I believe it's more a "hours powered on" problem instead of power spikes. Mine probably had 5000 hours turned on due to my 12v-trigger-plug-setup. But it was never used with high intensity. Heck, it was a amp for my surrounds. You can guess yourself how much watt this thing needed to produce.
The crackling and noise in the right channel also came up while it was completely unused but powered on, it got louder and louder. I bet if I hadn't disconnected it the right channel would be a noise generator by now.
