Philips 963SA normal characteristics?

The capacitor upgrade is a single capacitor that is easy to change if you can solder and unsolder.

Get a Blackgate VK 150uf/350V. I got mine from www.referenceaudiomods.com. Replace the only large cap on the power supply board. It's easy to find. Make sure you keep the polarity the same. It's not hard at all. You will need a torx screwdriver to get into the unit. Those are the 5 pointed ones.

I heard immediate improvement, though the cap took at least 100 hours to break in. Had much tighter, richer bass and a much more natural overall presentation. Like it didn't have to work so hard.

Gregm and Mmrog, thanks a lot. So I'll give that mod a shot be4 blowing this thing off completely.

My other problem with this thing, is with the upsampling sounding a bit watery, unconvincing of real instruments. timbre different from unsampled, and is not even as convincing. Upsampling certainly has ovbious benefits of sounding more open, relaxed, and less digital, hard.

I had read somewhere concerning this that upsampling involves Digital Signal Processing, i.e. some kind of extrapolation process, which results in the lesser accuracy that's probably what I'm hearing. The same article said that hence, their company only doubles up to 88.2 kKz, as opposed to using DSP to extrapolate to 96 KHz or here, to 192 kHz.

Give it some time to break in. Usually 200-300 hours. I had mine for under 4 hundreds and I think it does a good job for it's price! It is a bit flat and uninvolving but that's Philips' characteristic. No, it was not a Japanese company but I think now part of it is own by Japanese?

For upgrading the inside stuffs? It's up to you. I decide to leave mine along and I moved it to my bedroom system.