Protect Your Equipment

AC Power. If there is one thing in the audio/video/home theater world we take for granted it is the alternating current coming out of that little socket in the wall. What you may not know is that little plug is not only feeding your equipment with current, it is also serving up a heaping dose of garbage in the form of noise, spikes on the line, surges, cyclic dips, etc. All that noise (or "hash" as some folks in the A/V world refer to it) can not only cause your components to look and sound worse, it can cause them irreparable damage that you may not even notice until one day, Poof! And your DVD player or receiver just stops working... just like a light bulb that suddenly blows out. Many people notice power problems when their refrigerator cycles on or a vacuum cleaner is started and their lights dim for a moment. The lights dim because their flow of power has surged up and down and, just like your lights, your electronic equipment experiences these same power problems every day. It's just not as obvious.

You may think you are ahead of the game if you have purchased a "surge protector" in the form of one of those "$2.99 Special" 10-outlet power strips you found on sale in the Sunday paper. But really, those little power strips do little more than give you extra electrical outlets like a glorified extension cord. They may protect your components the first time lightning strikes the line, but instead of informing you of what has just happened, most just simply burn out their "sacrificicial circuit" and go into a sort of "bypass" mode. There they continue passing current to your components, but have lost their surge protection ability when their internal protection devices were destroyed.

Another misconception: These cheap strips really do nothing to shield your components from the regular daily power surges (like the light bulb example) that may eventually wear them down. Most, if not all, of these types of power strips are set to blow only if a certain voltage level is reached. That's fine for big surges like lighting strikes, but small daily surges well below that level can still lead to performance problems. I could go on and on, about how these little strips do more harm than good, but I would rather share the cure with you.

Unfortunately, the best solution is usually not the cheapest, and so it goes in this case. Richard Gray's Power Company (RGPC) makes one product I have tested for over two years in my own home theater (and can highly recommend to you). RGPC takes a completely different, patented approach when it comes to protecting and conditioning the power feeding your components. RGPC uses a large, very heavy inductor, or "choke," which acts as a natural surge protector. This big device actually protects its own internal metal oxide varister (the sacrificial agent we spoke of earlier), which is set to blow if, and only if, a surge somehow makes its way past the inductor. This is highly unlikely to happen, since the inductor can absorb a strike as high as 1500 volts.

Aside from blowout problems, the reason many electronic components cannot achieve their full potential is because they are often being starved for current and must work hard to overcome the dips and sags on the AC line we spoke of earlier. By providing your equipment with the clean, safe power it needs, RGPC products can improve the performance of most audio and video components to a noticeable degree.

RGPC offers several different Power Management units, sized to fit various systems. If that wasn't enough, RGPC has a really heavy duty 240-volt SubStation, a 2.5-kilowatt monster transformer that will completely isolate the AC line, thereby eliminating all ground loops, and providing truly "balanced" power to the most demanding A/V system.

Richard Gray's Power Company products provide even more of an advantage when you live in an area of the country that suffers from frequent power problems. Almost everyone is susceptible to some degree of "noise or hash" on the line (unless you operate your own power company and generate your own AC power). So the worse your AC, the more you need power conditioning. Interestingly, often less expensive electronics benefit the most from this sort of help. Anyone who is serious about their A/V system should find their local RGPC dealer and ask about a 30-day, no risk, in home trial. See (and hear) for yourself.

www.richardgrayspowercompany.com