Thanks for all your help on this post. Bought the iFi for my daughter x-mas 09. I was blown away by the sound. She left for college and came home and it was caput. Believe she left it on. Recently decided to have a go at it and found your posts. Sure enough, the caps were blown. 12 dollars to digiking for 5 caps and 75 to the repair guy and I got power. Only thing is the dock is very squirrley, Basically , you have to hold,tape and wiggle the i pad and/ or i phone to get it to fire on all three speakers. Got to hold your mouth right too. Bought an aux cable and the thing is perfect. No glitches and sounds as great as ever. Volumne control works fine. Both aux inputs work equally as well. I suppose the only purpose the dock has otherwise is to charge the device.
I have a theory that the pins inside the connector(where the device slides on) get worn or bent, either from use or people not using the proper plastic widget. Same thing is wrong with my wife"s i-home. Would just like to get your thoughts on this.
Would have been a cheap fix if I had the skill and tools to do the solder job. Again, thanks for all the insight,