Surge protector

@immatthewj What does switching off the breakers do. Don’t you want them on so they offer protection by tripping?

If you switch them off, don’t you lose their protection and allow current to flow through without impediment?

@vinylshadow , I guess I wasn’t clear. I manually trip the breaker so the circuit for my audio system is turned off. (Kind of like unplugging the components but easier.)   I don’t know if a massive voltage spike would jump across a breaker that was tripped, but I would think not.

@immatthewj I believe you are defeating the protection that breakers provide by tripping them. Best to unplug your mains cables from the outlets. 

Nothing will protect stereo equipment with a direct lightning hit to your house.

I’ve ordered the Furman PST-8 unit to protect my new subwoofers once they are installed.

@immatthewj I believe you are defeating the protection that breakers provide by tripping them. Best to unplug your mains cables from the outlets. 

@vinylshadow ​​​ there is a comment up above by @jea48 and he actually addressed my question of whether a massive voltage spike could jump across an 'open' breaker, and once again, I was wrong, as @jea48  states that, 'Yes, it can, so best to unplug.'  

However, I am not sure what you mean by 

defeating the protection that breakers provide by tripping them

If I am not mistaken, the protection that a breaker provides to a circuit is that when the circuit is overloaded with too many amps the breaker reacts to the heat generated by that overload of amperage and then it trips and opens that circuit and then everything powered by that circuit is without power.  So how does me manually tripping that breaker possibly defeat the protection the breaker offers?