1. Depends on the power supplies of your components really. Most of the time if the blackout is brief the equipment breezes through it fine. If the power supply isn't robust enough, then it'll depend on the equipment. If something like a UPS activates, or something produces EMI (lights, etc), then it's enough to cause interruptions with the DAC, pops, etc.
2. A UPS (in particular a refurbished APC SmartUPS from refurbups.com), or a surge protector (the Belkin theater one, there's a thread on Head-fi about power conditioners), but not both at the same time.
3. Yes, but I'm not particularly sure if it's a good thing to do. My UPS is a pure sine wave output, and I have been assuming that the power out of my particular UPS is almost as clean as it can get. I'll definitely need to test this though. If you have a UPS that uses a more common stepped wave approximation, it's probably not good for audio.
Edit: By the way, I would not recommend the APS SmartUPS from RefurbUPS unless you can hide it somewhere. It makes a constant buzzing/chirping noise and is pretty distracting.
Edited by ShinyFalcon - 4/9/11 at 5:50pm
