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Ground Loop(?) leads to blow speaker

Aloha 'goners!
          I'm going to do my best to get the details down here as I am a bit stumped on this one.

I have a Wadia 121 DAC that was recently repaired.  The issue was the RCA/XLR outputs produced mostly noise and little music.  The headphone side was fine.

As the unit wasn't functioning properly I hadn't had the chance to hook it up and use it.  When I got it back and hooked it up there was a nasty ground loop(?) that led to a blown speaker (Thiel 1.6).  The buzz produced was the angry bee buzz followed by a loud electrical sounding crack and the woofer was gone.  The amp (Creek Classic A53) went into protect mode and I shut it off.  I then disconnected the Wadia and hooked up a Mytek Brooklyn+ and there was no buzz.  Same cables same outlets same everything except the DAC.  I tested the amp and it seems to be ok through another pair of speakers.

At this point I wasn't sure what was going on.  I tested 3 different amps with the Wadia and 2 of the 3 buzzed.  With the Mytek none of them buzzed.  Of the 2 amps that buzzed one of them had a 2 pin connection and the other a 3 pin.  The only amp that didn't buzz was a 2 pin Adcom 535 MkII.  The other amps were a 3 pin Creek and a 2 pin Carver.

Here is the full chain:

Primare CD31 --> Madrigal AES Cable --> Wadia/Mytek DAC/preamp --> Chord Cobra Vee RCA --> Creek/Adcom/Carver amps --> Tara Labs spkr cable --> Thiel 1.6/B&W CDM1SE speakers

I used the same wall outlets for the DACs and amps.  The same interconnects were used between components as well as from the amps to speakers.

I tested the wall outlets with a cabling tester and it said they were wired correctly.

Could there be something else that I'm missing that would be causing this?  The only amp I am comfortable with using to test is the Carver as it has a variable level on the front panel.

Any help or thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.

solobone22
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almarg's avatar
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almarg
9,670 posts
 
It’s not clear to me what you mean when you refer to a "2 pin connection" and a "3 pin connection." Initially I thought you might have meant RCA vs. XLR, but several rear panel photos I found as well as the manual for the Creek amp (which you described as "3 pin") show it to only have RCA inputs. And the cable you indicated was being used between the DAC and the amps is an RCA cable. Can you clarify that?

Also, by any chance were you using XLR-to-RCA adapters between the DAC and any of the amps?

In any event, I agree with Dan that it does not sound like the problem was caused by a ground loop.

Good luck. Regards,

-- Al



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almarg
9,670 posts
 
P.S: Now that I think of it I presume that "2-pin" and "3-pin" were references to the number of prongs on the power plugs of the amps. And since the problem appeared when you used the Carver which has a two-prong plug that would seem to further confirm that the problem was unrelated to a ground loop.

Regards,

-- Al
gs5556
1,239 posts
 
The Adcom 535 Mk II is capacitor coupled at the input and the Creek and Carver are not. What you have is DC at the output which the Creek passed through to the speaker before going into protection mode. The Adcom's input cap blocked the DC and didn't pass the buzz-causing DC to the speaker. DC is enough to blow out a woofer.

The problem in the DAC can be anywhere in the active circuit. I would present a repair bill for the Thiel to whoever worked on the Wadia.
gregdude
222 posts
 
+1 to everything gs5556 said. A ground loop would be characterized as a hum. What you say you heard was a buzz, that blew out a woofer, almost definitely DC 
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