Has a capacitor blown up inside my Rdac?

[mzry]

Hey all,
 
I was checking out the PCB inside my Arcam Rdac because I was getting the 'clicking' issue a lot of people seem to have been getting. Then I noticed that capacitor C406 has either disintegrated or been removed:
 
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6vqgf6MYPD1OVFpZ2RzOWpPd2c
 
Do you guys recon this is something done by an engineer? I noticed one of the legs on a regulator chip underneath looks like it has been hand soldered.
 
Thanks,

 

[MindsMirror]

It's a decoupling cap for the voltage regulator. I don't know why an engineer would remove it without replacing it.
 
What happened to the regulator? I can't exactly tell because the picture is out of focus but I'd say it looks burnt. Maybe the absence of the cap caused additional stress and heat damage to it. If someone did resolder it, they may have knocked the cap off by mistake. The cap may have fallen off or been missed before soldering. Does it look like there was once a cap there? Are the solder balls on the pads smooth or indented with the shape of the cap? If the cap itself disintegrated, I would expect some more obvious signs of destruction.

 

[mzry]

The right hand leg of the regulator has a dab of pretty fresh looking solder on it (which is obviously done by a person) The capacitor section does have two bits of solder on each leg area, but yeah the cap is totally missing. It also wasn't inside the unit rattling around or anything...
 
I'm handy with a soldering iron but I think it's too small for me to fix without a very fine iron, which I don't have. I obviously have a warranty so maybe I'll just take it back to the shop.