Why Care About Power and Grounding

Why should you care about power quality?

The electricity that comes out of the wall is unfortunately getting worse. Increasing amounts of consumer electronics, chronic underinvestment by the power utilities and more extreme weather are all causing poor power quality.

• Poor power restricts equipment performance. Power quality, like room acoustics, is an often neglected but foundational element in determining the absolute performance level of your stereo, home theater or studio. Best performance is realized when your equipment is fed clean power, free of noise and distortion. Audio and video, after all, are just filtered and processed electricity.
• Poor power damages equipment. There are many power issues such as spikes, brownouts and swells that slowly degrade your equipment over time and can cause catastrophic failure. You've invested a lot in your electronics, now it's time to protect them.

What are you plugging your equipment into?

Devices such as surge protectors, uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) and isolation transformers can all help solve particular power quality issues. It is important to realize that most 'power conditioning' technologies do not solve all power issues. Understanding each power quality issue and how it affects your audiovisual system is therefore a useful step in selecting the right product for your needs. Some solutions, like surge protectors, only deal with a single power quality issue. Others, such as power regenerators, solve all of the major power issues.

Learning more about power and grounding

The following pages will help you learn more about power:

• Power and grounding for audio, home theater and studio provides an overview of the electrical system feeding your audiovisual equipment and the issues with it
• Power quality issues describes the seven problems with electricity delivered by the utility company
• Hum, buzz and ground loops explains the root causes of these commonly misunderstood issues and provides recommendations on how to treat them

Help me choose a power conditioning product

Read the power conditioner buyer's guide to get an understanding of the different technologies available and which power quality issues they can and can't solve.

Then review our product recommendations for audio, home theater and studio systems. If you need help choosing a product please contact us.