Michael Williams wrote:

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.
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