Blown woofer from a bad tube? Is this possible?


Hi,

Is this possible:

Current Set-Up:
CDP
Tube DAC
Passive Preamp
Chip Amp
Speakers

I installed a tube DAC that I just received into my system and have now discovered that one woofer in one of my speakers is not working correctly. The woofer just makes a funny noise, it's normal on the other speaker's woofer.

During shipment, the tip of the tube broke and did not visibly show itself (i.e. seeing the white, smokey look in the top of the tube) upon initial inspection. So when I powered everything up, the bad/broken tube made itself evident with sound that was very wrong and the visible broken tip and white, smokey look.

I opened the tube DAC and replaced the tube with a known good and with a new pair of speakers, the spound is amazing.

So, my question is can the bad tube have caused the woofer to get damaged?
vman71
I really doubt it.

First, because if the tube had leaked (silver getter turned white) then it couldn't sustain any current from the cathode to the anode, and so your DAC would have no output on that channel.

Second, you would have heard something nasty out of that woofer before it went bad if it was being overdriven.

Have you reversed your speaker cables and sent them to opposite speakers just to make sure that the problem is indeed with that particular speaker and not something else upstream?
.