Ep.4 - Clean Power: The AV Upgrade Nobody Talks About

What if one of the biggest upgrades to your system wasn’t a new amp, speaker, or camera… but the power feeding it?
Yep — in this episode, we sit down with Wade Bussey from Furman and Panamax to talk about the part of AV everyone forgets until something goes wrong.

Wade walks us through why clean power can make your audio feel more open, your video look sharper, and your network way less moody. We get into noise floor (the silent troublemaker), why quick burst current actually matters for music, and how wideband filtration keeps today’s digital gear from freaking out.

We also dig into BlueBOLT, which basically lets your rack fix itself when things go sideways. No more weekend “my system died” calls.
Plus, we hit on the “circle of protection” — AC, coax, and telco — and why it matters more than ever in real homes and real installs.

If you’ve ever heard a system suddenly “breathe” after adding a conditioner, this episode is going to click instantly.
 Grab a coffee, plug in, and enjoy the chat.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_01 0:00

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of SFM.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

So, welcome to today's episode of Behind the Rack. We have a special guest, our first guest, actually, of our podcast, Wade Bussey from Furmin and Panamax, a nice group to discuss the brand and probably the most underrated topic in AV, power, and so much more. And uh a very exciting podcast, an episode uh you won't want to miss. So grab your headphones, pull up a chair, and join us for some honest, sometimes nerdy, always fun conversations will happen behind the Wade. Good morning. Nice to have you. Great to be here. And in our new podcast. Welcome.

SPEAKER_03 0:58

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

This place looks great. Really like it. Yeah, it's very sharp. We appreciate you coming and uh kind of giving us uh just some cool conversation about uh power. And uh you're from Furman and Panamax, and I know um Furman and Panamax, you know, just in the power uh space, there's it's I find it's a very, very underrated topic.

SPEAKER_03 1:22

It's always been behind the scenes for uh for Panamax, well especially for Furmin uh since the foundation. But uh yeah, I want to take the opportunity for uh for uh you know joining your uh joining your first podcast and um talking a little bit about product and power. That's that's great. Appreciate that.

The Furman Origin Story

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Uh why don't you uh give us a little bit of um a bit of a background? I think there's a there's a cool a bit of a cool story behind Ferman. Why don't you guys why don't you give us a little uh a little glimpse into that?

SPEAKER_03 1:50

You know, it's it's kind of fun because the rock and roll world is uh is peppered with uh with great stories and uh and legacy for sure. And and Furmin is one of those one of those brands. You know, they started, kind of founded and and um was part of um you know a very famous rock band, the The Grateful Dead. And um servicing product, um fortifying product, um making sure that the stage kits go up, go down, uh consistently and reliably was um was some of the fundamental parts of uh development of Furmin. Uh at that time it was um not Furman, uh it was more of a service company and uh show company that made sure that everything worked and what didn't work got improved and uh got better. And then from there, some of the early uh early products were sort of formed um in ideas of trying to make uh those show kits and those stage performances, those rock concerts more reliable, more consistent, of course, sound better. The most important thing was sound better, and um it was kind of unique. And uh from there, um, sort of the Furman story starts with a lot of a lot of color uh that happens uh in the stories and the development when they're on. That's amazing. And and where the name Furman comes from? Uh the name Furman uh comes from the founder, and the founder was basically um um Columbia University out of uh you know New York City. Um got a Bachelor of Science in Electronics Engineering and had a passion for music. And typically when you come out of you know science uh studies like that, you go into aerospace or defense and you know different things that really challenge uh the mathematics of it. Um but the passion, passion inside uh inside the student was still for music and was fascinated with rock and roll and and the whole you know a scene that was developing at that time in the early 70s. And uh headed west, headed to California, and decided that um you know he was gonna go with the passion, skip the money, and um start with the start with the tour band and you know and a service group and and really kind of hone the scale of of what he liked while enjoying the the atmosphere and the the colleagues around him.

Wade’s 12-Volt Roots And Power Lessons

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Yeah. I know um just to kind of step back a bit, um you have a great appreciation for sound. I know I've known you for quite a quite a long time. Um what's your background? Give us a little bit of your background.

SPEAKER_03 4:26

Oh my um so I started uh doing uh 12 volt um when I was just getting old enough to drive a car. So 15, 16, I became fascinated with the environment of uh audio inside of a car. And at that time in the mid-80s, I'm dating myself now, but that time in the mid-80s, um the factory equipment was very um, you know, minuscule. It was it was very the the the least the least cost affordable was provided by the factories. And uh the aftermarket opportunity was huge. And with the aftermarket opportunity came, you know, cell phones, um, came car alarms, auto starters, you know, things, things our industry and automotive never had. And then from there became um upgrades, you know, the compact disc came out, and now you could have a very durable product that you could put in the dash, and um, and it was very portable. So now people wanted to wanted to do what they used to do to their engines and their chassis and their cars to make them go fast. Now they want to make them make them go loud. And um, I was fascinated by that. Um, funny story with my dad will sharing another podcast of um me being fascinated with it and him not so fascinated with it. That's as there's an overlapping story here.

SPEAKER_02 5:43

I don't know if you saw our first episode. You and I have a lot to talk about. Yeah, that's a point in common that's really frankly.

Taming Dirty Power In Homes

SPEAKER_03 5:49

We'll do that, we'll do that on the next one. Um and um with within 12 volt, um, it was really sky's the limit, and manufacturers were just so focused. And it seemed like every every month, every every six months, every year um it revolutionized itself. So I was immersed in 12 volt um right up into I would probably say the early 90s, and uh went right to the top building, you know, sound pressure machines and stuff, looking at the mechanics of what sound and pressure. And what I learned a lot about um automotive electrical systems is they're not quiet. They're very noisy and they're very problematic and they're very unreliable. And um, all your power comes from the battery that is given in the car and the alternator that's sort of attached to it. So you quickly learn that, much like a stage band, you know, looking for a tour group, you you have to fortify, you have to make sure that this, if you're gonna ask more demand of it, more performance of it, you have to supply the key source, which is the power. And that got me got me started, you know, figuring out 12-volt, 12-volt conversions, you know, bigger alternators, stiffening power supplies. And that rolled right into my next uh generation of esoteric audio, getting into ultra-high-end. And um, all these amplifiers that were worth tens of thousands of dollars and speakers worth tens of thousands of dollars were all being plugged into the utility grid, you know, the whatever the house um was provided. So if it was a new area, it typically had newer wiring, but a lot of uh where I where I grew up in Toronto, a lot of the it was older neighborhoods, you know, the power grid was 60, 70 years old, and along came the problems. So we had these great amplifiers and we'd plug them in at different homes, and we had different problems. And it was never the same problem twice. So we had to try to try to figure out how do we tame this this power issue because the noise and the backwash that was happening within the home and around the home was becoming part of the environment. And now we had we had another sale to make. You know, you've got this great system. Now that we've seen these you know issues in the power from the utility company, the noise coming back and forth from your appliances and different things in the home, this backwash needs to be removed. And then the customer would would be a little overwhelmed. We're like, Well, didn't you take this you know into consideration? And we say no, because everywhere you go, much like stage and touring, yeah, every city, every stadium, uh, every location, every bar that you plug into has its own backwash, it has its own noise, has its own appliances that impact the performance of what it is that you're doing. And if you turn up the white noise on a television to mid-volume and you try to have a conversation, you're not having the same conversation. But we can bring that white noise down to an absolute zero and have that conversation. You can have it with much more detail, much more training, like much more dynamics, and uh, you know, much more interest as well. So then started uh, you know, our journey in in retail, trying to, you know, isolate power, isolate noise, um, isolate electronics, different units in the system from interfering with each other as well, especially in the coming age of digital and switching power supplies. And then from there came out of high-end audio into um custom integration and automation. So then started to work on how to automate an entire home. And that's magnified it because now we have sound throughout the home and multiple amplifiers and multiple devices used throughout the home, a tremendous amount of wireless and RF radio frequency and a lot of different interference now. You know, now the refrigerator is affecting the video performance and different appliances we never took in consideration.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

So now the next evolution was how do we filter out um audio video um interference frequencies that are in range and then we're talking about even you were talking about yesterday about subwoofers and even having capping, especially as I think as the audio world evolved, especially on the residential side, subwoofers were getting larger and larger amplifiers, and now even caps, power caps were needed for yes, yeah.

Power Factor And Dynamic Current

SPEAKER_03 10:16

That's that's definitely a a Fermin Furman technology. We were using it in 12 volt. We would put these big fair ed caps, these large caps, to try to give the 12-volt battery some relief by storing, you know, two to three hundred percent of the energy of the battery in a cap. So when the amplifier hit 200% or 300% of a bass note or piano or guitar jam, the amplifier didn't wash out of power from the battery. It had this big reserve. And that was uh a technology that transferred over, you know, well, didn't really transfer over, but really came from the the music industry because you have these big explosive moments, you know, in the finales or the you know, at the end of the solos where they uh a lot of the instruments are playing all at once for a tenth of a second, and the amplifiers need, you know, in the home, there's 15 amps of service. On the rigs, there's hundreds of amps of service. So if you have an amplifier that's kilowatts of power in a 15 amp service, you need power factor, which is a Furmin technology where it has a large reserve and deliver up to 80 amps for a tenth of a second and deliver that power that it needs and not re you know, increase the impedance or the resistance of the wall uh because it's hard to get that much power instantly out of an outlet. So it's kind of like a reserve uh power station um that moves extremely fast to the dynamics of music. Um, different from a UPS. A UPS um is very slow and steady, and Furmin Power Factor is spontaneous and fast in the nanoseconds, and that's that's what amplifiers are looking for when they need that 200, 300% millisecond of uh energy to make the note and not compress it or clip it. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off uh your journey. My journey. So I I journeyed out of um uh out of esoteric home into automation. Uh figured out a lot about automation. And um and kind of like many, many people in our industry as as they come through, you you get ideas and then you get um interested in how do we make this better? How do we how do we change this? How do we what is the next step? What's gonna be the next step two years from now, three years from now? How do you make a difference? You know, it's you're kind of you've been at so many different avenues of uh in in the field, you're like, what's the next step? And I got fortunate enough that a manufacturer called me and said, um, you know, we we really like what what you're doing in in the retail into the stores and your your systems and your designs and all that stuff. We could kind of use a guy like you to help, you know, teach and and help others to sort of grow their business and do that because it's the avenue of of you know prosperity for for everyone. And we really want good systems out there, and we really appreciate the fact that someone, you know, and companies take the time to do that. So I moved into uh vendor manufacturing, and then you know, I've been selling uh when I was doing esoteric audio, of course, my solution, my very first solution, uh was presented by you guys by SFM in the early 90s. Um a young gentleman uh came to me uh with a rather heavy box. Um, it was extremely heavy, wasn't very large, but it was extremely heavy and dense. And it was uh an IT reference and put it down on the counter. He goes, I want you to try this. And I said, I'm I'm game, but we have a couple of systems that have a lot of electrical problems and noise due to the devices that are installed, the appliances and furnaces. He goes, Give it a shot. He goes, but I'm pretty sure it's gonna work. Man, we plugged that IT reference into the wall, and uh all the Furmin patents that are still today that are still being used in the IT reference series were in that unit, and we plugged it in, and it was like it was like turning hitting the mute button. It was like unplugging, unplugging the microphone, everything just went quiet, the noise floor was there, every all the gear got the voltage and the it just got what it needed to perform, and the system started to do something we didn't expect. Not only did you get rid of the noise, but we actually improved dynamic performance. So because we have such a low noise floor, um, we're now hearing things, minutiaus, you know, footsteps and fabric movement and toe tapping, and we could almost tell the style of shoe he was wearing, whether it was a leather sole or a rubber by the way it was hitting off the stage. So now we had transient, say we had we had sound that we simply didn't have before. The second thing, which I learned about, was power factor, and that was you know the reserve of uh of dynamic current that was sitting inside the reference series. And then when the dynamics went off and you know the kettle drums hit and the symbols crashed, power factor came in, and then we took it out of the system. We were ready to live with the noise, but we did not understand how symbols and how the impacts, how percussion suddenly and guitar detail suddenly became more apparent and more present in the music stage. So we took it out, plugged it in, took it out, plugged it in, went home, uh, went back to the store, tried to do a blind test, invited some some great customers, invited some speaker manufacturers, some amp manufacturers in, did the A-B test. It's like, please tell me it's not me, because there is a sort of a cycle of acoustics that when you improve something that the that it it improves. So we wanted a blind test. So we we covered the racks and we just plugged things back and forth, and everyone's like, Yeah, that's great, that's great. What what did you change? You know, was it the cable? You know, did you put a better CD player in? Like, is it a different amplifier? We're like, no, it's the power conditioner. And they're like, What? It's the power conditioner that's making everything that's existing, you know, and we were chalking it up to 10 to 15% better performance at a minimum basis. So we would do that now. We incorporated power into our demo. It's like, hey, here's our system. Great. This is gonna be a non-audio part, but an important part. And we'd plug in the Fermin piece into the integration of the system and we'd turn it on. It was almost instantaneous. Like, oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's that's as important as another component part of the system. So that's how we started. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

That's so impressive. And I I'm sure you have that conversation more than once. Because I think uh even me on the resie side, I've realized that you don't even have to get into that high high-end stuff, or even on that stage to realize that the power that we get in in certain areas, I'm sure the area that I'm in now is even worse. But even just having a good unit, you can I think we can safely say objectively hear the difference. I mean it's it's especially just reducing the noise floors. I'm not talking about the dynamics, but just reducing the noise, I think I could objectively say that it's uh it makes a huge difference.

Proving It: Blind Tests And Results

SPEAKER_03 17:30

I I would agree. And later I found out through awareness that that filtering, that power factor were made in other units. In the prestige series, in the Merit series, it wasn't just in the most expensive series out there. So then we had uh dealers that were coming in saying, Oh, I need a new amplifier, I need a new receiver. It just doesn't have the you know what I think it should have, it's warrant. We would go and then plug it into a Furman piece, reduce the noise floor, introduce, and now a off-the-shelf under a thousand dollar home theater receiver, stereo receiver integrated suddenly came back to life, and customers were going home with a product that they knew and loved that they invested in years ago, going home with this new new device. With this new sound, with this new sound from the exact same equipment they had. All we did was add the Furman product to it. So it was it was revolutionary. And we had we had a tremendous amount of fun um doing that. Nah, you don't need new stuff, you need a power conditioner. And they're like, they would come at you know the usual power strip, right? You buy from uh inexpensive, you know, box store and stuff like that. We're like, no, that's not the same. It's so misunderstood. It's a component, it's an important component of it. And it's its foundation came from live stage, which is probably one of the noisiest ground loop humming and buzzing environments with inconsistent ground lift. Oh, yes, exactly. Yeah. Let's fix that issue. Let's remove the ground exactly. Let's remove the ground lift. We all have some needle-nose pliers in our uh in our tool bag somewhere. Yeah, three plug to a two-plug. Yeah, dangerous, dangerous stuff, especially at 100 amps. Yeah. So that's um that was, yeah. And then coming out of that in the residential market, suddenly I knew that you know, selling this this power component was as important as uh as any component that was in the system, if not more. So now a lot of focus when I moved into the the manufacturing side and the and the Furman and Panamax team was tell me more and tell me why. And you know, I'm I'm sure we'll get chance and time to discuss it as uh as these podcasts go on. But it's um it's probably one of the most underestimated improvements uh you can make with the least amount of investment. You know, we have a lot of this technology in our floor bars. You know, we make nine to twelve different uh designs of floor bars with each level of performance increased before you get into a rack unit. So it doesn't have to be expensive. But it needs to have the patented technology and and the awareness of you know of what the what the systems do do prefer and and don't prefer.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

And do you feel that uh the difference of a power conditioner was more um noticeable uh when everything was analog, or now that lots of equipment is using digital transmission and uh not anymore any you know microphones, wireless microphones are now using digital uh transmission instead of like through RF or through uh an analog transmission, you feel that it was more noticeable like 10, 20 years ago, the the power conditioning than it is right now with with digital? Yeah, that's a great question.

Analog Vs Digital And Linear Filtering

SPEAKER_03 20:51

And I'm glad you asked that because it was one of the things as we developed out a you know, analog phono and you know, and tape, you know, moving into CD digital and don't download streams, and then the devices became different. We had added networks, you know. Now we're adding wireless networks and wired networks and land cables to streamers. We have a lot more dynamics of where is the ground coming from, where's the offset voltage going, and where is this noise being generated from? I think one of the things that was introduced very early in development of Fermin, um, and subsequently Panamax um as well, was uh the linear lift uh filtration. Um so instead of attacking certain frequencies, like a switching power supply or a digital power supply or backwash of a certain device, um, most filtering takes care of the noise that your fridge makes, your stove makes, your microwave makes, you know, devices in the home or devices on the stage. What Furman did different than than anyone else is they took an entire frequency range that is audible. So any frequency that is in the audible range is filtered. And any frequency in the video range is filtered and it's suppressed on a linear in a linear fashion. Right. So now when new devices get introduced into the system and previous and other manufacturers would have a notch filter for each kind of frequency that the common devices would interfere with, the notch filters didn't need adjustments. We we had a wide spectrum of audio and video range of noise filtration that allows our units to go decades with newer technology being introduced, go decades and still perform and still keep the audio video floor very low and very noise free. So it's it's a great question because as a manufacturer, we we try to break our stuff um as often as possible. We we get paid to do it, we like to do it. Um, and it's and it's kind of hard, especially when creating a noise floor in inside those two brands.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

That's crazy. I never that was a great question. I I was actually I didn't even think about it, but because everything moved into digital, I was like, it's true. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

And he was talking about his experience with like uh analog device, that's right, that's right. Git RM, stage. So that that's why I was asking. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:25

Yeah, that's good. And wireless as well, you know, because you have these RF RF, you know, and then you had Zigbee and you have Wi-Fi, you have all these different devices that create uh different radio frequencies. But if you focus on filtering the audio range and the video range as the noise suppression, everything brings brings it down effectively.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

That's incredible. Actually, just on a small parentheses, Franco and I were talking, actually, even with Hugo, when we're talking about network switches, and I know I have a Panamax at home, but it's the whole point of being able to switch, like everybody's going into network switches now, and we realize that having to cycle devices on the network is super important, and uh doing it through the power, even and even devices that are outside the network sometimes just need a good cycle, yeah, just once a week. I think that's a cool thing that uh you guys uh that you guys are able to do it with uh with your devices.

SPEAKER_03 24:28

You know, Bluebold was um was one of the early um adopters. Um there was a company out there many, many years ago with basic control called Oversea, and we wanted to sort of panamaxify it. You know, we we wanted we wanted to make it better.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

We wanted to like this is great. Maybe the clarify blue bolt is a is a protocol that enables you to remote your device extern externally from from the network. Am I correct? Correct.

Remote Power Management With BlueBOLT

SPEAKER_03 24:59

We have a series, uh, series of products. Blue bolt is uh an IP-based uh remote uh management system that allows you to remote in or in like behind a firewall or outside of a firewall. It goes to a cloud control or local control and allows you to uh manage and monitor and of course um control um particular banks of outlets or individual outlets, depending on the device that you have. So Blue Bolt was really um it was it was interesting when Blue Bolt launched because there was a lot of blank faces and odd stares. Like, why would we need this? Right. And and at that time, you know, um at that time, you know, digital music download or or streaming as a data service, either your home and your cellular was not affordable. You know, um what we have today as you know, we can go on a phone and we have whatever an 80 gig plan to stream live TV in our phone. Um megabytes uh back in that time, and even your home service um was very limited uh to a very restricted amount of of data. So people are, you know, they they just didn't understand why why we need to manage power and why were networks so important? Fast forward 12 years later. Um most homes now are highly integrated with with networks uh and network control. And what we learned early with networks is uh sequencing, just like we learned uh with Furman. Sequencing is very important. Uh the modem takes the turn-on time, uh it takes a while for it to turn on, get an IP, get settled down, and get ready for action. Um if we turn all the devices like the switch on at the same time as the modem, uh the switch gets an empty call. Yeah, it doesn't get a it doesn't get any connection. So now things are out of sequence. So we learned very quickly that the importance of Blue Bolt was was not just the um the remote uh capability of you know keeping service trucks at bay and being able to see what's going on into a home without mobilizing something that's cost effect or the homeowner uh guessing at what it is. Um, we could add these uh sequencing factors uh into Blue Bolt remotely. And then we could do it automatically. So then we give a service of checks, check boxes. You know, would you like to do this automatically? So with Blue Bolt, it will actually um communicate, it will ping on a regular basis and make sure it always has a connection. And then when it doesn't, uh you have a few different options. You know, it can call a friend, uh, it can call a technician, it can call the homeowner. It's really up to you to select what it does. Uh or you can just leave it alone and uh it will wait uh and then start cycling its system and just going through to see if it was a power glitch or you know, maybe a storm or something like that that caused the protection activity to go off and you know um do its due diligence there and then the network would restart. Uh many times it's a utility company. And this is where a lot of homeowners and integrators and network people get kind of frustrated because when the utility company goes down, uh everyone calls the modem provider. And if you're an integrator uh and you've integrated your network to the modem provider, they now call the integrator. So now the integrator is getting mobilized, you know, trucks on the road, service call, maybe it's you know, after hour service or weekend service because it's always the way power works. It's never when you want it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:37

Oh, is it the worst possible time?

SPEAKER_03 28:39

It is, you know, like 11:30 on a Sunday morning before the game starts at one, you know, the network goes down. Um, so uh Blue Bolt gave you the ability to look into the home, look into the system, to auto-correct itself, um, to auto-heal uh is is kind of a term that we've we've been using for a lot of a lot of you know for a lot of the marketing and stuff because it's actually called you know auto healing uh inside Blue Bolt. So let it do its job. And if it is a utility out, um, we have a proactive mechanism where it actually reaches out and communicates and says, hey, you know, this service is out. Um we are working in our program to reset it and get it going. But, you know, you may not need to mobilize the truck because it's not it's not our equipment, it's it's utility company. So dealers love that. Um integrators love that. And with the Blue Bolt system, you know, we could have thousands of dealers on uh sorry, thousands of customers on on dealer accounts, and that gives them the ability to really see their whole mesh network of clients throughout a large city or even remotely over large distances and add some ability to um you know restore the calm, uh restore the network, um, keep the cars and the trucks off the road and the service, the service team uh out being profitable, working on systems and commissioning new systems. And obviously, as a as a proactive gets to reach out, ensure the relationship with the deal, you know, the customer and says, hey, you know, everything is okay. Your system's fine. The utility company is out right now. We're seeing multiple outages across our system in your area. And when your utility company comes back online, your system will auto-heal, auto-reset and sync, and you'll be up up and running.

SPEAKER_02 30:37

It's such an interesting topic because uh you know, as a as an A V person, the first step, the troubleshooting, or the first question someone will ask how many times did you reboot? Did you reboot the system or did you reboot the component? But like we were saying, it's so overlooked, yet it's the first uh question that is always asked. Did you reboot? Um wait, I had a question for you. We spoke a little bit about the origins from Pro and Live, uh coming from Pro and Live myself. You know, I think when we talk about consumer behavior or our plan uh when we're setting up something for Pro and Live, or a rack in this case, the first thing we do is okay, what are our components? How big is my power conditioner? Where's my Fermin going? Right, that's the term everyone uses, and then we plan the rack from there. So it's something that's so important because of the different locations, the different power that we're encountering at all the different applications that we're that we're visiting. And then you go into we spoke about hi-fi audio, let's call it that, or the audio files. And thoseoteric isoteric, esoteric. You know, I think those people will realize the importance of power, to your point, and they realize okay, it's not just my components, I really need to be managing the full flow of what's happening through my equipment. Let's start off with the power. Wow, what a difference. Then we talk about automation or resi and you quickly realize you know, there's people putting the dollar store power bars into their racks. It's something that's so overlooked. Do you think now with the introduction of IP control or IP power conditioners, that's starting to change the mentality a little bit? It's making people realize, okay, this has to be the base of my rack, just like it is in Pro and Live.

Sequencing, Auto-Heal, And Fewer Truck Rolls

SPEAKER_03 32:22

It it's starting, it's starting to, it's it's stronger than it's ever been. And what we did is we incorporated the audio and video and the and the linear filtering into the IP control. So now you have the trifecta. You have all the patented technology that came from Furmin and Panamax, you have all the filtering and all the noise flow reduction that that you need as well. And then you have the IP control. So it's it's the trifecta. You get everything in one box, one purpose, you know. And it's and for many of our warranties, they're either lifetime with a$5 million coverage on catastrophic, which is backed by nationwide um throughout the US. And it's it's kind of like we do replacement value at market. We don't do replacement value of your unit eight years ago at a depreciation. So we do it right. We have a lot of confidence uh in our product. Um, we do make sure that uh we we train on something called the circle of power, and the circle of power means that surge can come in through a lot of different areas. Now you have a coax line that may be going to the house, or you have a telephone line that's going to the house. Well, those lines are in the ground, and those lines are also connected to all your neighbors and all the street poles and all the infrastructure in your community. Now, your community may get hit by lightning, and that's a very catastrophic, very important event. And it will go through every conductor it can. It has it has no stuff, it has no filters. Uh, it it will go as far as it wants, as far as their energy is there, and it will happen in very very quickly, picoseconds. And um, and what's what's kind of missed out with um a lot of manufacturers is that we have coax protection, we have cable and ethernet protection, and we have power protection all included on our Panamax devices and included on the Furmin devices. And these are important because the circular protection is you may have protected the power from lightning, but the lightning may have hit the local cable service or the local telco company, and now the lightning is coming in over your telco line or it's and it needs to be stopped. So we always encourage uh we build uh we have modules that are done at your DMARC locations in the house. Make sure that the DMARC is surge protected and you know suppressed for the telco and the coax. If not, we do local as well. So built in each one of our units uh will give you the ability to then locally plug in uh telco, coax, and power. And it's that it's that IT portion of it. People never thought you know, a DSL or coax line coming in could be a conductor. Um, even if we had heavy rains or snow and the lightning hits a tree locally by, it will energize the wet ground and energize the cable that's buried into it and can also bring um surge into the home. So there's there's a lot, there's a lot to it, and many companies miss that fact. But when Panamax first started that, so we were just starting DSS satellites. So DirecTB was just starting, you know, and and Val Media and stuff were just starting to get people to strap satellite dishes to their chimneys or post or um metal scaffolding, yeah, right? Lightning rods. And um some were being grounded, some were not. Some were DIYers, some were you know, pro companies. Um, so it's very inconsistent. So now you have a metal dish um posed beside your house. Um at the highest point of your house. At the highest point of your house. Yes, on metal, on metal scaffolding, exactly. Basically uh calling card to lightning saying, you know, I'm right here. I'm here. If you're looking for somewhere to go, I'm I'm your guy. And uh and then it would come in over the over the coax, right? The RG6 or the RG59, depending on how it was wired. It would come in over the coax, and uh the DSS manufacturers were smart. You know, they built this protection in. They did it. And their way of building a protection was to dissipate it out everything else but their circuit. So if you had audio or video cables connected to this device, connected to a receiver, connected to a TV, guess where the surge went? It went straight through the satellite box and went straight into whatever it was attached to. And power is a unique thing, it's a bi-directional system. Noise and surge is bidirectional. So bidirectional noise in a residential neighborhood can be almost up to 200 feet. So it's not that you know the you don't have a 20-amp, you know, table saw, power saw, or arc welder in your house and it's causing noise, but your neighbor might, or someone within 200 feet of your home might. And when you go into multi-dwelling units and condos and apartment, and if you look within a 200, you know, circumference radiance of your apartment, all the devices that are in those homes are all feeding energy and noise back and forth. And if something shorts out or something's not working properly, um, that surge all comes to you. And it may come through the telco, it may come through the coax, or it may come through the power line. So the circle of protection is just one of those things that through the DSS uh industry, uh, Panamax and Furman figured out really quick. And umwide is is backed and why we have lifetime warranty up to five million dollars on some of our products to make sure that um the customer feels secure and that the investment that they've made um is is is real. You know, it's and it's it's it's tough to explain sometimes to consumers, you know, because lightning really happens, but you know, the instance is very low.

Circle Of Protection: Power, Coax, Telco

SPEAKER_00 38:22

It's almost like it has to happen in order for them to realize that, oh yeah, okay, now I got some devices. There's a lot of anecdotal stories until it happens to them, and then it all I mean, the first time I bought uh um a unit was uh I had a Lutron system in my theater room and I had uh my set top, my digital set top box plugged in the coax, not into the unit yet, not into the power conditioner yet, but I would just dim the lights and hear the hum in the speakers oh this is terrible, and it was a digital set top box, it was the coax, the RJ6 coming in that was uh problematic, so ended up getting like a Paramax unit, Panamax unit, plugging the coax, just that just instantly, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:09

And you're so right, it takes the experience of one to start the story. Um you know, we have a lot of storm states um in the southern parts of the US, you know, where lightning and and uh and rain and and a lot of wind. And um, and these events happen, you know, the tornado alley is is one of the few places in the world um that actually uh experiences the the high level of tornadoes out of there. And of course, with rain comes lightning with with storm and all that stuff. And you'd be surprised because every customer that we talked to after a lightning event, um they're 100% sold. They're like, I couldn't believe it would blow a hole this big or take out half my chimney because a lot of these DSS dishes were mounted to chimney stacks. And uh the lightning would hit and take out the chimney or take out. Part of it, and of course it would you know collapse and do different things you know in the home and around the home. And customers were like absolutely you know kind of shocked. Um, but that's really not um the most common use of of surge suppression and and protection, it's the everyday. You know, if if you have tools and and microwaves and and well, not for me, hairdryers, but you know, every time you let go of that device, there's another back surge uh, you know, where the demand is kind of like an elastic, it pulls the power out, and now the power to run the high current device is out. And when you let go of that switch and that power device is turned off, where there's kind of this elastic effect uh called EMF, where the current goes back into the line or the voltage goes back into the line because there's no draw, it gives everything just a little bit of a bloom, um, a little bit more higher voltage than normal. And that's not something that wears appliances or products down um, you know, in these individual events, but after months, after years of these small increment things, it does wear through the appliance and it does wear them out prematurely. And we always found in the esoteric world in the high-end audio, people that had power conditioners had amplifiers that were, you know, I've seen some very old Furmin pieces, you know, 20 plus years, 25 years old, 30 years old, and these esoteric audio systems. And we keep saying maybe you should, you know, update your amplifier. No, works fine. Works like the day I bought it. And sounds like the day I bought it. We're like, oh, no sale here, let's go for speakers. But uh yeah, because um that they they simply uh it's doing what it's um it's creating that buffer between the utility and and the unknown of surgeon suppression and uh and really protecting the home and more importantly, stage. You know, stage is um mobile power is one of the hardest, especially with Attoric concerts. You know, mobile power and and diesel generation, you know they're making sine wave, they're making power, and um and different devices turn on and off, and especially lighting systems. Oh boy, lighting systems take a a few amps of current uh to run. Those darn lighting guys. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're gonna get you know, might get hate mail now, but um you know uh lighting is another, you know, one of those dynamic things, right? Everything on, everything off, everything on, everything off, right? And everyone knows, you know, if you turn on 50 light bulbs in your house, you're gonna be consuming a lot more energy. And then if you start turning them on and off, on and off, on and off, you look at that energy transits that happen. That's a demand on power. Well, if you look at an amplifier between, you know, someone uh on a snare drum and some cymbals or plucking an acoustic guitar, it's the same on and off effect that's happening inside the electronics, but it's happening way faster. So, you know, making sure that your your stage rig and making sure that your stadium or your mobile power uh is based in the foundation of Furmin so it understands how to disconnect. You know, I we have a product called P3600, and that that basically insulates you from whatever you're connected to and creates an environment that's you're only connected to the Furmin world and the Furmin world knows what's going on. So it it really gives um, well, the entire industry uh a good safe feeling, knowing that whatever they're plugging into, wherever they're going, wherever they are in the world, um Furman, Furman kind of has that ability to uh to isolate you from all the bad stuff and only make sure that your rig and your stage and your performance is gonna work the way it's intended to.

SPEAKER_02 43:48

Wait, I have to compliment you because I I mean I know a little bit about electrical and power, but you have such an eloquent way of explaining it and such a simple way of making analogies and just making everyone understand the importance of it. So I gotta compliment you because I'm learning.

SPEAKER_01 44:06

That also raises the bar for our next uh, it does. It really, really does.

SPEAKER_02 44:11

But it's uh it's fun to be learning about these things because as we said, it's often so miserable. And yeah, he's he explains it so well.

Everyday Surges And Gear Longevity

SPEAKER_01 44:21

So so well. We're getting close to the end of the episode, unfortunately. We could stay here for another three hours and we'd have uh fun. Uh but uh I I I wanted to finish uh uh maybe not finish right now, but uh just a question. Uh what is the oldest Furmin you you mentioned 20 25 years like a few minutes ago, but what's the oldest piece of Furmin equipment you've seen in use um recently? Uh some of the original PL8s.

SPEAKER_03 44:49

So one of the very first uh Furmin products uh introduced uh in the mid 80s, 85 was um was a rack mount uh power distributor so that you could plug all your guitars uh amps into because everyone used sort of mobile, they didn't use rack, rack wasn't big in in the 80s. And um a sales guy from California, one of their sales meetings say, Hey, why don't we put some lights in this? This would be really cool. So they figured out a way to put two aluminum sleeve lights, 12 lights, uh into the unit, and um and it had eight outlets, so eight amps could plug into it, and um those units have are still produced today. Uh we're in we're in uh a dash two now, and uh seeing some of the original um designs and some of the original units of the the PL8s, you know, power light, eight outlets, and and still sell it today in the product line. Like we got we still have those, and customers do call. They're like, hey, if they sent they'll send a picture. It's like I have this PL8, you know. Do you still make something like that? I'm like, identical. We still make the PL8, we still make the PL8, yeah. Yeah, we'll send you another one. So I think that's that's probably one of the coolest products that I've seen with the elasticity through all the change and all the marketplace to uh to to endure. Ensurance evolution of time and technology and I I don't see any end to the PL 8. You know, that that is still a foundation piece for almost every rig out there today.

SPEAKER_01 46:15

So as long as the power will be wired, which is probably will be a while because wireless current doesn't really exist.

SPEAKER_00 46:22

No, as long as the power will exist, wireless power sort of exists, but it's still wired, hardwired somewhere around in the chain.

SPEAKER_02 46:29

So that's well it's a testament to the brand. And you know, it's funny, uh, I'm thinking back to my own racks that I have. Over time, you've I've changed so many of the different components, but the one thing that I haven't changed is the PLA. Um so it's a testament to how you guys are future-proofing all your products, uh, even a testament to the SFM portfolio, actually. It's been since the 70s that we've been distributing Furmin. Furmin was one of the one of the first.

SPEAKER_03 46:56

Furmin was the first uh distributor outside of the domestic US. Yeah, into Canada. And when the um when the when we started uh producing power products, you know, and got out of the Furmin sound products, you know, and that's that's when the opportunity came. But it really came from the you know the the preamps and uh the noise gates and stuff, because rock stars were they they were picking them up and you know they were holding them. They were like, I record on Furmin, you know, I perform stage on Furman, you know. I want my master tracking to be done on Furman. And uh, you know, Andy Garcia has um has the very first serial number 0001 of uh of our first, you know, PEQ, you know, um parametric equalizer. And it was through that breaking free of the bass in trouble world. And it was through that Furman sound that moved into Furman Power that just fortified the fact that not only did Furmin have a good idea about music, uh they had a good idea about what impacts music the most, and that is the system noise, recording noise, stage performance noise, the environmental noise that's out there to the point where we don't make much Furmin sound product anymore. We make Furmin Power because that makes everything post just so much more better, so much more effective. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:28

Alright, well, thanks for hanging out with us on Behind the Rack and thank you, Wade, for stopping by and sharing your insights. It's Thanks guys. Really appreciate it. It's great. We definitely hope you'll come back uh um for maybe a more in-depth, anyways, we can talk forever about uh power and AV with you. We learned a lot. So thank you again. Uh there's just again, just so much to talk about. So um, if you've enjoyed today's episode, um hit that like, smash that subscribe, and share the episode with a colleague or an AV fan and help us spread the word. We'll be back with more stories, insights, and conversations from the world of pro audio, lifestyle, and systems AV. Until then, keep the Curiosity alive and catch you on the next time on Behind the Rack.