I finally got round to unpacking my kit, and put together the LCDPS a few weeks ago, and actually tried the DAC over the weekend.

All is not well.

Primary Symptoms:

1) Very high current draw on VD - over 0.5 amp
2) No output on one channel

Because of (1), I have had to jumper out the 10Ohm resistors in LCDPS to get enough voltage to allow VD to regulate. If I adjust VD to be 6V, after a few seconds the on-board LDO reg goes into thermal shutdown oscillations, and the lock LED only glows faintly. During the first few seconds, the lock LED is at full brightness. If I blow on the board to cool it, or turn VD down to say 4.8V, the lock light is at full brightness.

One channel has seemingly normal output (I have only watched it on the scope, not listened yet), but the other has no audio signal; at maximum gain on the scope there is a few mv of digital hash visible, but that may well be a measurement artefact. This is measured directly at the Buffalo terminal block, in Voltage mode, with no external IV circuit at all.

What should I look at next to help diagnose the problem, as I assume this is not normal?

You were quite right, there is a short.

The left channel is the good one, and AVCCL has the normal voltage, while AVCCR sits at a few mV when the board is powered. Doing power off, in circuit probing shows a reasonable resistance between AVCCL and ground (more than 10K) while AVCCR has a near dead short to ground (<1 Ohm). It looks as if the short might be at the op-amp end of the trace.

The high drain from VD is presumably a side effect of various parts of the right channel output not being correctly biased. I have to hope the Sabre chip is not actually damaged, and will spring to life once the right voltages are present.

Fixing this probably requires the ability to solder SMD parts, which I have neither the equipment, the steadiness of hand or the eyesight for.

What is the procedure for returning a board for repair?