I've got a little story to tell, and some questions and conclusions.
As many of you know, I've been using the tiny but mighty little lepai 7498 chip amp (100 wpc @ 4 ohm) as my bedroom/ rest of the house and outdoors system running through a russound autoformer 12 way speaker switcher to my Infinity Ren 90s, and a host of other speakers; Canton Fonum 200, M&K S 125 two ways, KLH outdoor 3 way speakers, Altec lansing outdoor 2 way speakers, two pairs of outdoor 'rock' speakers both two way, one with 8" woofer, one with 6" woofers. Tjhis setup has been working flawlessly for around four years now.
Well, The other day, I came home from work, after a long, tough day, and decided I needed music and I needed it LOUD AS HELL so I put on a dj shoe set from new years eve 2000 and turned it up Up UP.
I was driving my ren 90s, the Canton fonum, the KLH, and the M&Ks simultaniously. listened at very high levels for about an hour, while doing household decompression stuff, then all of a sudden the music quit. no obvious sounds of distress except some slight clicks I thought were in the bootleg recording until silence. No bad smells, no magic smoke, nothing.
first I turned on my main system, and switched to the same audio input I'd been listening to with the chip system, to verify that yes, the soundcard was still outputting music, then I plugged my senheiser 530's into my apt Holmann preamp to ensure it was at least getting and processing signal, then I finally plugged in another lepai, since it was a simple swap to see if the amp was what had gone down, and yes, it was the amp that had mysteriously failed.
It's been a busy couple of work weeks, so I didn't have any time to check further, or to figure out a permanent swap situation, as it's been a busy work weeks.
Yesterday was my first day off in a while, so I planned on switching the entire bedroom system up. In the process of moving everything to re-configure, I turned the russound autoformer around, and looked at the autoformer dial, it has the following settings, 1 pair; 2-3 pairs; 4-6 pair; 7-8 pair; 9-11; and finally all twelve, with a stepped actuater dial. most of the time I leave it on 2-3, sometimes going to 4-6, but most recently I dialed it back to 1 pair, as the rens sound better that way when they're the only pair being driven....
Doh! I forgot to reset the autoformer to 2-3 where it usually lives... and now have finally destroyed one of the lepai chip amps.
That's pretty impressive for a 100$ class D chip amp, I must say.
For those that care, I switched in my last Carver PM 350 (350 wpc @ 4 ohm) to drive the mighty Infinity's directly, with no autoformer speaker switcher, and also switched in my carver TFM 15 cb in place of the lepai amp that now runs into the speaker switcher. This way when I really feel the need to rock out, I've got all the power in the world for the Ren 90, and the TFM can handle all the other speakers with the russound dial set to 2-3 permanently.
But, I'm thinking seriously about buying a modern pro chip amp, Crown, and yamaha are high up on my list.
Does anyone know the difference between the Crown XLS, XLI, and XTI series, and anyone have any experience with the yamaha PX8 or PX 10? I'm considering the Crown XTI 4002 or possibly, if amplification is similar the Crown XLS drivecore 2502
Thanks.
Oh, and my Ren's are absolutely singing with the 35 year old Carver PM 350, but, it's 35 years old, I'm thinking it's time for a modern robust amp.