In Reply to: RE: Again already: New and even more improved computer speaker/amp system posted by Tony Lauck on July 10, 2012 at 19:04:30:
It seems that a bad power cord on the TubeMagic A1 may have caused some sort of short in the Bifrost DAC? Here's how I've come to this speculation (some peculiar things going on here)...
While preparing to unplug everything, I got a bit of an electrical shock when I touched the power conditioner to which both the amplifier and DAC are connected.
I unplugged the USB cable going from the computer to the DAC, and for some reason, this caused the power on the TubeMagic A1 to go off (at this point, A1 was apparently only getting [partial] power via the computer, USB digital cable to DAC, and then via the analog interconnects from DAC to TubeMagic A1; by the way, during this peculiar power scenario, the tubes in the A1 would not power up).
I unplugged the analog ICs from the back of the TubeMagic A1, and received another shock (handling only the IC cables).
At this point, I tried a different power cable with the TubeMagic A1 - and all seems to be well with this unit again (tubes are working, not even any hum at all - just clean sound, albeit now from the inferior DAC of the computer, via computer's analog output. Now however, the DAC seems to be hosed. No computer will recognize it via USB cable, funny sounds are coming from it, and of course, it's simply not working (though it does "power up").
Do you think the A1's original power cable issue, along with the subsequent power the A1 was sucking through the DAC/computer may have contributed to the hosing of the DAC?
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Follow Ups
- You're right - it is more complicated (some good, bad, and strange news here)... - willkayakforfood 22:28:35 07/10/12 (3)
- Small update... - willkayakforfood 23:33:34 07/10/12 (2)
- Repaired Bifrost is back in service! :) - willkayakforfood 14:57:21 07/21/12 (0)
- RE: Small update... - fmak 08:32:37 07/11/12 (0)