[zachary80]

My latest setup has my Musical Fidelity X-Dac connected to my PC over S/PDIF, and has been working fine. Yesterday when I powered up my headphone amp (the DAC is always on from the included wall-wart power supply), I heard a moderately loud buzz/hum with distorted audio, similar to whenever a subwoofer cable is loose. Connections don't seem to reduce the buzzing. If I unplug the power, wait a few seconds, and plug it in, the buzz gradually fades in after about a minute.When I run test tones, they come out extremely distorted, but recognizable. My headphone amp is silent once the DAC is unplugged.
 
Any ideas if this is a dead DAC, or maybe the power supply? Any more troubleshooting I can do?

 

[zachary80]

Is this expected for component failure? It's my first piece of audio gear to "expire"

 

[HPiper]

Audio components can fail at any time, even expensive ones. What yours sounds like is a 'classic' power supply failure most likely a capacitor. Point being, like it or not you are in the market for a new dac or dac/amp. If you have some known good units you can isolate it to the dac or amp, otherwise might as well get one of the integrated units out there. The quality of those is pretty good now and the price is constantly going down.