your best bet for surge is a lightning arrester on your main panel, they are beer can big, but throw current down your ground before it ever gets into house, this can stop fires as well, a friend had a dam can opener burn his house down from a lighting surge. yea like nuts huh. the fire Marshall took it for a exhibit he was building on fire craziness. if its a good hard lightning strike, nothing will protect you, the flash will just travel across all you got and flame out on your rig. This is devil DC current, it plays by even less rules then AC.
Most all these devices have big LEDS on them pumping noise into your system, I remove LEDS for a $ charge from equipment, unless its a junk amp, I promise audible results in the mid highs, this is old news.
when my system is on, it looks off. Marantz made a huge leap in turning its display off, that almost anyone can hear.
The only light i trust on a system, is a small neon, I THINK, jury still pending. many switches still use these.
Ferrite chokes are on almost all this stuff which adds a bit of boom smear to many a system.
you can remove these with no loss of protection and get a tighter low. but if you have a bass lean system, it can sound better with a ferret laden protector cause the dam doughnut choke is adding bass-period.
Monster made a raved about tap bar that STEREOPHILE said was great, I have it, plug it in more bass, unplug,,,less.
And all the above is most always true, but some times, none of it apply's and you get a more hypnotic sounding rig with junk hanging all over it.
Dam I wish there were more all the times rules
This is funny as hell, I put radio shack chokes on a guys main panel breaker wires out-
when he turns on his 240 dryer, they buzz, if you bang on them they stop, I think they need to just hang a certain way to vibrate.