I read about that dreaded ”automatically going to 0dB/melting tweeters & my eardrums“ problem on a couple of threads today, so I was inspired to start this thread. Like most of you, I despise this problem, and I’ve run into it way too often over the years.
Most recently it was my miniDSP Flex, which when I powered it on normally as I do every day, suddenly decided to scream a constant digital tone (not white noise but a fire alarm-like tone in the hundreds of Hz range by my ears) at full blast for no apparent reason. After power cycling, it seems to be working normally, but my nerves (and especially those of my wife) are too frazzled for me to resume normally, so I disconnected the Flex from my amp and sub and connected it to a little portable speaker for the time being. I haven’t even checked if my downstream equipment is damaged yet. And based on previous experience with glitches on this thing, I’ll probably never find out what caused the problem. After some reboots or fiddling, the problem will randomly go away, but another problem will surely arise at some unexpected time.
But I’m not singling out miniDSP because I’ve had several pieces of equipment suddenly and unexpectedly go to 0dB, including 2 different NAD integrated amps, a Parasound DAC, and even some Logitech computer speakers.
So I don’t want to just gripe about this ubiquitous problem. I want to find a solution. And that would be a transparent passive analog volume control, like the Schiit Sys, that I could insert between my Flex and power amp. However, unfortunately, I need a 2.1 version of the Sys so I can protect my sub and keep its volume aligned with my L+R channels. Has anyone found such a thing? Something with a little bit of a track record would be nice, although I may have to turn to Aliexpress if all else fails.
Most recently it was my miniDSP Flex, which when I powered it on normally as I do every day, suddenly decided to scream a constant digital tone (not white noise but a fire alarm-like tone in the hundreds of Hz range by my ears) at full blast for no apparent reason. After power cycling, it seems to be working normally, but my nerves (and especially those of my wife) are too frazzled for me to resume normally, so I disconnected the Flex from my amp and sub and connected it to a little portable speaker for the time being. I haven’t even checked if my downstream equipment is damaged yet. And based on previous experience with glitches on this thing, I’ll probably never find out what caused the problem. After some reboots or fiddling, the problem will randomly go away, but another problem will surely arise at some unexpected time.
But I’m not singling out miniDSP because I’ve had several pieces of equipment suddenly and unexpectedly go to 0dB, including 2 different NAD integrated amps, a Parasound DAC, and even some Logitech computer speakers.
So I don’t want to just gripe about this ubiquitous problem. I want to find a solution. And that would be a transparent passive analog volume control, like the Schiit Sys, that I could insert between my Flex and power amp. However, unfortunately, I need a 2.1 version of the Sys so I can protect my sub and keep its volume aligned with my L+R channels. Has anyone found such a thing? Something with a little bit of a track record would be nice, although I may have to turn to Aliexpress if all else fails.