[pcar]

I started up one of my Octane2's today and the startup sound was noticeably distorted and sounded very over-driven.  Other sounds are also slightly distorted or just plain sound wrong, I unplugged and re-plugged in the speakers.  I can't seem to find any audio tools to test things with to determine what may be going on.  Also, no amount of fiddling with things in the audio panel changes anything.

[Raion]

I'd find the capacitors on the audio circuit for the motherboard and test them

[pcar]

I did a quick test switching chassis, no change.  I started removing parts to swap cpu boards and look what I found under the cpu, gulp.  I hope i can get it bent back into shape, then test again...

https://imgur.com/I4zdpQA

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Well, shit...I breathed and that freaking pin broke clean off, swapping everything to the other IP30 board i have...

[pcar]

Got everything moved to the other board and all is well with the audio, now to fix all the Alias licenses (grrrr)

[Raion]

It's a shame about the motherboard but yeah I knew that it was probably the audio circuit. It's either the amplifier chips or the capacitors that usually goes bad in this sort of situation and judging from the build quality I would suggest that it's probably the capacitors.

That's kind of why I didn't suggest pulling the CPU and other things off the board because those connectors are extremely fragile.

It would probably be possible to desolder the connector if it's through the hole and replace it with one from a donor. I forget if it is through the hole or not.

Either way my suggestion is not to immediately throw that bored out because that might be useful for something.

[pcar]

Yeah, I didn't want to pull the components either, but I'm glad I did, otherwise I would never have known that pin was messed up under the cpu. I also spent a few hours "fixing" the block of holes on the receiving side under the cpu that were messed up as well. I have also contacted the party that I purchased the Octane from to convey my displeasure.