John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Construction of my new house and personal studio within the home continues. So far, the electrician's have installed/wired the room with a 100A subpanel box(fed from main house panel) which will supply all the dedicated circuits/outlets in the control room/studio.

I've run several lines of 8 channel snake wire and mic cabling(all Mogami) and midi and CAT5e to and from several wall areas(wall plates will be ordered soon).

In terms of lightning/surge protection, I've checked out Surge-X's website and a few others. I would like to protect the entire 100A subpanel. Is this possible? Would I also need to do the main house circuit panel? I see a "whole house" surge protector for about $200 bucks but I'm sure it's just crap. Where do I need to be looking and hopefully not braking the bank.

Also, balanced power and UPS. I'm a Pro Tools HD guy and a UPS has saved many a session for me. I've been looking at a true on-line UPS for my Pro Tools rack(G5, 192 I/Os, Midi I/O and PRE) and other rack gear. Is balanced power more of a priority(substitute a smaller not on-line UPS like an APC?)?

How about Voltage Regulators like the the Furman AR-1220 or the Monster Cable?

I'd like to avoid buying something redundant but I don't want to exclude an important chainlink.

Any and all advice is truly appreciated!

equi=tech has Panel solution...

http://www.equitech.com/products/wall/wall.html

Also, if using UPS AND balanced power you need a UPS that's large enough to run your balanced power transformer, assuming you want your gear that's getting balanced power to ALSO be on a UPS.

Once the power is balanced, you cannot put a UPS on the balanced power and get it to work. Check the link Bryan gave, they have some white papers on this... Steve