Did this save my pre and power amp?

[seoirse2002]

After getting a very nice and good sounding pair of Griffin speakers from Rob(puffin) a couple of weeks ago, we placed them on top of my B&W DM2000 to have have a listen through my Sumo Athena and Polaris,and very good they sounded too.Anyway,long story short,I disconnected them,and as I did so,the speaker cable fell down the back of the dm-2000s and the banana plugs must have hit the dm2000s own plugs as they fell and I heard a not so good noise. I was on the way out,so when I came back I switched on the squeezebox and turned up the volume......nothing!!!checked the input switch..still nothing...
tried the cd player....nothing!!! no sound whatsoever....
last time something like this happened to me,the amp I was using had blown due to the shorting out....I was getting nervous.... Then I remembered the dac...I have this little fiio taishan dac that I run the cd and sbox through but I have to switch the output for each and I noticed no little blue light telling me there was signal on either cd or sbt...with a little bead of sweat on my brow,I disconnected the dac and carefully reconnected cd and sbt direct to the amp,and lo and behold,all is working!! my question again guys....is it possible that this little £30 dac took the fall and saved my pre and power amp? that's the only explanation I can think of

[synsei]

A sacrificial DAC, eh? Could be...

[Spectral Morn]

I don't see how, as shorting the amp out will take the amplifier out and not the source components unless the amplifier in blowing takes out the mains strip and that damages a source component by some sort of surge.

Must say in all my years in audio retailing, and then as a civilian I have never heard of that happening or even seen it and I have blown a few amps up in my day (not recently) and then only the amp was kaput - usually a blown fuse but in a few cases with amps not using relay protection more damage was done to the insides of the amplifier.

Heavy cables coming loose, dropping cables by accident are risks in one of my cases one amp I blew up was because the phone rang, I went on the call, which lasted for well over an hour and when I went back to my system and switched the amp on I had forgot I had not connected the amp to the speakers yet

The amp was a Triangle integrated, their first way back in the early 90's. I can't find a photo of it but it was like two clam shells made out of cast metal with a triangular control panel sticking out on a stalk, at the front, with clear rods poking out along the middle right between the clam shells to show volume up and down as they lit up. No protection circuit in it - so it went bang but nothing else in my set up was affected by this.

I think this DAC failure is just a coincidence but I could be wrong......


Regards Neil

[seoirse2002]

That's what I thought,I cant see how it could happen myself,but a weird coincidence....
I use 2 sets of speakers so they are connected to one of Stan Beresfords routers,so I can switch over. The signal,(short)I assume, would go back along the speaker cable,then through the router,then amp,then dac,then source, so it would have reached the amp before the dac and hence noise from speakers,
I wish I was even a little bit tecnichal so I could open the dac up and see whats blown inside...it would be interesting to see if its the inputs or outputs of the little fiio that are blown...funny that both inputs are blown but I was only using one...

[sq225917]

Coincidence, plain and simple.

[seoirse2002]

and surprisingly.....amp not affected

[Haselsh1]

The truth is out there

[seoirse2002]

I don't believe any of it....nor in coincidence