Sunfire FAQs

Q. How do I get my Sunfire product serviced?

A. If you suspect your Sunfire product has a problem, please do everything you can to confirm it before calling for service. This includes reading through the Troubleshooting Guide of your user's manual, also see the FAQs Product section on this site for issues that may be specific to a particular model. A large percentage of products returned for service are coded "NTF" or No Trouble Found, which usually means the problem lay somewhere else in the system. If you have determined you need to return your Sunfire product for repair, go here for instructions or call us at 1.800.472.5555 and follow the prompts to Technical Services, Audio, and then Audio again to reach the Sunfire Tech Support team.

Q. What is the warranty period?

Q. What was done to my repaired unit?

A. A Repair Log with the technician's comments and what parts were used for the repair will be included with your repaired Sunfire product.

Q. Why did my unit fail?

A. This question is asked almost every time we receive a unit in for service. Then usually followed up with, “Was there anything I could have done to have prevented it?” or “Was it something I did wrong?” Most of the time the answer is no, normal everyday use should not cause a problem. 

Sunfire equipment has many protection features built in to safeguard against what would be considered abuse by some manufacture's standards. For example, compressor and soft clipping circuits utilized in our subwoofers are used to protect against over-driving the transducers. Protection at the component level can be also be found through out Sunfire products, examples are, voltage regulators with internal over-temperature shut down protection and transformers with internal thermal switches that disconnect the power at high temperatures. 

Now for the "Why did my unit fail?" question. This can be one (or more) of dozens of believable or farfetched answers.

• Power Surges Line conditioners regardless of quality or price may or may not protect you audio components from damage due to power surges.
• Heat One of the most lethal conditions for electronic devices is excessive heat. Semiconductors (transistors, diodes, ICs, etcetera) are usually rated for operating temperatures between -55°C to +150°C, this rating is given for the actual surface temperature of the device, not the ambient room temperature or the temperature of the unit as a whole. Power transistors and voltage regulators are normally mounted to some sort of heat sink to dissipate heat away from the device. The common practice is to use part of the case or enclosure, for example, the amplifier plates on Sunfire subwoofers and the bottom chassis of the Ultimate Receiver serve as both housing and heat sink. Guidelines for proper ventilation can be found in your Sunfire product's User Guide.
• Lightning Strikes The actual strike could possibly be miles away but can follow the power lines straight to your audio equipment. Here again, line conditioners may or may not protect your components from damage. Remember, lightning has been known to arch across miles of thin air (sky), what's to stop it from jumping across the .100” space between contacts in a power conditioner or for that matter arching and bypassing the entire power conditioner altogether. Lighting has also been known to get in via cable TV lines.
• Mechanical Vibrations can cause broken solder joints or wires to come loose. If you were to look at inside our products you would see many of the susceptible components and wires are reinforced to reduce the effects mechanical movement and vibration.
• Component Failure Semiconductor manufactures estimate failure rates in parts per million (PPM ) and long term failure rates in units per billion device hours. Although these number are quite impressive, they do fail. That being said, even the best designed electronic circuits can fail under optimum operating conditions.

When asked this question "Why did my unit fail?", the response from most service technicians is usually, what parts had failed and what was replaced or that some thingamajig was probably the culprit, then at best, a guess as to what may have caused the problem. The reason for the vagueness is, 99 percent of the time it is literally impossible to tell exactly what caused the component(s) to fail or the exact sequence of events after the fact. 

For example, integrated circuits such as BIFET op-amps can be damaged by voltage spikes or surges. Components such as CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductors) can be damaged merely by static electricity (electrostatic discharge). Bipolar power transistors such as those used in most modern amplifiers can breakdown when operated outside the rated for operating temperature. Excessive collector to emitter voltage can destroy power transistors. And the list goes on and on and on... 

That being said, the exact explanation as to what actually caused the malfunction would require, sending each failed device from the unit being serviced to the manufacture for analysis as to why it failed, then attempt to determine the component-level sequence of events and why. In other words each failed device would have to be labeled as either the cause or effect of the malfunction. As you can see this would not be very practical.