My speakers are usually just fine. Playing Spotify or Youtube causes no issues. When I open VCV Rack, my right speaker starts outputting static white noise instead of the actual audio. If I close VCV Rack, audio continues to output white noise with Spotify, Youtube, or anything that should play normally. The only way to fix it is by shutting down, waiting a few seconds, then turning it back on. My drivers are all up to date, and I haven’t been able to find anything online.
The title of this post reminds me of the time when I was a teenager and my dad told me that I couldn’t play punk on his system as it would damage his record needle.
I’ll get my coat 
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I don’t know - could be anything.
see VCV - Support to contact VCV for help.
Or maybe if you give us more info, we have a chance to help ?
- OS, rack version, soundcard make and model + sw release version.
- screenshots of your Audio module in rack.
- screenshots of any relevant audio interface settings.
- log.txt from the rack user folder.
Maybe a samplerate mismatch issue - once upon a time, some interfaces gave problems, that could be fixed changing the default template settings for sample rate. That hasn’t been nescessary for some time AFAIK.
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No joke I think vcv frequencies has ruined my MacBook Pro right speaker. Crackles and bad driven sounds come out past like a third of max volume. Oh well.
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Those online audio services seriously compress and limit all their audio.
No comparison to raw audio production of any kind (Rack or not). The only compression or limiting in Rack is when you add a limiter or compressor to your audio output chain.
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If you hear staticky, “crunchy” or robotic sounding audio, it’s highly likely to be a sample rate/format mismatch. Make sure your OS audio settings and Rack settings are both set to the same sample rate/format, and it’s an output mode that your device supports.
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“software x destroyed my hardware”. Heard that one a lot over the last few decades 
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this is very possible…
Vcv rack standalone nearly destroyed my monitors and ears…
- somehow it is messing up the audio routing in my rme and overloading inactive ports…
- (ph 3&4 & adat ports going to hardware)
just started after testing a new version 2.60 (was buggy) and reverting to a working version (2.20)
now its internal audio routing seems to be messed up… - all other apps are fine… (the vst versions are fine too)
-Contacted support … lets see what happens…
May be try a less sample rate ? Eg 22 kz? Alain
I do not understand this 
How could a samplerate possibly affect a speaker??
I had this issue, changed the bit rate of the output device from 24bit to 16 and i think its fixed. Did this through sound settings, more sound settings, double click device, advanced tab. Top box. Hope this helps
I get my greatest improvement by bumping up the block size in the AUDIO module to at least 1024. (2019 MacBook Pro)
Note - whenever I change the output (eg. headphone jack to MacBook speakers) Rack perversely reverts back to the default of 256, so I have to change it again.
IMO if there’s some crackling or undesired noise, then it looks like a software/driver issue and no damage on the hardware. My Motu UltraLight 3 usually works fine on Windows 10, but on some days, I got crackling and then I immediately restart the Motu, and in most cases this helps for the rest of the day.
Since over 10 years I had no damage on speakers and other hardware caused by software.
The only damage I had so far was a broken capacitor in the power supply of my speakers. Replacing the capacitor solved the problem.
Not limited to VCV but I had some issues with my Arturia AudioFuse mk 2, where both speakers sometime would make noise as you describe and I would have to power cycle the audio interface (had a colleague make a short USB cable with a power on/off switch, so I didn’t had to unplug/replug it when it happend).
In the past I had an RME FireFace 800, connected using firewire 800, but when I last year got a new PC the video adapter was so big it blocked all my PCI sockets, and I was too cheap to by a new RME, hence I went for the AudioFuse. Whether it was a hardware issue or a driver issue I don’t know. But in the end I had to bite the bullet and got myself a new RME FireFace 802 FS (using USB2), and haven’t had a single issue since.