What went bang, smelled of "I'm fried", yet left it in working order...???


Hi gang - wasn't sure if this should go here under amps or tech talk, but here goes: normally, I'd call the salesman I work with at my LAD, but they're closed Sun. & Mon. and I'm loosing sleep over this as I feel I'm on very thin ice.

My wife and I were watching a movie late last night, and after the movie we were sitting on the coach discussing it when we both jumped when we heard a loud bang coming from the media console and smelled an electrical burn. Sitting on top of the console is a Dan D'Agostino Progression Stereo power amp, a McIntosh C53 preamp, and mounted directly behind this on the wall, a Panasonic plasma TV.

Nothing tripped a fuse, the TV was still on, both sets of power meters on both the Dan & Mac were still lit. I streamed a test track that has a lot of bass that when I turn up to a certain volume, has the Dan's power meters hang at 400 watts for a few seconds, and they did - just like always. Everything seems to look and sound fine.

So, while I'm not asking for anyone to try and guess which of those three components made the bang, what I am asking is for any of you here who have an electronics background tell me what electronic part (in either the preamp, amp or TV) possibly could have made a loud bang releasing an electrical burn smell, yet "seemingly" leave everything still functioning as normal...?

--thanks and cheers!

128x128jimmy_jet
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That smell is still lingering inside of whatever failed. use your nose to determine what unit failed. A loud bag is mostly a capacitor that was shorting out and over heated. After it failed, it opened the short and it's operating again but must be fixed. More than likely a power supply cap.

Once you isolate the unit, disconnect and open it up, probably going to find it pretty easily.

 

BillWojo

Update: I removed the top panel of the power amp and no smell nor anything appearing to be charred or have black marks. All caps (8 big beautiful 12,000 uF, 120v), resistors, transistors, etc, all appeared nice and shiny with bright colors. No soot on any of the interior walls or top panel ceiling. I know there could be something hidden, but then again, there's a lot of space in there and nothing crammed pack. So, I think I'll move on to removing the top panel of the preamp and looking in there.