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Sound problem with Raiden 1
Question from Steven: Hello! I had been searching Google for information on fixing my Raiden 1 PCB I acquired and I came across your website with this email. I received Raiden 1 last night and upon installing to my existing cabinet, everything works fine except the sound; and it’s not volume. The music is very low and very crackled and static; explosions don’t sound very good or if at all. It just seems like there’s so much sound going into the speakers that it’s cutting out, but it’s not loud sound, the volume pot works fine. I was curious if you’ve ever had a problem like this or if you could lead me in the right direction. Thanks for your time!
1 answer
Response from Jonathan: Steven,
First off, thanks for visiting our site. Since you are new to repairing arcade games, we highly recommend going through all of our content (blog posts, videos, podcasts, etc.) to get yourself familiar with how arcade games work. We have covered some similar questions to yours on the Q&A Podcast so that might be a good place to start.
As for your question, this sounds like a problem with the audio amplifier on your Raiden PCB but there are a few things you can check before suspecting that. Sometimes speakers will get damaged in arcade games from many different factors (such as kids jamming objects through the speaker grills, moving the arcade game from place to place, volume on the game set too loud, etc.). We recommend checking out your speakers to make sure they are in good condition. We also recommend checking the speaker wiring that runs from the board to the harness to make sure it is making a good connection. Another audio issue that is common with certain boards is the -5 VDC not being supplied to the board. You might check your power supply and make sure that the board is getting the -5 VDC from it.
If you check all of those things and you’re still having trouble, then you might have a problem with your board like we mentioned. If you have another JAMMA board available, you might plug it in the cabinet and see if the sound on that board is working properly. This will give you a good idea whether the problem is in your cabinet or the board. Assuming the problem is in the board, you will need to rebuild the audio amplifier section. Sometimes just replacing the capacitors on the board can fix this issue so you might start there. I believe the Raiden boards also use a audio amplifier chip that you may need to replace in order to restore the sound to your board. All of these parts should be located around the volume adjustment on the board.
Hope that helps. Thank you for your question and good luck with your repair.
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