Surge protectors and power conditioners - Good idea or bad?

Rare to get hit by lightning? Guess that depends on where you live. Here in central Florida you can depend on your home's power lines being hit by electrical surges caused by lighting every few years. While a direct lightning strike to a home's power inlet is probably going to overwhelm any surge protection, surge protection for my audio equipment has protected and saved my audio equipment from damaging surges that burned out unprotected circuits like garage doors and doorbells. As to negatively affecting sound quality, there isn't any definitive answer. Some components (most often power amps in my experience) are negatively affected by power conditioners while everything else in the system is usually positively affected. As always, experimentation is in order and what works in one situation isn't going to necessarily be the case in another. 

What a surprise the "surge" burned out things like garage doors and doorbells that are not fused. The real reason people use surge protectors is FUDD stories just like this one. 

The reality is if you get hit by lightning, good luck if your system is the way when the megavolts burn their path to ground. Anything less than that you have this thing called a fuse. 

Of course this is electronics we are talking about. Someone somewhere always gonna have something get blown out by the static charge you get walking across carpet, blow the instant it is turned on, or just plain give up the ghost for who knows what reason. By and large though surge is like the other "s" word, snow. Everyone freaks, but then life goes on- until they hear the "s" word and freak out all over again.

+1 for @photon46

I have always leaned toward surge protection and balanced power in one unit. Furman makes a couple of units. The home unit is the IT-REF 20I. the pro-version is the P-2400 IT. Each will provide 20 amp balanced power to make your system black while also providing excellent surge protection. I would also consider Equi-Tech either model Q or Son of Q (no political reference). They also make very good equipment.

If you don't use surge protection then make sure your homeowners policy covers your gear. Oh, and depending on your system, I would stick with a 20 amp unit which will also allow you to use it for your amp regardless of what others say. I have been running my amp from a balanced power unit for years and it sounds fantastic. Balanced power by the way will give you clean fixed voltage power that your equipment will love. 

First of all lightning is sent directly to the closest and biggest ground.

That ground rod at the mains is exactly what that is for. Folks that use to get hit with lightning were hit because of antenna sticking up all over the place. THAT is what normally wipes out electrical gear NOT lightning hitting the power pole.. THAT'S right it goes into the ground rod. THAT rod is for one thing outside spikes coming in from anywhere ONLY. It is not the bond for your house. It is the bond between the house and the pole.. THAT's different

People that don't protect equipment, are BUYING equipment.. simple as that.. Protect FIRST then listen.. IF your equipment suffers because of a surge or filtering device, chances you picked the wrong device.

Power supplies on equipment that are well built (extra capacitance usually) don't suffer from most maintaining devices. The key to healthy equipment is to protect from overvoltage QUICKLY and under voltage the same way, QUICKLY..

Under voltage use to be the number one killer of power supplies in my area.. Not anymore.. 8k lines to 20k lines.. Like magic..

The guy that doesn't protect, doesn't deserve.. simple for me..

Regards