My wife turned the stereo on this morning, so we could enjoy some tunes with the morning coffee. But instead of the Roy Haynes Trio ringing out bright and clear, we heard only a shadowy specter of the trio fighting a losing battle against a hailstorm of static and noise.
I had no idea which portion of the audio chain was responsible. But I replaced the PC and USB DAC with the DVD player from the basement, and (playing CDs for the first time in a couple of years) the music sounded fine. I swapped out laptops, and returned the USB DAC to operation, and everything fell apart again. I then removed the DAC and replaced it with a TASCAM US122 USB music interface, and, although this sounded pretty awful, it was clearly working properly.
So, it seems like my DAC is screwed up.
But I have no idea why. It was working fine last night.
Interestingly, my wife tells me that the microwave, basement PC and oven all needed to be reset this morning, as though we had had a power failure last night. I don't think we had a lightning storm. No breaker had been tripped. It seemed just like a simple power failure. Could that have damaged the DAC somehow?
Any suggestions for what I should do, other than contact the manufacturer for instructions? Any ideas for what might have happened?
Chad
