Power and Grounding: The Acoustic Frontiers Approach

by Nyal Mellor March 07, 2012

We recently spent some serious research & development time developing what could be called the Acoustic Frontiers approach to power and grounding for audio, home theater and studios.

The results of this effort can be found on the new power pages on our website and in the three brands that we are proud to represent:

1. Environmental Potentials, a maker of whole house AC ‘waveform correctors’ and surge protectors.
2. SurgeX, who design and build a wide range of products ncorporating series mode surge suppression.
3. Torus Power, a manufacturer of isolation transformers from 5A to 290A

All three brands are made in the USA or Canada and are engineering, not marketing, led companies.

 

 

 We put the effort into developing our knowledge, services and products in this area for a couple of reasons:

• The power area is one that is full of pseudo-science and BS. To us it is one of those areas, like room acoustics, where clear engineering and analysis can provide clarity on what is important and what is not important when improving power delivery to your system.
• It is an area where there are a huge number of products available from many manufacturers, which prompts the question: how do you sort the wheat from the chaff? From our analysis there are clearly some product categories, like surge protectors, that are stuffed full of underperforming products that have no place in our AV systems.
• There is no really good resource on the web that pulls together the basics on power and grounding for AV systems in one place. I hope you’ll spread the word about these pages and over time that this resource can be improved and further added to.
  
  

Here are some of the juicy topics covered on our power pages:

• Why should you care about how your system is powered and grounded?
• What is the anatomy of the power and grounding system feeding your AV gear?
• Do you know that there are 8 power and grounding issues that can affect the performance and lifespan of your AV system?
• What are the causes and cures of 60Hz hum and powerline harmonic buzzing?
• Why are 99% of all surge protectors based on MOVs (Metal Oxide Varistors) no good for AV equipment?
• Why do you need a UPS for your projector?
• What is the concept of whole room power conditioning?

If you’d like to discuss the power for your AV system or learn more about power conditioning technologies please contact us!

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