel. I’m using an Eaton, type 2 which is well regarded but uses MOVs, which are sacrificial- if the thing does its job and fries, the pilot lamps will tell you it needs to be replaced. It’s under a hundred bucks. There’s an audiophile approved one mentioned in one of your threads, the Environmental Potentials 2050, which claims to be a whole house power conditioner- I’m not sure about its design. Maybe @Jea48 knows- their literature claims that it isn’t just a whole bunch of MOVS, but I’m not sure that answers the question.
Most people also employ point of use surge protection. ZeroSurge, from Frenchtown, NJ, had some of the patents on nonMOV surge protection and it was licensed to others. I’m not sure if they make a whole house unit.
I’m not employing any point of use surge protectors, like power strips or line conditioners with surge protection in my main system. Instead, I have a large Iso transformer that sits outside in a weatherproof cabinet and also has some surge protection. That in turn feeds a subpanel that distributes a bunch of dedicated lines. If it fries, it has replaceable parts on a board and a warning light to alert you to do so.
This does give some peace of mind but if you get a direct hit of lightening, I’d say all bets are off.
You might consider asking Tammy to merge your threads so that you and others don’t have to double post.
Bill Hart

Right.(falconquest, not the other one) My experience is the more direct the better. The main advantage of a dedicated line is not the ability to provide more current. Our systems do not require anywhere near even a 15A draw let alone 20A. What we want is clean. The greatest source of noise by far is all the other wires in the house, and all the connections on the system circuit.

Normal house circuits are wired outlet to outlet. Every one of these outlet connections creates a little eddy current the power must go through on the way to the system. These connections are also a source of a lot of noise from micro-arcing . Eliminating all these extra connections is the single greatest advantage to running a dedicated line.

The next problem is every wire is an antenna, and all the wires in the house are connected to the same panel. So the more circuits and connections the more noise. This right here is the number one reason to not add a panel. Adding a panel is spending money to make noise worse not better. The panel does absolutely nothing to improve sound. How could it? Serious question.
This comes up a lot and every time it seems hardly anyone gets it. This in spite of the fact there’s a very simple test everyone can do to hear for themselves exactly what I am talking about. Simply go and listen to your system. Then go to the panel and flip off all the breakers not needed for the system. Go and listen again.

Flipping the breakers disconnected all the hot leads, roughly half the wire in the house. The other half, the neutral wires, those are all still connected together at the neutral bus bar in the panel. Don’t take my word for it, remove the cover and see for yourself. Its how they are all wired. Flipping off the breaker disconnected less than half the wires. Even so it was a huge and easy to hear difference. I know. I’ve demo’d this for people. Always they are shocked how much difference this makes.

Adding a panel is adding wires. When what you want is less wires not more. Again, don’t take my word for it. Takes like 10 minutes to try this and then you will know. How many will actually try? Based on past experience almost none. Most would rather pay big bucks for stuff they don’t need than spend even 10 minutes trying to understand what is going on. Oh well.

I'm doing 200amp.
Should have 40slots plenty
Will seriously consider the MOV panel solution. 

Have owners of isolation transformers found them worthwhile? I can do so between main panel and subpanel if I wish.