I am about to drop $250 on a Brickwall surge protector, am I doing the right thing?! (1 Viewer)

[Earl Simpson]

Side note: I have yet to loose a piece of equipment on a surge protector(cheap ones and good ones).

I had an extra UPS from a computer project, so i'm using it with an industrial surge protector for those brownouts. Black outs I turn everything off. I got tired of my DBS acquiring the sat for every brownout for 2-6 secs.

 

[Claude M]

oops!
http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showd...=3208&CATID=45

 

[james e m]

I just bought the Brickwall 2RAUD from Sellcom and with shipping it was $195. I called Brickwall to see if they would beat Sellcom's price and they said no. I plan on plugging my Surge Master II into the Brickwall unit and I'll be good to go. I'll let everybody know if I notice any difference. I bought this for it's surge protection, but if it gets rid of the noise that some of my appliances can create I'll be even more excited.

james

Shawn...As far as the info about the non audio Brickwall units affecting the soundstage I did add "However, I don't know if this is true." The info I was going on came from some customer reviews I had read on the subject.

 

[Patrick R. Sklenar]

Ah hah! Thank you for clarifying the differences. The only problem now is ... I'm not really sure which would be the best to add to my HT. Hmmm ... time ofr some more reading ...

Again, thanks for all the replies!

 

[Kevin C Brown]

... from what I understand the UO from PS Audio actually is a power conditioner in that it takes power from the wall and cleans, scrubs and recreates it so that it's EXACTLY 120V or whatever it should be coming out of the wall ALL THE TIME.

Incorrect. Only the Power Plants from PS Audio give you 120V all the time. Not the Ultimate Outlet. The ultimate Outlet is simply a filter.
I don't like "filtering" either. That's what I rely on my balanced power unit for. But, the filtering that zerosurge and brickwall does, is simply really high freq stuff:
3 dB at 5 kHz, 26 dB at 100 kHz, 38 dB at 300 kHz.
And remember, that is the kHz of the power supply, not your music. AC is either 55 or 60 Hz (can't remember). So... really high freq stuff.
And, as far as "current limiting" by zerosurge/brickwall units: just buy the largest size unit that you think you'd need. For me, that's 20A. (That's what the circuit is in my family room, and that's the rating of my balanced power unit is.) Hence: no current limiting.
The 15A model should be fine for most people. I would just want to use the 20A model because I had to change my receptacle to accomodate my BP unit. (Got a deal on it, otherwise the 15A model would have been fine.)
Fun stuff! I did not know that Adcom units used zerosurge technology...

 

[Ron Boster]

Kevin:

Thanks for a very informative review the brickwall filtering and potential current limitation issues. I really appreciate it!

Ron

 

[Hank Frankenberg]

James, I'm the one that Brian Bunge referred to as having just bought a ZeroSurge unit. I have studied/built power supplies for years and I'm also convinced that MOV-based surge protection is not the best. It's the basis of 99.9% of surge protectors sold, because it is the CHEAP solution.

Read the Brick Wall or ZeroSurge technical info to understand the circuit design philosophy. I have the 15 amp 2-receptacle model. I have a TrippLite unit plugged into it (for its good noise filtering), and my equipment plugged into the TrippLite. When I move back to separates, I'll buy another ZeroSurge (a 20-amp unit) and plug the power amp into it. IMHO, ZeroSurge/Brick Wall units will protect as well as the high-end, botique brands targeted at the monied class with the esoteric adjective-laden advertising hype.

 

[Brian Treinen]

Incorrect. Only the Power Plants from PS Audio give you 120V all the time. Not the Ultimate Outlet. The ultimate Outlet is simply a filter.

Ooops - should've checked thier site before answering - got the two mixed up! thanks for clearing that up Kevin.

I'm still going Adcom.

 

[Bob_M]

Brian

>I told him I wanted two 20 amp dedicated HT runs for powering my system - one for the receiver and sub amp and the other for the rest of the system.<

I read that it is best to wire these two dedicated outlets on the same leg back at the pannel. In other words keeping both outlets on the same phase.

Hope this helps,

Bob

 

[Bob_M]

Hi All,

I have been using APC products for years here at work and the BrickWall topic was interesting to read but it seems all the info was coming from their WEB site. So I sent APC a message and asked about Brickwall and if they use MOV technology. I thought I would pass on two emails I received below.

Dear Bob,

Thank you for writing. I am sorry for the wait, we have had an unusually heavy volume of mail on our system as of late.

To answer your question, our UPS and Surge units do use MOV technology.

I myself have not heard of the company or units of which you speak. If you don't mind, I would like to research this further to provide you with the most concise and efficient answer to your question. I will be contacting you in a short time with this information.

Thank you for choosing APC!

Respectfully,

Robert Mendoza

Customer Solutions Team

American Power Conversion

Dear Bob,

Thank you for writing. I am sorry for the delay. I spoke with our product manager on your question and received this reply;

Brickwall uses similar technology as Zero Surge. That is, they do not have MOV Protection and they do not provide Common Mode Protection (Line to Ground or Neutral to Ground Protection). We advertise our let through performance to be a Normal Mode (Line to Neutral Protection) Surge at 200 Amps 100 kHz Ring Wave at 6 kV and our let-through voltage is around 40 Volts (this is Clamping Voltage level Minus the Peak of the AC Sine Wave or 210 Volts Clamping Minus 170 Volts Peak which equals 40 Volts). I am sure that Brickwall does not understand Let-Through and looked at our Clamping Voltage. Also, since Brickwall does not protect against Common Mode Surges (the most destructive and the most Common Surges are common mode) they leave the customer's equipment vulnerable to these surges as well as leaves the end user at risk of electric shock during a common mode surge.