Audiophilia: Son of a...

Well that was brief. My stereo system is dead.

My surround decoder (Proceed DSD) is sending bad pops and clicks to the speakers and is giving off a bad odor. Not good signs at all.

I opened up the case to see if there was an obvious problem. Looks to me like a capacitor has blown. Damn. This is on the board that outputs to the surround channels but for some reason the pops and clicks are going out to all the speakers. Seems odd that a failure on one board would have spill-over effects on others, but who knows what's going on in all that circuitry. And maybe there's another problem further up the line.

The company's offices are closed for the weekend already so I'll have to wait until Monday to find out if and where I can get this thing fixed. Grrr. And I was 95% of the way to having the system perfectly set up with all the pieces finally in place!

The DSD is a little old - I bought it used from a hi-end stereo shop. But stereo equipment is supposed to be pretty durable and long-lasting. No moving parts to break down and as long as you buy quality gear - which Proceed definitely is - you should be good for a decade or two. This is either just bad luck or maybe I need to rethink my approach to surge protection and line conditioning. So far I've only been using Isobar surge protectors.

The DSD has been a little flakey and stubborn since I've had it but this came out of nowhere. It was working fine last night and then as soon as I turned it on today it was crackling.

I'll bet we'll be well into January by the time this is fixed.