I have accidentially shorted my Speaker phat (switched I2S and Ground). The tiny Speaker was very hot by the time I found my error. Speaker phat still works (plays sound and vumeter flashes) but volume has decreased significantly. Did I kill my Speaker phat?
It’s possible you killed your speaker, rather than the whole pHAT but without fitting a separate speaker it would be difficult to tell which. I don’t know what the symptoms of a fried DAC/Amp chip would be.
I grilled the speaker, fortunately not the DAC or amp. An external speaker works great.
That’s nice to hear, what I mean is, its the lesser of two evils. Better the speaker than the DAC. At least its usable with a small modification.
Having grilled a speaker myself- actually totally melted- attempting to drive it directly from the Pi’s GPIO (oh boy did that not work) I know how you feel :(