Greetings AudioCircle Members.
I have come to this site to see if I can get some help troubleshooting my amp. As stated in the subject line it is a Nuforce Icon2 Dac, desktop amp/headphone amp. Performed beautifully until just a few days ago. I have had it for about three years, bought it used off of Craigslist. I will try my best to describe what it is doing, hopefully to generate some feedback on what I might be able to do, if anything, before I take it back to Nuforce. I get the feeling it will be expensive to repair. Maybe not, I dont know but here is what is happening. I get a static sound that jumps in unison with the beat of the music. If the unit is turned down low, the static sounds very light like tsst tsst tsst on top of each beat. As I turn the volume up it becomes much less pronounced and begins to distort the music as well as blanketing the beat with more of a sshh sshh sshh sound to it. Either way its friggin noise that is not supposed to be there. No if I have the unit on and just turn the volume up and down with no music playing, it sounds like phht all the way up to a PHHHHHT type of sound as I turn the knob all the way up. When I turn it down it does the same thing but in reverse. This static becomes heavy distortion once I lean on it with volume, to the point where when it is up loud, it sounds like a straight distortion issue with static being a byproduct of said distortion. I am running some Polk bookshelves, thought it might be a blown pair of speakers at first because at higher volumes it did sound like that. Hooked the unit up to another speaker and it did the same thing. plugged in a pair of headphones and same problem so I figure it has to be the unit. This is my laptop setup and the icon ran the polk bookshelves and the subwoofer so nice. I hate to take it in if it is something simple, looking to you guys for some advice. Let me know if there is any other information I can give you to help troubleshoot this. I realize there is only so much a person can do over the internet but maybe someone else has had a similar problem before. I sure miss this little amp, its been great up to now.
dan
