New to the forums, figured now would be a good opportunity to say hi! I’m a long-time fan of Klipsch products, having started with a set of fantastic-sounding Promedia 2.1’s I bought about 15 years ago. That system has had its quirks, but I’m quite happy about just how repairable they’ve been. I was in the market to improve the sound quality from my entertainment unit, but given the size of my place and the fact I have a toddler running around, having a dedicated home theatre system wasn’t an option. To address this, I picked up a Bar 48 about a year and 8 months ago as I’m familiar with the quality of Klipsch products and knew it would produce quality sound. And produce quality sound it did… until it died.
With the sound bar being 8 months out of warranty, I figured I could get it repaired. Turns out that’s not the case. Per the Klipsch support centre here in Canada, these sound bars aren’t deemed repairable. No parts available, no service manual, no schematics. Nothing. Basically, if it stops working there is literally nothing that the repair centre can do to fix it, and they advise you just buy a new one. Furthermore, the service centre told me that there’s a copious amount of glue used to hold everything together, so even if you feel inspired to take it upon your self to attempt a DIY repair, nothing will be accessible and you will cause more damage trying to fix it. Instead what I was offered was a possible trade-in credit on a new unit. I was told that I could send it in at my expense, and they would offer me a Cinema 600 for $699. To put that into perspective, retail pricing for the Cinema 600 when it goes on sale is $699, so they were offering me literally nothing for the sound bar I paid $700 for less than two years prior. Basically, I was told to pound sand. Again, I can’t stress enough that I’ve been a fan of Klipsch products, but the fact that the company made a failure-prone product unrepairable and is unwilling to try and help me out struck a chord with me. I’ve seen from multiple sources that Bar 48s not powering on is an extremely common failure mode, so hopefully this thread can help some people out by adding a ray of hope to their expensive sound bar that Klipsch says can't be fixed.
So for starters, the Bar 48 is totally repairable. By removing the screws around the periphery of the back panel, the main PCB, power supply, and associated wires all slide out as a unit:
The Canadian service centre mentioned that everything is glued together, and that simply is not the case. Yes, there is some hot glue on the connectors to prevent the connectors from separating if the unit is moved around or bumped, but this is a common sight with consumer electronics and can be easily removed by some careful prying away with a screwdriver.
Through my testing, I found that the power supply on my unit had failed. The unit is an LPS-U101D2405L dual switching power supply, made by ETOP electronics in China. The PSU takes a 120VAC source and converts it to two separate 24VDC and 5VDC rails. The 24V rail appears to power the amplifier and speakers, while the 5V rail appears to power all the other electronics, including the control panel, LEDs on the front of the sound bar, and Bluetooth functionality. I found that when unloaded, the rails output 24V and 5V as they should, but once the Bar 48 PCB is connected to the 5V rail, output from the 5V rail drops to 2.7V. This is likely not enough voltage to power the main PCB, thus causing the no-power issue that many have experienced. I have reached out directly to ETOP (as an FYI this is not an easy thing to do!), and have confirmation that the power supply has failed. Per the spec sheet they sent me, operating voltage on the 5V rail should be 5V +/- 0.5V, so the 2.7V reading is well outside of spec, which was further confirmed by their engineering department. I’ve made arrangements to have a replacement power supply sent my way (with which to compare with my failed unit), so in the meantime I was going to try and diagnose exactly which component in the power supply failed. The goal here is to provide the Klipsch community with a low-cost option to fix your dead Bar 48s. As a disclaimer, I am not an electronics savant, but I am pretty handy with electronics and am extremely determined to fix this sound bar due to this awful customer service experience. Additionally, I was going to use this as an opportunity to learn more about power supply and voltage regulator design.
So as mentioned earlier, when a load is applied to the 5V rail, output drops to 2.7V. I believe this might be related to a failed component in the 5V rail voltage regulator, which appears to have a couple of components that would be relatively easy to swap out. The first is an A12N65H MOSFET attached to a heatsink on the board. The MOSFET tested fine, but doesn’t appear to provide full continuity between the drain and source pins after the gate has been activated. Again, I’m not an electronics expert, so perhaps this is normal but I ordered a replacement MOSFET to install just in case. The second component I was going to look at was the LD7552BPS pulse-width modulation controller. I believe these are used for controlling voltage, with operating frequency set by a resistor connected to Pin #4. Maybe a resistor failed? I’m not sure! Having a second, replacement power supply handy will help me validate some of these things!
The simple solution here would be to have offer a power supply replacement for these units that failed, but since those aren't available it looks like a DIY approach is the only option. Either way, stay tuned with my progress on this, as I will get my Bar 48 working again, despite Klipsch telling me there’s nothing that can be done.