I have used the above sound card dongle now for quite a few years without any problems. Lately it started to get intermittent before dying on me a few days ago. This was a first for me. I have several sound card dongles but the one above is supposed to be the better unit.. Time to open it up and see what caused the problem. I had little hope to solve the problem as the audio chip is embedded by a black blob of epoxy. After removing the covers I started to inspect the PCB and components for possible failure. Needless to say that many components are surface mount and with my bad eyesight this was to be a fruitless venture. I cleaned the back of the PCB to have a better few of the soldered components. After using about 10 magnifying glasses and two spot lights I observed that there were several components that had some bad soldering joints. (see images) Instead of just throwing away the unit I decided to re-solder all the suspected joints. I also observed that there were two ground lugs that were never soldered but just bend over to connect loosely to the PCB. I soldered both these lugs to the PCB. Another good clean after soldering and I installed the unit to my computer. Low and behold the unit came to life and worked flawlessly. The soldering work was now better than before and hopefully the unit will last for a few more years. Moral of the story is when you buy any Chinese electronic product, ensure that the soldering on the PCB's are well done. Unfortunately this cannot be checked prior to purchase and once you remove the housing your warranty will be void if there is such a warranty. This fix turned out well and was worth all the effort with bad eyesight and all.
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Above: Soldered, cleaned and ready to put out sound again.
