Over the past year, I ran into a weird problem in my studio that taught me something I probably should have known already. Like most people running a small studio, I have a mountain of gear and all of it needs power. So naturally, I’ve always had a bunch of power bars plugged into the wall, often daisy-chained or hooked up through a rack-mounted surge protector like a Furman.

When I moved my setup back into my house, I wired things up the way I always do but I started noticing issues. I was getting some nasty RF interference and ground hum on certain pieces of gear. I got it down to a workable level eventually, but I couldn’t shake the question:

why was it happening in the first place?

I asked my good buddy, Chat GPT what the problem could be and it brought up something I hadn't considered. Using multiple surge protectors with different pieces of gear can actually create grounding issues and inject noise into your audio chain.

Turns out, almost every power bar you can buy off the shelf has some level of surge protection or EMI/RFI filtering built in and if you use too many of them, or combine them with other filtered gear like a Furman, it can cause exactly the kinds of noise I was hearing. Even just chaining power bars together (don’t lie, we’ve all done it) can make things worse.

The tricky part? Try finding a power bar that doesn’t have these features. That’s where Tripp Lite comes in. They make professional-grade (and admittedly pricey) power distribution units that do one job: deliver clean, unfiltered power. No surge protection. No EMI filtering. Just power. Bonus: most of them come in a metal chassis, which also acts as an RF shield.

I picked one up and ran a test using it to power my analog synths. The difference was hard to believe. I recorded a before-and-after using my Arturia DrumBrute with the preamp gain cranked just to bring the noise floor way up. The first test was with a basic Belkin surge-protected power bar plugged into my Furman (which also has its own filtering). The second test used only the Tripp Lite bar. The noise difference was substantial.

Morphpro · BEFORE - Belken Power Bar with RF/EMF and power surge (plugged into something that already has that)

Morphpro · AFTER - Tripp Lite plugged directly into Furman AC215

From there, I made it my mission to find more Tripp Lite bars without paying full retail. Facebook Marketplace became my new addiction. My family’s used to my weird detours by now, so no one blinked when I had to swing by and pick up a power bar on the way to Wonderland or after dropping my stepdaughter at camp.

Long story short: I now have the setup I wanted. I use my Furman AC-215 as the base, and from there, I run a few Tripp Lite power bars to feed all my audio gear. The result? A much quieter noise floor and fewer gremlins in the system.

Here’s the final test clip of the setup in action—noise floor and all.