Accidentally played distorted wavefile on Marantz SR5300 and Xitel Pro Hi Fi Link

I have a Marantz SR5300 receiver and I have a Xitel Digital Pro Hi Fi Link connected between it (via a digital coaxial input) and my PC's USB port. I've had it set up for about a month and it's great (sound quality and all) and I usually use it to play MP3 files via WinAMP. But this afternoon, I had set up a MP3 playlist for the computer to play as I was doing household chores. I went down to do some laundry and I came back and I heard some awful distorted sound coming out of the speakers. It turns out that the software program (WinAMP) had been trying to play a corrupt MP3 file and all sorts of distorted sounds were coming out of the speakers (connected to the Marantz system) . Fortunately the volume level wasn't high (it was at about

-25 dB or so) so I don't think that the speakers would have gotten damaged. But my question is that, as this sound file may have been playing for ~10 minutes (ie. constantly playing distorted clicks and beeps for this time period), is it possible for this playback to have damaged either the receiver (either the amplifier or the internal

24-bit/96 kHz DAC) or my USB Xitel Sound adapter (although I think it's unlikely for it to have damaged the sound adapter since all it does is relay the digital input signal to the Marantz receiver)??? The reason I'm asking is because now, if I put my ear next to the speaker, I can hear a little hum (even in digital audio mode), even when ther'es no sound playing, and I'm not sure if I had this phenomenon before with this sytem.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Reply to
Michael Williams
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Michael Williams wrote:

The hum probably was there before and now, understandibly, you are a little paranoid. The weakest link in your system would be the tweeters in your speakers. They'd be the first to go. Actually, I blew a tweeter in my system doing something like what you did. I had winamp playing wav files and one of the files was still in 88.2/32. Since Winamp 2 only plays 44.1/16 files, a whole bunch of garbage spewed out of the speakers for several minutes. Soon after, one tweeter died. Interestingly, inside all that garbage noise, you could actually hear the music in that file. It was faint and totally overblown by all the distortion, but it was there. On a slightly different note, but still related, a friend of mine, who also uses Winamp, uses his EQ extensively, and EQs in software have much more capability that the traditional EQs. He did his usual V pattern he likes, but since it was software, the boost levels at the extremes were very high. Instead of 6 to 10 db boost at 60 Hz, he was subjecting his amp to 20 db of boosted bass and treble. I told him he was going to kill his amp. He argued that it's 100 watts. I countered and told him it was the input side of that amp that would blow. A week later, it did. SO these 2 experiences, and a few others tell me that internal components are more robust and able to handle overloads better than the high power components on the ouside, such as the power stage of the amplifier and the speakers. Most amps have a self protection mechanism that keeps shuts them down to keep them from burning themsleves out, so the speakers would be the next weakest link.

CD

Reply to
Codifus

If he had his amp connected to his line out or via spdif theres no way he could have done that.

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Reply to
Ian Molton

There's no way that playing some nasty-sounding stuff at a relatively low level could damage *anything*. I agree with the suggestion that the low-level hum you hear was there all along. Just about *every* piece of audio gear that is somehow connected to the power line will put out a tiny humming sound if you turn it up and put your ear next to the speaker. If there was damage due to overload, it would most likely take some other form, such as clearly audible distortion or big changes in the tone quality of the music.

Reply to
Arny Krueger

He was using his line out from the soundcard to the amp. SPDIF was not an option. It's quite easily possible. If you look at a Winamp EQ, the boost settings are quite large, and if you un-check the auto checkbox, which he did, the signals get boosted without any max output level correction by software, then the input stages of an amplifier will be hurting.

CD

Reply to
Codifus

No, they wont.

no matter HOW much 'eq' he put on the winamp soft eq, the line output will not have (if it really was a line out) put out more than about 1V p-t-p.

some old equiment used 0.5V p-t-p but modern stuff is generally 1V p-t-p.

if he got winamp to produce some really high ouput LF square wave output its a possibility that if his amp was turn up a bit much he could have damaged his tweeters. but its not very likely, as you said - it wasnt loud.

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Spyros lair: http://www.mnementh.co.uk/   ||||   Maintainer: arm26 linux

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Reply to
Ian Molton

. or as smoke ;-)

Jodster

form,

the

Reply to
Jodster

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