Electronics nerds

[Moses]

I?ve had a speaker for not far off eight years. One of those Bowers and Wilkins all in ones (A7, not a Zeppelin). Miles out of warranty.

Has started doing this thing where it gives an error light and needs to be power cycled to boot into a working mode. The internet tells me it?s an issue with a capacitor. How easy is that to diagnose and fix? Can it be done with a multimeter/soldering iron?

Was it Chuckles who?d buy broken stuff and do relative simple fixes?

[ChemicalKicks]

That’s pretty decent for an AIO. When my sub popped I bought a multimeter to test it before looking at self repair. Get a multimeter and work from there. There’s a massive nerd community at HIFI Wigwam, check out their forums.

[Moses]

Yeah I’m sure ‘audiophiles’ would slate it but to my peasant ears it’s very good.

[Chuckles]

It could be tested with a multimeter, but capacitors can generally only be tested out of circuit in that way, meaning they would need desoldering first.

You can quite often tell if they are knackered because they end up bulging like this

https://rollestonshed.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/bad-capacitors.jpg

To test them properly in circuit you need something like this

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Akozon-Resistance-Capacitance-Backlight-repairing/dp/B07JZ1YTZ2/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=esr+meter&qid=1621844329&sr=8-5

If you don't have the tools, I would start by just taking off the back and seeing if any look knackered visually. If they are cheap brand ones, it's a common problem.