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I've fried two Amp2s

Zane Claes

February 14, 2021 17:28

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I have HiFiberry products attached to Raspberry Pis in every room of the house (2x Beocreates, 3x Amp2s). Twice now, I appear to have fried the Amp2 that is on my desk (no lights come on when plugging in the power). The first time I thought I had accidentally shorted something, but the second time appeared to just happen randomly at night. In both cases, the 24v/3A power was plugged in to a surge-protected bus (and I'm using 8 ohm Jamo S 803s). It's strange that both happened on the same Raspberry Pi, but it's a brand new Pi4 (same as the others), so it seems like a spurious correlation.

Is there anything I might be missing? The 24V seemed fine on the other Amp2s, given I'm running 8 ohm, but maybe it's not appropriate here? I note that plugging in the 24V PSUs tends to create sparks... the PSU brand is "Alitove" (common on Amazon).

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3 comments

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  HiFiBerry team February 15, 2021 08:59

  24V is the absolute maximum. We see many cheaper power supplies creating higher voltages on low load which can damage the board. Therefore, we don't recommend to use 24V with the Amp2, but something in the range of 12-20V.

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  Zane Claes February 15, 2021 20:19

  Ah, darn. Okay. I'll drop down to 18-20v. I should have guessed this might happen, but still, the way the Amazon listing is phrased for the Amp2 it reads as though you're recommended to use "higher" voltages with 8ohms ("Higher operating voltages are only recommended with 8 Ohm speakers."). The top Amazon reviews and question both insist that you should use the same 24v Aliotive PSU I have. In fact I bought the PSU specifically on the Amazon recommendations. Obviously I don't hold you responsible for the Amazon reviews, but this was a very expensive lesson to learn. The 24v information is featured very prominently on the Amazon page, and I expect other people have fried hardware as a result.

  Edited by Zane Claes February 15, 2021 20:19
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  HiFiBerry team February 16, 2021 05:21

  I can't say for sure if this was caused by the power supply. That's just the best guess for now.

  Unfortunately there is nothing we can do on people recommending things on Amazon. That's one of the reasons you might rather check our site instead of Amazon.