Can "Digital" damage my gear?

Keep in mind that analog circuits can malfunction in ways that result in high volumes and/or high frequencies. Something as simple as a turntable phono cable that gets partially unplugged could blow a tweeter if the volume knob on the amp is turned up. Or, one of your neighbors could get into shortwave radio as a hobby with you finding out the hard way that your cable and equipment shielding is no longer adequate.

So, yes, there are some risks in the manner you describe with digital sources. That doesn't mean that you are risk-free if you have no digital. A bit of caution deals with most situations, however.

Mlsstl - I don't expect noise/EMI pickup of full amplitude but circuit malfunction is always possible. I don't have control over that. Digital "malfunction" appears to be in addition.

Al - I wouldn't know how to start. Inspecting huge files with Sound Forge seems to be time consuming and would have to be done for every digital file. It would be great if somebody can write piece of software that automatically detects malicious footprint (like antivirus).

I've got over 40,000 songs on my digital server. I have never come across a maliciously recorded digital song. I've had damaged CDs give me silence, clicks, pops and stutters but no blasts of noise.

Each person gets to worry about those things they choose to worry about, but it strikes me that you're concerned about item number 4,999 on the list of 5,000 things that can go wrong. The only way I might be concerned is if I were downloading music from "free" services or buying lots of pirated CDRs.

Lots of people have had blown tweeters over the years and I'd be fascinated to hear of one blown by a malicious digital recording.

Mlsstl -

"I've got over 40,000 songs on my digital server. I have never come across a maliciously recorded digital song."

That is very good to hear - thank you.

"I'd be fascinated to hear of one blown by a malicious digital recording."

- that's exactly what people said about computer viruses at the beginning. Computer virus won't physically damage your hard disk. In worst case you have to reformat and reinstall software (there was a virus overheating Pentium processors). Music virus can damage very expensive gear.

I know it is not likely but many people move to servers and in my opinion its only matter of time. It doesn't have to be pirated CDR or downloaded music - it's enough to play internet soundbite or video using main speakers.

Software engineer, I work with, says that Fourier analysis of such size files will take forever. He participates in SETI program and does analysis of small files on his computer. Ideal would be small crude scanner program that looks for high amplitudes above 2kHz.

I hope I'm just paranoid since I'm planning eventually to move to server (already use DAC) and get much better speakers.

Software engineer, I work with, says that Fourier analysis of such size files will take forever. He participates in SETI program and does analysis of small files on his computer. Ideal would be small crude scanner program that looks for high amplitudes above 2kHz.

Kijanki -- Although as you realize there is a learning curve and familiarization process involved in using an audio editing program, once you attained sufficient familiarization, doing what you describe would be trivially easy with Sound Forge (and possibly with the less expensive or free audio editing programs as well).

All you would have to do is to spend a few minutes setting up a preset in its equalizer function, that would sharply roll off everything below 2kHz, and then set up a preset in its "find" function to find everything above an amplitude that you specify.

Once you had those presets in place, you would copy the file you wanted to check to a separate folder, and open the copy with Sound Forge (that avoids the risk of accidentally modifying your original). Then all it would take would be a few clicks to call up the two presets, and voila! The processing time required by a reasonably powerful, fairly recent pc running Sound Forge would be a few seconds at most.

If you want to pursue this approach, I'd suggest starting with the free audio editing program Audacity (easily findable on the web). I haven't used it, but conceivably it might be able to provide similar functionality.

Regards,
-- Al