Can "Digital" damage my gear?

I wouldn't worry about a CD. Loose interconnects are the typical reason for loud noises. That's why tweeters should have fuses. But, for some of you guys, your fuses cost more than a tweeter !

Eldartford - I have only one 0.5m XLR (locking) IC. My speaker cables have Cardas bar type (common knob) very secure connector on amp side while on speaker side I have very tight spade connection (I tend to overtight). No loose connection here.

Fast fuse (straight wire) wouldn't affect audio but would protect my tweeters. Amp is different story.

My feeling is, and my (extensive) computer experience has been, that if you use a good anti-virus program, have a good firewall in place, keep your Windows patches up to date, and don't visit or download from questionable sites, viruses are not a significant worry.

In the last 10 years or so, during which the several computers in my house have received extensive use, most of it on the internet, I think there have only been two instances of virus infections that were not blocked at the moment of potential introduction. In both cases they were due to Windows or Internet Explorer vulnerabilities for which patches had not yet been released. They were detected within another day or two by the anti-virus program, when updated definitions were released, and no harm was done.

FWIW, I use the NOD32 anti-virus program. I use a SonicWall hardware firewall, which costs $450 but provides business-class protection for my entire LAN, with no performance impact on the computers. I also use Firefox 3 for web browsing, which is both better and safer than IE (as well as being much better than earlier versions of Firefox).

I set Windows to notify me when updates are available, rather than automatically downloading and installing them. I then use Microsoft Update to update manually. I believe that setting for automatic download and silent updating sometimes results in the process being delayed, for days or weeks. I know that was the case when XP Service Pack 3 was released.

I also regularly (perhaps once a month) use an imaging program to create an image of my entire "c" partition (in addition to doing backups of data files daily), so that if an infection were to occur I could simply reformat, restore the image, restore the data backups, and be back in business in less than an hour.

I consider all of these things to be basic to any serious use of a computer. But my observation has been that probably 95% of all computer users don't follow these or similar practices, which is why virus-writers, cybercriminals, botnets, etc., have proliferated.

Regards,
-- Al

Bad digital will probably hurt your ears first before causing any damage to your equipment. Don't worry about it, just relax and enjoy the music.

Sidssp - 25kHz at full blast will take tweeter fast (minutes) as well as my amp and I won't even hear that - sometimes it is the case when amp's output stage goes to high frequency oscillation (instability). That was main reason, other than clipping, for tweeter fuses that Eldartford mentioned.

Al - Remember what is at stake: my amp and the tweeters.

I do Windows at work (I refuse to put-up with Windows stupidity and clumsiness for free). Windows still have a lot of dangerous services enabled by default like Telenet or Remote Registry Access.

I enjoy my 1 year old MacMini but still remember years of being confused and scorned by Windows. Never again (for free).

Antivirus might be useless with new unknown virus. Mac does it much better than Windows executing applications in "sandboxes" etc. The only viruses I know for Mac are Windows applications' viruses.