Nano Biscotte crackling sounds

My friend and I are wiring up our sabers tonight, and my buddy's NB v2 makes a continuous crackling noise as soon as power is connected.

I checked his wiring, the solder joints all looked ok to me, and couldn't find any points of shorts under the magnifying glass. We put my sound card in, still crackles. applied power without a sound card, still crackles. I'm pretty stumped here... everything else on the saber works fine, FoC is fine. Main LED is fine, both accent LEDs are fine. you can even hear the sound font, and switch between fonts. but theres always a very loud crackle... I've tried resoldering the speaker leads, and still no luck...

Battery is charging at the moment, the only thing I could think of is a low battery.

here are some pics of his board:

Attachment 10400Attachment 10400Attachment 10401

could it be a bad board?

*edit* i know the solder looks connected in the photo, but it's not... *edit*

Check it after you power up your battery. It also could be the speaker itself.

tried switching already, no luck

i found it, he had been sloppy and got a speck of solder on the transistor? right in front of the speaker leads on the nb... i took some desolder wire to it, and its working perfect, :) hopefully this helps someone in the future

got the right resistors on you main LED? I originally on my saber read too much into the manual and read the part about messing with the drive parameter instead of using a resistor if your resistor value is really small. I had cracking in my sound and random swings. Put in the right resistor and all problems solved. Probly not your problem since one of your sabers works fine.

ya, check the above post, he was sloppy and a tiny speck of solder was shorting two leads on the ?transistor? right in front of the speaker pads :)

Cool glad you got it fixed :D. I think I was writing my post when you were writing yours so I didnt read yours before I posted mine.

Just an FYI on wiring the sound boards, erv recommends that you DO NOT solder the wires through the holes, as the holes are there to prevent the pads from "lifting", not for the wires to pass through. Not only can you get too much solder on the connection, but the way the wires bends makes the joint an easy place for the wire to break off after you assemble your saber. It also increases the risk of shorts from solder bridging.