Most power amps have quite a few volts on the output - higher voltage supply rails seem quite popular in recent designs, because it reduces current demand.
The main feature of well designed equipment is that it is resistant to abuse - outputs that can stand reverse phantom being stuffed up them, mic inputs that can cope with +4 levels being stuffed into them, amps that can survive being plugged into awful generators that have wildly fluctuating output voltages. It's amazing any of this kit works, but good design means most of these things are tolerated with no lasting damage.
Everyone here is quite right saying DON'T plug speaker level feeds into a mixer channel - but have you seen how tiny some of those surface mount capacitors and resistors are? There really isn't much to go up in smoke, so they just fail. They can be secondary components, perhaps designed to prevent DC or RF entering the device, and they may fail safe - with just protection gone, and you will never know until something else happens.
So if somebody says should I, and the answers come back no, don't, stop, whoa, then surely common sense says hang on, everyone is saying this is a dodgy thing. Reading this, and then actually doing it, is foolhardy in the extreme - even perhaps stupid. To then tell everyone you did it with no harm just makes everyone sigh a little with relief you may not (not did not) do any damage, but they also think how stupid you were to ask for an opinion and then ignore it. Why ask a question if you really are going to ignore the response?
The main feature of well designed equipment is that it is resistant to abuse - outputs that can stand reverse phantom being stuffed up them, mic inputs that can cope with +4 levels being stuffed into them, amps that can survive being plugged into awful generators that have wildly fluctuating output voltages. It's amazing any of this kit works, but good design means most of these things are tolerated with no lasting damage.
Everyone here is quite right saying DON'T plug speaker level feeds into a mixer channel - but have you seen how tiny some of those surface mount capacitors and resistors are? There really isn't much to go up in smoke, so they just fail. They can be secondary components, perhaps designed to prevent DC or RF entering the device, and they may fail safe - with just protection gone, and you will never know until something else happens.
So if somebody says should I, and the answers come back no, don't, stop, whoa, then surely common sense says hang on, everyone is saying this is a dodgy thing. Reading this, and then actually doing it, is foolhardy in the extreme - even perhaps stupid. To then tell everyone you did it with no harm just makes everyone sigh a little with relief you may not (not did not) do any damage, but they also think how stupid you were to ask for an opinion and then ignore it. Why ask a question if you really are going to ignore the response?
