Line Conditioners And Protectors - Alesis adat AI4 Reference Manual

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Getting Started

Line Conditioners and Protectors

Although the AI4 is designed to tolerate typical voltage variations, in
today's world the voltage coming from the AC line may contain spikes or
transients that can possibly stress your gear and, over time, cause a
failure. There are three main ways to protect against this, listed in
ascending order of cost and complexity:
Line spike/surge protectors
Relatively inexpensive, these are designed to protect against strong surges
and spikes, acting somewhat like fuses in that they need to be reset or
replaced if they've been hit by an extremely strong spike.
Line filters
.
These generally combine spike/surge protection with filters that remove
some line noise (dimmer hash, transients from other appliances, etc.).
Uninterruptible power supply (UPS)
This is the most sophisticated option. A UPS provides power even if the
AC power line fails completely. Intended for computer applications, a
UPS allows you to complete an orderly shutdown of a computer system
in the event of a power outage, and the isolation it provides from the
power line minimizes all forms of interference—spikes, noise, etc.
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