Sigh.. Swan M50W dead after 30 seconds

DNME

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 13, 2009
Messages
181
My Swan unit came in a few days ago and I just got around to setting them up. About 25-30 seconds in to listening to a song the thing just cut out and died. It made a sound like someone ripped out the audio in cable. Now the control module is getting no light so I am guessing the amp or a fuse in the sub just took a shit. I was looking forward to playing these babies this weekend. :mad:

I'm currently opening a ticket with audioinsider to get this resolved but maybe I'm just dumb and I can fix this myself. I double checked all my cables and made sure everything was connected correctly. Also, my pc and lamp were on and running at the time of said incident and they did not die on me.

Any insight?
 
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Don't bother trying to fix it. Just get it replaced.
 
It looks like it was a real Swans song :D

PCs and audio are not an easy match. Many PC:s have half of the mains voltage seeping to the chassis. Your audio ground is at the same potential with the chassis so when you connect an external device to your computer you feed it 55 to 110 volts without realizing it.

It's easy to figure out if your computer has this problem by holding the audio cable connector in your fingers and swiping the bare metal of the chassis with the same finger. If you feel a tingling electric shock then this may be the reason the cheap amp crapped out.

You should use a quality galvanic separator between an amp and a computer unless you use optical connections.
 
Or it could just be DOA. It is all but impossible to tell given what little information there is.

And if it is DOA, it sucks, but it happens even to the best products out there.

In any case, I wouldn't try playing around with speakers that are so new under warranty. Just send them in and get another pair.
 
yeah brand new out of box don't mess with it send them back

bummer but better something fail when new than a month after the warranty ends.

in my experience if something is going to fail it will either be DOA and all but (work briefly then fail) as in this case. Most of the time when i have something that works great for 2~weeks or so it works for years (baring dropping it or some other accident).

In this case you just (likely) got one with a fault and when power was applied that fault in short (pun ???) order took them out.
 
Yeah I packed it up and I'm waiting on their customer service to get back to me so I can get this thing out of here.

Has anyone here dealt with audioinsider? I'm trying to get a feel for them and right off the bat they are extremely slow to respond to my emails.
 
Swans are very nice quality and I'm surprised to see they arrived basically doa. I'm interested in hearing your opinion on sound. Few years ago I picked up a pair of M10s for my wife's laptop and was pleasantly surprised by the sound.
 
My left speaker popped and died, last night. :( Provantage has no more M50W sets in stock, so I'm just returning for refund. I'll try a pair of small powered monitors for my laptop, instead.
 
Better to get a pair of small active speakers instead of powered ones ;)
 
I believe he is referring to speakers with an active crossover network versus self-powered speakers which have a passive crossover network and an internal amplifier.

Speakers with an active crossover network feature a crossover at line level with a separate amplifier for each frequency range. So if an active bookshelf speaker has two drivers, a woofer and a tweeter, then such a speaker would have two amplifier sections, one section for each driver. This allows for each amplifier to be tuned for the range it is responsible for, allowing for increased efficiency, among other potential factors.

As a point of comparison, the same bookshelf in a powered, but traditional crossover, configuration would have a single amplifier which feeds into a passive crossover and powers both drivers. And as a single amplifier is responsible for the full frequency range, tuning and efficiency optimizations are more limited. In this scenario, there is no real difference between a passive speaker with a separate amplifier and a powered speaker, other than an increased possibility that compromises were made to fit the two together into a single enclosure and price point.

At least this is the theory. It is certainly possible for a powered speaker to perform just as good, if not better than, a separate passive setup. It simply is not as likely within the market.
 
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