No.  The cables don't have to be shielded, and most likely won't be.  Can they be?  Sure, but that isn't 'protection' as far as code is concerned.

Buzz has it correct.  Shielded cable isn't going to do squat in a strike situation.

Shielded cables are shielded as a means of noise rejection, not surge protection.

Ok, but it was said that all cables entering a structure should be grounded. How do you ground a cable that isn’t shielded (ie what part of the cable is connected to ground if not the shielding?

This is the job of the surge suppressor. One would pass the external wires through a surge suppressor. The surge suppressor is essentially an open circuit until the input voltage crosses a threshold. Once the threshold is crossed the suppressor turns ON and conducts the surge to ground. One must also provide common mode protection. (the voltage difference between the two wires)

Electrical cable is not shielded, how do they ground it?

I used shielding as shorthand for having a shield/drain/ground wire. Electrical cable has a ground wire. What does non-shielded category cable have that can be grounded?

This is probably an issue of vocabulary or sloppy writing.

As for vocabulary, I stated above that "connectors" in the electrical world are not what we electronics guys think of as connectors (spade lugs, RCA plugs, Speakons, etc.). To verigy this, I looked up "electrical connectors" and found that, for instance, the thingies that go between a piece of EMT and a junction box are variously called "electrical connectors," "electrical fittings," or "electrical couplings."

When someone writes that all cables should be grounded, we've got to deal with what they mean by "cables" and "grounded," as well as cases where we specifically DO NOT want the ground of one part of a system to be connected to the ground of another part of a system.

We should probably look at it this way:
Whatever they wrote, they were trying to make sense.
Whatever they wrote, they were promoting safe conditions.
Whatever they wrote, they were trying to communicate the legal necessities.

Thus, the shield of a cable company's RG6 should be grounded at the pole and at tne service entrance. The "0" (ground, neutral) wire of a house's 120-0-120 should be connected to ground at the transformer and at the service entrance. No wires of a CAT5 should be connected to ground (but then, when do you find a CAT5 coming in a service entrance?).

Et cetera.

You folks are confusing terms and processes.

There are two separate issues here:

1. "Bonding"

2. "Surge Protection"

i. Surge Protection for outdoor wiring and cabling gets installed where the cables enter the premise.

ii. The Surge Protector has a terminal for each wire in the cable.

iii. The Surge Protector has a Grounding Strap which gets Bonded to the service entrance system electrode conductor.

As mentioned before, shielding is for noise rejection. It some cases it is only connected to a reference ground at one end. That's known as a drain wire.

Surge Protectors are available for every type of power and/or communication wire that exists. For coax it might have two "F" connectors, for phone it may be as simple as an RJ-14 or as large as a 66-type punchdown block for multiple lines. For speakers there are models with screw terminals for the "in" and "out" of both the neg. and pos. conductors.

But none of these things will work properly unless the bonding strap on the surge protector is connected to the electrical service system grounding electrode.

This process can be diagrammed two ways:

i. Pictorially with images of a house, an antenna, phone, cable and electrical lines, a ground rod and a service entrance.

ii. Schematically with resistors and wiring showing the path of current and the voltage drop across various portions of the circuit.

Both are great at explaining. Sometimes the schematic drawing are more helpful for the electronically minded. It shows what can go wrong if each piece of equipment doesn't have the same resistance to ground.

Good explanation here:

[Link: mikeholt.com]

From what I gather - something like that linked Panamax MOD-SPKP device, in-line, with the speaker cables.

That device is then connected to the bonding bar, at the service entrance, using 10 AWG cable.

I don't think it's commonly done, in the real world. Getting that bonding wiring from the rear of the house (cable entrance for outdoor backyard speakers, irrigation controller conductors, or an invisible fence) to the service entrance is not easy.

For new construction, what do you ask the electrician to provide at/to your equipment rack location with regard to bonding?

How do you handle retro? What would happen if you simply used the ground from your AC outlets?

Your surge suppressor should be located at the point where the speaker wires enter the building.

AC outlet grounds are for user shock prevention, not lightning suppression. During a nearby strike a trainload of electrons is suddenly thrown at a point on the earth. Electron flow is current. Huge electric and magnetic fields are part of the deal. Earth has a relatively high resistance (drive a couple ground rods some distance apart and attempt to measure the resistance between them). This earth resistance results in very large potential differences between ground rods as the strike electrons leak away from the point of strike. Electron flow is current and there will be a voltage drop caused by the conductor's (copper or earth) resistance. The outlet ground wire has some resistance too. If you bond your speaker wire suppressor to an outlet ground wire, during a strike all of the outlet ground pins on that circuit will be elevated above the voltage on nearby ground pins on that circuit. Further, ground pins on other circuits will be at a different potential too because they are not carrying strike related current. As an example, if you were touching two appliances at the instant of strike and the outlet grounds are at different potentials, you'll risk being shocked. If the bonding is incomplete, plumbing fixtures could be at dramatically different potentials than electrical appliances using an outlet ground wire.

Yes, retro is a pain. You want the transient to be snubbed at entrance to the building. You don't want the transient to be anywhere near your rack.

A direct strike on a building is a big deal, a strike down the block, not so much -- if one uses good bonding techniques. It is very difficult to predict exactly where lightning will strike. Near our store there is a two story supermarket nestled among some four story homes and nearby 30 story high rises. You'd think that this supermarket would never be struck, but it was. The building was nearly destroyed and repair required weeks before the store could reopen.

I've taken a closer look at this product from Panamax:

[Link: panamax.com]

Unless I'm missing something, this product relies only on the ground provided by an AC outlet. Many here have stated that this is not adequate. Does Panamax have it wrong? Am I misunderstanding how the Panamax product installs?

I will often use this without the power strip attached.  Whether I use the power strip or not, I always have sparky provide a separate ground wire which I attach to the exposed buss strip.

Ok, so, what does that separate ground wire run to?

It runs back to the main ground for the building whether it be a buss bar or bare copper connecting to the ground rods/plate.

This is the only way to ensure that you have one ground potential in the house.

When I wrote this, I was unable to imagine how a LV cable could be grounded without being shielded. I was thinking of an unshielded cat6 cable with 8 conductors and imagining that none of those conductors could be connected to ground without disrupting the signal.

What I now (think I) understand is that the electronics within the products designed to provide surge protection for this cat6 cable provide the means to ground that cable without forcing direct contact between the cat6 conductors and ground.