Short of getting an electrical engineering degree or repping one of the major power conditioning companies (w/huge discounts on the entire line), this topic boils down to common sense and exhaustive completeness:
1 - Get a whole-house surge supression device at the electrical panel...something very robust that can take a big spike. An electrician can install it. It's almost certainly better than any local outlet devices
2 - But audiophiles being the OCD creatures we are, go ahead & install any pricey surge suppressors or high end power modification devices you want ahead of the big $$$ gear, paying special attention to line level tube equipment, as someone else here noted
3 - I have a UPS in the home office--it's perfect for desktop computers, which can lose data in a millisecond's outage. But the real solution is a whole house system. Very expensive, but worth it. After the 3rd or 4th extended winter power outage (upstate NY), I finally installed a propane-fired Generac generator w/automatic transfer switch. It's big enough to carry the entire house (20 KW). My home office billing justified the cost and I never looked back
4 - But even with all that, the vulnerability that remains for many is the incoming cable TV or satellite TV wire. Lighting can light up anything attached to those wires, and typically there's no surge protection for those TVs, receivers, or other audio gear--or the surge protection only stands between the power outlets and the gear. There are surge suppression systems that allow cable connection, but that gets tricky w/2-way communication protocols; most people simply disconnect their cable wires at a central location whenever the weather becomes threatening...
1 - Get a whole-house surge supression device at the electrical panel...something very robust that can take a big spike. An electrician can install it. It's almost certainly better than any local outlet devices
2 - But audiophiles being the OCD creatures we are, go ahead & install any pricey surge suppressors or high end power modification devices you want ahead of the big $$$ gear, paying special attention to line level tube equipment, as someone else here noted
3 - I have a UPS in the home office--it's perfect for desktop computers, which can lose data in a millisecond's outage. But the real solution is a whole house system. Very expensive, but worth it. After the 3rd or 4th extended winter power outage (upstate NY), I finally installed a propane-fired Generac generator w/automatic transfer switch. It's big enough to carry the entire house (20 KW). My home office billing justified the cost and I never looked back
4 - But even with all that, the vulnerability that remains for many is the incoming cable TV or satellite TV wire. Lighting can light up anything attached to those wires, and typically there's no surge protection for those TVs, receivers, or other audio gear--or the surge protection only stands between the power outlets and the gear. There are surge suppression systems that allow cable connection, but that gets tricky w/2-way communication protocols; most people simply disconnect their cable wires at a central location whenever the weather becomes threatening...