Found the likely culprit! That chip near the 3.5mm with the black dot gets insanely hot. The 4.4mm still works fine. Anyone know if this is an easy fix?

Here's two images: https://imgur.com/a/hp8TR8S https://imgur.com/a/JgrAPEp

Yeah I'll ask them and RME but, honestly, if it's anything over $200, I probably won't be fixing them

Which ADI-2 model are you talking about?
The 1st imgur link that you posted leads to nowhere on imgur...
The 2nd one only shows one chip; from this, it is not recognizable.

This information is not unimportant to draw a good decision on whether to repair this unit and whether to keep or upgrade.

Here some information about different models, or in short, simply look at the front of your device ...

https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=32506

But as Waedi mentioned, a damaged unit has no real value. You can expect to get approximately 65-80% of the street price of RME devices due to quality and long firmware and driver support. The final price depends on the condition and how old it is.
The sound quality was excellent for all devices of this series. Differences are more in terms of features.
Even a few dB more or less SNR has no impact on sound quality; at least nobody on the RME forum had that experience.
So it could even be that it makes sense to simply keep the unit after repair.

I would get a repair quote from an RME service partner in your region.
I would guess that it is in the range that you might get a new board. With that, the device would be like new.
But even with a repair of your current board, you would still have a fantastic unit in return, as the sound quality is excellent for all models of this series.

Big Phones connector (TRS) is 6.35 mm. 4.4 mm is Pentaconn...

This is clearly an ADI-2 DAC, the only one with 3.5 mm IEM output.

The broken chip is an OPA1622, not expensive, but not easy to change, because of a thermal pad below it and a 10 layer PCB. Just a solder iron won't do it...

Thanks everyone, yes it's the ADI-2 FS AKM version. I updated the first link. The chip still gets very hot so I'm not going to be using it but reaching out to synthax to check the repair price.

Interesting, I found this thread: https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=42674. I do have a soldering iron so I could at least remove the chip if I want to keep using it /;

I would avoid it, you could damage the board. Unless you have enought experience and propper tools...

Sure, it can be done, if one has skills....

Still, OP considers to send it for repair, if price is reasonable. So, maybe better not to risk the damage...

Power is pin 2+4 (start counting at the dot lower left in the photo).
As far as I can see it’s connected to board layers from underneath.

One would need to trace where the possible decouplig elements are located and remove them.
I don’t see a significant advantage in this approach, compared to removing the chip.

What’s puzzling me is that the DC protection (the bigger white block, a relay) did not protect the IEM.
But maybe it was disabled in the menu - one should never do that unless it’s needed for special purposes like measurments.

A relatively foolproof way removing the chip:
• Bend a piece of 0.5 – 1 mm thick wire to a square that snug-fits around the chip. Leave some sticking up as a handle.
• Solder it to the chip’s pins and the 4 pads directly left and right of the chip.
• Now, with some excess solder, heat the whole arrangement until the chip comes loose.
• When loose, shift it to the side on the empty space of the board, then remove it.
• Clean the board from possible solder-bridges between pads.

Is it because I never updated the firmware? https://www.synthax.co.uk/latest/2022/0 … re-update/

But the protection should've still kicked in right?

Interesting, I hope the ADI-2 successor will have some protection for IEM out. My er4xr could've definitely used it lol.