Amp blowing Speakers?

[Marvt74]

I came to turn my hifi on this morning and normally when i do theres a slight crackle/pop whenever the power amp switches on. This morning however it sounded a little worse than normal. After a couple minutes something seemed wrong and i noticed there was no sound from the left speaker.

My wife had been cleaning the front room yesterday with one of those rug doctor things you can rent and had unplugged the speakers so i assumed it was just a little loose. I checked and it all looked fine, so i grabbed another speaker (Aurousal A1) from the bedroom and connected it up. Switched the amp back on and again a louder than normal pop and no sound from the left channel. Getting a little worried i turned the amp off, waited a couple minutes and went to unplug the speaker. When i did there was a spark from the banana plugs. I ran upstairs to recheck the speaker and the Aurousal was dead. I can only assume the same is the case of the Victoria Evo that was initially connected.

My guess therefore is looking towards the Power amp as the problem but its been fine for years.

Can anyone suggest anything i can do to test the amp out and also any companies that can have a go at repairing my speakers. Are house insurance companies likely to pay out for 2 repairs or are the likely to say i shouldnt have tried the second speaker if i suspected a problem and that it was my fault? Obviously neither speaker is very common so not sure how easy it'll be finding someone to repair

[StanleyB]

Your amp should have a DC detect circuit in the speakers output, which should have prevented any dodgy signal from getting to the speakers. If you got a spark jumping across then the amp is putting out a DC of a very high level.
I am actually surprised that you continued to use the amp even though you could hear a pop when the amp switched on. It shouldn't do that because the speaker protection relay is normally engaged for at least 5 seconds in order to mute any switch on thump.

So the amp needs fixing, and by the sound of it, so could your bass speakers. I would expect the midrange and treble to still be OK if it is a DC level problem on the amp. You can check that with a know good amp.

[Marvt74]

I'm not sure it was a pop as such more like a crackle. There's usually a static crackle when I power the speakers on first time (has ever since I bought the amp (Avondale S100) and its been back to them who've advised there's no problem with it). I just thought it was a continuation of this.

Sounds like you're right in that the tweeter still works. The Aurousal is a single driver speaker which would explain why I couldn't get any sound at all from that.

Is there anything I can test with a multimeter to try and narrow things down?

[StanleyB]

Put a multimeter on the DC Voltage setting.
Select the highest voltage setting available on the multimeter if it has a manual option. In auto mode it might be too slow to react.
Connect it across one of the speaker outputs on the amp.
Now switch the amp ON.
If the amp does have a DC component that is above 1Volt it will register on the multi meter for at least a few seconds, before settling down (if you are lucky).

If it is an Avondale phone and ask them if it uses a relay to mute the speaker outputs or not. If they say it hasn't got that, then get an amp that does. If they say it has got a relay then the amp is faulty.

[hifi_dave]

What is the amp ?

[The Black Adder]

I came to turn my hifi on this morning and normally when i do theres a slight crackle/pop whenever the power amp switches on. This morning however it sounded a little worse than normal. After a couple minutes something seemed wrong and i noticed there was no sound from the left speaker.

My wife had been cleaning the front room yesterday with one of those rug doctor things you can rent and had unplugged the speakers so i assumed it was just a little loose. I checked and it all looked fine, so i grabbed another speaker (Aurousal A1) from the bedroom and connected it up. Switched the amp back on and again a louder than normal pop and no sound from the left channel. Getting a little worried i turned the amp off, waited a couple minutes and went to unplug the speaker. When i did there was a spark from the banana plugs. I ran upstairs to recheck the speaker and the Aurousal was dead. I can only assume the same is the case of the Victoria Evo that was initially connected.

My guess therefore is looking towards the Power amp as the problem but its been fine for years.

Can anyone suggest anything i can do to test the amp out and also any companies that can have a go at repairing my speakers. Are house insurance companies likely to pay out for 2 repairs or are the likely to say i shouldnt have tried the second speaker if i suspected a problem and that it was my fault? Obviously neither speaker is very common so not sure how easy it'll be finding someone to repair

Get it checked out asap matey... With mine it was a loud pop and a short dying tone... then my speakers caught fire.

[DSJR]

Yeah, we need to know the amp concerned..

Ya see? This is why proper amps have some sort of protection on them to minimise damage if a transistor goes DC. The silly gumph about "better sound" without any form of protection is just incomptent design expetrtise IMO