Re: Vizio E421VA No Sound Through Speakers

I don't have much experience with soldering SMDs and am looking into possibly using soldering paste. I'm considering lower temp pastes so that I won't fry the sound IC SMD with my inexperience but am a little worried about the temperature tolerance of the paste in the long run when the device is running and gets hot.

Would the Chip Quik Low Melting paste ("Melting Point 138°C 281°F (Eutectic)
87% Metal Particle Size 25-45 Microns") be an acceptable choice for this application?

The datasheet on...

Re: Vizio E421VA No Sound Through Speakers

After a lot of scraping and gradual chipping away at the solder, I was finally able to get the heatsink off. I wasn't successful with the soldering iron either, so I ended up using a pair of nail clippers to slowly and carefully chip and wear away the solder. Eventually there was only a thin amount of solder left to where I was able to wiggle the heatsink with pliers and pull it off the board...took a lot of persistence.

There's nothing visibly abnormal with the sound IC as far as I can tell. I put the board back into the...

Re: Vizio E421VA No Sound Through Speakers

I just got a chance to remove the board from the TV to look at the underside of that sound IC area (see picture). It doesn't seem (at least to my virgin eyes) that there is any burntness/bulging to it like you had on yours. I'm not exactly sure why there is that rectangular blanket of solder overlaying part of those PCB lines. From pictures of the same board online, they have that similar blanket of solder but look slightly different.

Have you tried using that desoldering suction at the same time as you're holding the iron...

Re: Vizio E421VA No Sound Through Speakers

Lol darn heatsink. Do you know how many watts your solder iron is? I wonder if a high ish wattage one would provide more of the heat quickly enough to melt the solder before the heat gets transferred -- this is coming from someone who barely has any soldering experience though =/

Re: Vizio E421VA No Sound Through Speakers

That's awesome, thanks for posting the picture. I am still planning on repairing but won't get a chance to open it up til possibly this weekend. I'll update whenever I can, best of luck in the meantime! Keep us posted.

Re: Vizio E421VA No Sound Through Speakers

Hopefully I'll be able to get the heatsink off without damaging anything.

Haha, that's an awesome emoticon with the beer glasses. $320 is just crazy, glad you were able to fix it for $90. I agree that it is a very good TV; I'll be sure to update as soon as I make any progress with this issue -- I'm excited to give it another look when I get a chance. Thanks for offering the pictures, I'll let you know if I run into anything that needs a possible comparison, though probably hard to compare with pictures unless blatantly obv...

Re: Vizio E421VA No Sound Through Speakers

Thanks for your quick reply/helpful information. Unfortunately it does not have a headphone output. Would the headphone output hypothetically help to differentiate anything further (for my own knowledge)? Luckily the optical audio output has been working still.

The underside of that heatsink location does not have prongs going through the board (other than the 2 prongs from the heatsink itself), so it's looking probably like a surface mounted audio IC?

Hello everyone,

I have an out-of-warranty Vizio E421VA that is not getting sound through the built-in speakers. The only sound that comes out is a very subtle high-pitched noise that disappears when the volume is turned all the way down or on mute. That high-pitched noise is constant when the volume is on, no matter what is playing on the TV. I tinkered with all the settings I could on the TV (turned speakers on/off, changed the speaker balance to left/right, turned off surround sound and the other special sound features). I've also tried resetting the TV to factory setting a couple...

Re: New Members - please post your introductions here

Hello everyone,

I'm new to the forum (and new to forums, in general, as far as being a registered member). I've learned lots from digging around and reading information given by others on here, and have enjoyed it quite a bit. I look forward to my time as a member and hopefully will be able to contribute something, however minor, at some point.