• These commercial threads are for private transactions. diyAudio.com provides these forums for the convenience of our members, but makes no warranty nor assumes any responsibility. We do not vet any members, use of this facility is at your own risk. Customers can post any issues in those threads as long as it is done in a civil manner. All diyAudio rules about conduct apply and will be enforced.

"The Wiener" TPA3118 amplifier card

One possibility is a flex cracked decoupling ceramic capacitor next to the chip which shorted the supply. I guess the amp was not fused? For the cap to be cracked it needs some force from either an impact/hard drop or some kind of pcb tension due to mounting.

Another suspicion is that those parts get destroyed by voltage resonance between the decoupling caps while driving the amp into clipping.
 
Cleaned it up a bit, a few smd components fell off. I took the thermal pad off the back and theres a little indentation sticking out away from the back of the board. The TPA3118 chip looks fine actually. May have been some smd component off to the side? The big flat piece of copper on the top side looks like its the top layer of the PCB coming off.

It had been playing fairly loud all day, but likely did get jumbled around a bit. The board was in the hammond case so it seemed somewhat protected from things bumping into it.

more pics - TPA3118 - Album on Imgur
 
One possibility is a flex cracked decoupling ceramic capacitor next to the chip which shorted the supply. I guess the amp was not fused? For the cap to be cracked it needs some force from either an impact/hard drop or some kind of pcb tension due to mounting.

Another suspicion is that those parts get destroyed by voltage resonance between the decoupling caps while driving the amp into clipping.


Missed your post... It unfortunately was not fused. I need to add an inline fuse from the battery. Didn't notice any clipping before it stopped working. I think you're probably on to something with the capacitor that blew, that seems to fit since I hadn't fused the board.
 
The bulging/sticking out on bottomside is the area around the three holes/via's ? May indicate nothing, may indicate pcb area that got hottest ???

Next to tpachip you had 3 smd's decoupling pvcc, now 1, the smallest is still there, biggest is laying next to pcb, middle one is also next to pcb, or did it go to pieces ? A little above those 3 there was one rotated smd, decoupling avcc, went to pieces or is laying next to pcb now ?

May indicate nothing, may indicate ceramic that got hottest ???
 
The thin projected particles stratum on the others components and the relatively large affected surface seems to indicate something brutal and fast.
Can it be an PCB shorting (a via can touch the Ground plane when the PCB is very hot and the copper is dilated) ??
 
Last edited:
Good morning sorry to barge in on trouble shooting problem.

I have been powering my Weiner with a 19.5 laptop brick.
Now I have come across a person who can build me a regulated linear power supply rated at 5amps at 19 -20VDC using an LM723, for what I feel is a reasonable price. (approx $20)

Would it make the Weiner sound better?
 
Good morning sorry to barge in on trouble shooting problem.

I have been powering my Weiner with a 19.5 laptop brick.
Now I have come across a person who can build me a regulated linear power supply rated at 5amps at 19 -20VDC using an LM723, for what I feel is a reasonable price. (approx $20)

Would it make the Weiner sound better?



For the standard Wiener I had a strong preference for a linear regulated supply over laptop bricks and even audio-grade SMPS. Even a very basic linear regulated supply was better, but eventually I used my favorite AMB sigma-11, which is a very nice PS indeed. So I would say YES try a linear regulated supply!


Now, the Wiener PRO version seems to be less picky about PS and for me sounds great from a (very) large 19.5V laptop brick. Different beast.


BK
 
BK was kind enough to offer a spare board which I was able to wire up to my build. I quickly reviewed the switch settings and it looked good, made sure not to tighten screws too much, and it made noise when I hit play, so I put it away for later.

When I got it out again, the speakers started to periodically "get sucked in" for half a second. It would still amplify the source for half a second between each thud. I took it out and tried different settings and found that 1SPW mode would work but not BD mode. After I put everything back together I noticed 1SPW sounded different, like the low end was very attenuated. There was also noticeably more signal noise with no input plugged in. This led me to take it out of the case again to try different settings.

BD mode would produce a periodic fault/speaker thud. The speaker thud was initially a long DC signal as the driver would travel pretty far down and stay down for half a second. I measured it at the time and was getting just over 12VDC, which is the battery voltage it was powered by.

I left it to troubleshoot another day. I unwired all the terminals and took it completely off the case. At this point both 1SPW and BD mode were both producing the periodic fault, but the thud changed to a pop at some point. The start-up delay adjustment directly impacts the length of the period between each fault. The LED turns off at the same time as the pop.

When I read the voltage during the faults now, its about 0.3VDC. If I decrease the start-up delay it will climb to 1.7VDC. I suspect my DMM isn't sampling fast enough to catch the faster spike unless I increase its frequency.

With no inputs connected, a 19V laptop brick, and two speakers attached, I tried pretty much all of the DIP switch settings. Placing the board into standby mode between each change.

Two of the states I tried did produce a slightly different result - the pops we're a split second apart from one another. All other states had both speakers pop at about the same time. This happened in these states:
1SPW 1 Mhz and 26dB pop separated by ~1/4 second
1SPW 1.2 Mhz and 26dB pop separated by ~1/3 second

I'm not sure what to do now, I guess I will take another good long look at it to see if I missed anything I may have damaged. Thank you to BK for helping me get this far.

Photos/Videos - Shared album - Josh Remaley - Google Photos
 
jorem and I took the troubleshooting as far as my (limited!) knowledge could go.


Ideally gmarsh or another TPA311x guru can suggest informative test points/diagnostics.


I'm hopeful we can identify the fault in jorem's replacement board and repair it. The other lingering question is the root cause of the failure(s). jorem's project is super cool and it'd be great to see it alive again!


BK
 
nuts.. just found this post, after ordering (ebay.de) 6@ Sanwu TPA3118s...
For 6-way (stereo, 3-way) active speaker system;
The heart of which will be Wroclaw Audio Force Najda v1.3
Any possibility of finding/ordering? 2@ of these units... with mod for 4ohm mids.
Or, could ask seller if they are aware of this mod.

Also, best guess for total current draw @ 18VDC? (tweets 8 ohm, Mid 4 ohm, woof 8 ohm).. possibly mounted in 1/2U rack case.

Also, considering trying Peltiers on the bottom for cooling.
thanks for tips,
John