Hey everybody - got a strange audio issue on an Attack From Mars.

Occasionally (lets say 30% of the time) when you destroy the mothership during a game and it goes through the detonation animation and light show, the sound will drop entirely for about 3 seconds, then you hear the typical boot up "DING" sound and then the sound picks right back up mid-game but the volume is higher than it was before. After the next ball drain, the volume reverts back to its normal state.

my gut tells me this is some sort of voltage surge or voltage drop that's causing the Audio portion of the audio/video board to reset?

Keep in mind the following details - the issue does not in any way impact the DMD, the lighting on the game, the gameplay itself, etc - this is ONLY a sound issue. The issue never occurs at any other point in gameplay or attract mode - it ONLY happens during the mothership detonation sequence. The capacitors LOOK fine but are clearly original - could this simply be the caps? which ones? every one on the board or just the big filter caps? Anything else I should consider?

I have done the following:

removed the Audio/Video board and reflowed solder at all connector pin locations and anywhere else that looks suspect
reseated all connections.

OMG! thank you so much for this info! I am having issues with my strobe as well. I have the rebuild parts on order for the strobe board (my strobe just frankly doesn't work - it has the pinbits upgrade in it but its still DOA). perhaps these 2 issues are related?!!

I am optimistically hoping that my issue is specifically and only related to the strobe board since that is the only time the sound issue occurs - never under any other circumstances.

I went ahead and ordered the pinbits strobe board rebuild kit as well as caps for the audio/visual board. I will report back after installing all of that to see if perhaps I kill 2 birds with one stone and get my sound to stop flaking out and get the strobe to work.

Just wanted to follow up. I rebuilt the strobe board with the Pinbits rebuild kit and it fixed the strobe board AND the audio has stopped resetting and acting weird. I'm calling this case closed!