So... has anyone else let the magic smoke out of their dongle? Because I just did it...
I was paring it with my studio monitors and was trying to reduce the background hiss which I identified as a possible ground loop. So I decided to connect both monitors with a cheater plugs (no ground plugs anymore! yay...) and, sure enough, no more hissing!
Thing is, while testing I only had one speaker plugged in (the other one was off and with its audio cable unplugged). I pretty much always turn high power audio equipment off when plugging in cables to avoid loud pops, even if there is no risk of damaging them, but this time I forgot to turn off the damn monitor. So, just as I was plugging the other side I felt a shock (it's a big 10mm jack, my finger was probably touching the ground sleeve...) and my computer imediatly turned off. As I recovered from the shock (nothing major, but I felt a rumbling sensation, is that's AC current, right?) I realized everything had turned off. Uhh ohh, the breaker tripped!
Once I restored power and turned all the stuff back on, surprise... the dongle wasen't detected by the system. Re-inserting it didn't work. Fearing the worst I took it off the computer and saw the burn marks... yeah, R$90 down the drain
(Electronic stuff is expensive here in Brazil, Apple stuff doubly so lol)
Question is, is this mostly my fault? Or is this dongle, due to it's diminutive size, lacking protection for this kind of stuff? After all, it was designed for low power headphones, not big powered speakers.