My first cd player was the Technics SL-P120 and was very happy with it. Then came the beast! The SL-P999 and until this day I haven’t heard anything close to it in performance and sound. Currently I have a Rotel, an SL-P720, I had a SL-P1300, a SL-P1200, Technics DVD-A10, etc and none approach the sound as this 999. I regret selling it many years ago! Great video 👍
My first CD player was that era - the entry level SL-P222. I loved it - this amazing new-to-me technology. All the fun of a cassette without the wow and flutter. After a while I realized it did not sound too as good as I hoped - so visited KJ West One with and hooked it up to an Arcam Delta Black Box 2 - which was a revelation. The black box came home.
Nice find. Being piss poor at about that time, I could only afford a Marantz CD50, which was actually my first CDP. Not even the souped up, supposedly much better, CD50SE. I remember adding an external DAC a couple of years later, an Audio Alchemy DDE v1.0, to turn it from multibit to bitstream (1bit delta-sigma, for the benefit of younger viewers)… Can’t recall if it sounded better or worse with it.. With my Musical Fidelity Synthesis integrated and Rogers Studio 1 speakers I probably wouldn't be able to tell anyway. Cheers from sunny and warm Athens, Greece.
I owned this from new and still working like a king. Best features ever made. It has peak search (hence makes sense to have VU meter) and is excellent for recording to tapes. I still uses the digital output with the SU-V100D amplifier. Sounds perfect.
I was lucky enough to find a technics SLP770 on a carboot for £15 with the remote control works a treat love it but not my favourite CD player in my collection that would be my marantz cd 63mk2 KI great video again
I very luckily have two of these. My original I bought new in ‘89 and one I picked up about 20 years ago for free. I love this model sounds great and was a workhorse in its day though now showing its mechanical age as my original player just stopped reading discs last week. Will do a deep dive to see if I can fix it. Also bought some Burr Brown PCM61 DAC Chip to swap out when I open it up and see what’s causing the disc read issues.
"I think my memory's going... I think my memory's going, because..." "You just said that". Comedy gold right there! Looking forward to the stand-up tour announcement soon gents :)
I owned a Technics SL P777 from 1989 to 1995 (when I upgraded to a Cyrus DAD7). My SL P777 looked exactly the same as this P999 - do you know what the difference is? I thought the SL P777 was a cracking CD player and it even had a surprising good headphone output! BTW the first CD I ever purchased was "Grace Under Pressure" by Rush (in October 1984). Great riff chaps!
The difference is that 999 has the TNRC ( Tecnics Non Resonant Compaund ) base, better specs ( S/N ratio, THD, Dynamics and channel separation ) and a few other options regarding functionality. Both are very nice and good sounding players.
Hi Mike and Dave. Really enjoy all your episodes. Thank you Mike for mentioning the Rush album: Grace under pressure. I have dug my copy out and turns out it’s a uk 1st press, with Masterdisk in the dead wax, in vgc. Excellent album. Kind regards from Robin
love those CD players , you could press the small buttons to select track of your choice , love the Vu meters too. Good to See you both at Bristol Hi -F- show too
When my Denon DCD1500mkIV started to skip in the late 90s I blind bought a Technics Bitstream player. I was attracted by its ability select tracks for recording to cassette (C30, C60, C90 go!). Biggest audio mistake ever, it sounded like dog dodo in comparison with the Denon. I kept the Technics solely to make cassettes (for the car) & I bought a NAD, much better. The Technics eventually went to the Sally Army. That said, my present CD player is a Panasonic DVDA-110 with beautiful sounding DVD Audio DACs. The lesson here is never blind buy audio gear!
I bought this in 1989. The first disc in was Laurie Anderson's 'Strange Angels' - also from that year. Two years later, I moved up to the Naim CDS. Despite their vinyl snobbishness, it turned out they could make a CD player after all. Strange that.
Technics components were quite underrated back in the day. But keep in mind, Japanese models were nicer, Technics cheeped out the rest of the world models. Still were nice but lacking few little things that separated them from a good component and a great component. I have converted a lot of my EU models by upgrading them with parts from the Japanese models. They became much more pleasing to both listen and look at! Also, just purchased the SL-P999 off of the Japanese auction and gonna do few mods to it. Can't wait to see and hear how it turns out.
It is funny, that the engineers in those days did use digital filtering a lot (with detrimental results) together with the now still highly praised multibit DACs, which we use now mostly without oversampling and digital filters of any kind, and even with passive I/V converting! In those days it would have been "mentally" not possible.
It is not funny. It is the victory of audiophoolia over science and reason. NOS and filterless is both theoretically and demonstrably wrong, yet there is a cult following of people who do not know better, think the distortion they are hearing is 'natural' and 'analog like' and are being taken for a ride by some manufacturers who just produce what is fashionable on any single day. Good thing the serious designers and brands amongst them call it for what it is.
@@razisn You may be right, in a theoretical sense. But the digital filters applied in the first place were all theoretically right too, but often sounded dreadful, because linearity did not correspond with phase and timing, and we do a lot better now. And I do disagree about the demonstrable bad sound quality of some NOS Dacs, because it simply is not true. They can (!) sound very good, in spite of some obvious technical flaws (which are normally corrected outside the DAC). The measurements normally made are not always correlating to what and how we hear - and that is an old and ongoing discussion among Audiophiles. As an audio professional who also works on the creation of the sound on the different media, I know how different and sometimes weird the artificial techniques can be to get the "natural sound" we then later admire in the recorded music. We need to continue to explore how and what we measure to get real and meaningful results.
@@klaushollinetz7494 Filterless produces distortion and artefacts. There is no ifs and buts about this. You like artefacts, distortion and edgy curves no problem with me, just don't say it is either natural or a better approximation of the analog signal.
@@razisn Unfortunately, also digital filters create distortion and artefacts, there is simply no way around. There are several ways to overcome the principal problems in digital to analog conversion, and they all have their goods and bads. Once badly but probably perfectly linear filtered in the digital domain, there is no way to recreate the timing and phase correct signal anymore. - Or do you really think one of these perfectly linear but pre-ringing filters do represent the analog signal better? Do you really know how digital filters actually work? Since the beginning of audio digitalization, we have come a long way developing filters of any kind, but there are still great differences between DACs, although the engineers wanted to make us believe that "digital" was and is always perfect for all those years. It simply is not.
Was there a Naim cd player available at this price point in 1989? Curious how they would compare, both sonically & at holding their value to this day. Love your channel, as always.
I have 2 of 999's and a 770. The VU display is different between the two models. The 770 & 777 are 18 bit where as the 990 & 999 are 20 bit sampling. The fast forward & reverse cueing wheels function differently between the 999 and 990 as well as the 777 vs 770. The stange thing is that it has a disc indicator when a CD is inserted, but why, as you can tell there is a CD loaded when the track information is displayed It is very quick at track selection with its linear drive motor for the lazer.
The main thing i take from this review is that when the SLP 999 was using its own dac you said you didn't notice a massive sound quality drop from when using it with the chord Hugo dac ? Now that is a mega selling point for me
What I don't get is when people swap the SL-P999 mech( when there's is broken) for one of a lower spec for say a P350.. then aren't you losing all the high end features like the 20 bit dac of the P999??? Or is that all done on the board and not the mech?
Had the 999 for many years. Played everyday for hours for about 7 or 8 years until I bought a Marantz 63 Ki Sig.... bad move...I sold the Sig and used the 999 with a MF X24k dac. Then bought a MF Xray. Sold the 999. It was a solid player. Better than the Sig but not as good as the Xray.
My first cd player was the Technics SL-P120 and was very happy with it. Then came the beast! The SL-P999 and until this day I haven’t heard anything close to it in performance and sound. Currently I have a Rotel, an SL-P720, I had a SL-P1300, a SL-P1200, Technics DVD-A10, etc and none approach the sound as this 999. I regret selling it many years ago! Great video 👍
My first CD player was that era - the entry level SL-P222. I loved it - this amazing new-to-me technology. All the fun of a cassette without the wow and flutter. After a while I realized it did not sound too as good as I hoped - so visited KJ West One with and hooked it up to an Arcam Delta Black Box 2 - which was a revelation. The black box came home.
You guys don't get enough love!!
Nice find. Being piss poor at about that time, I could only afford a Marantz CD50, which was actually my first CDP. Not even the souped up, supposedly much better, CD50SE. I remember adding an external DAC a couple of years later, an Audio Alchemy DDE v1.0, to turn it from multibit to bitstream (1bit delta-sigma, for the benefit of younger viewers)… Can’t recall if it sounded better or worse with it.. With my Musical Fidelity Synthesis integrated and Rogers Studio 1 speakers I probably wouldn't be able to tell anyway. Cheers from sunny and warm Athens, Greece.
Sold! I dont have any cds in the house anymore, and even I was considering looking for one 'just in case'.
I owned this from new and still working like a king. Best features ever made. It has peak search (hence makes sense to have VU meter) and is excellent for recording to tapes. I still uses the digital output with the SU-V100D amplifier. Sounds perfect.
It can be really cool to have meters on a CD to see just how compressed or how dynamic the mastering is.
Won't be 200 quid any more!
I was lucky enough to find a technics SLP770 on a carboot for £15 with the remote control works a treat love it but not my favourite CD player in my collection that would be my marantz cd 63mk2 KI great video again
I have a Technics SL-P620A CD Player which also has VU meter. It is a superb player; grippy bass with lovely musicality.
I very luckily have two of these. My original I bought new in ‘89 and one I picked up about 20 years ago for free. I love this model sounds great and was a workhorse in its day though now showing its mechanical age as my original player just stopped reading discs last week. Will do a deep dive to see if I can fix it. Also bought some Burr Brown PCM61 DAC Chip to swap out when I open it up and see what’s causing the disc read issues.
I now see why Naim persevered with TDA1541 multibit, when bitstream was available.
"I think my memory's going... I think my memory's going, because..." "You just said that".
Comedy gold right there! Looking forward to the stand-up tour announcement soon gents :)
Refreshing vlog as always 😇👍🌈
I owned a Technics SL P777 from 1989 to 1995 (when I upgraded to a Cyrus DAD7). My SL P777 looked exactly the same as this P999 - do you know what the difference is? I thought the SL P777 was a cracking CD player and it even had a surprising good headphone output! BTW the first CD I ever purchased was "Grace Under Pressure" by Rush (in October 1984). Great riff chaps!
The difference is that 999 has the TNRC ( Tecnics Non Resonant Compaund ) base, better specs ( S/N ratio, THD, Dynamics and channel separation ) and a few other options regarding functionality. Both are very nice and good sounding players.
@@technics-n-thuiast8346 I believe the 777 had the TNRC base also but only an 18 bit DAC
Hi Mike and Dave.
Really enjoy all your episodes.
Thank you Mike for mentioning the Rush album: Grace under pressure. I have dug my copy out and turns out it’s a uk 1st press, with Masterdisk in the dead wax, in vgc. Excellent album.
Kind regards from Robin
Brilliant Riff, love these videos, the content is spot on.
love those CD players , you could press the small buttons to select track of your choice , love the Vu meters too. Good to See you both at Bristol Hi -F- show too
Likewise!
When my Denon DCD1500mkIV started to skip in the late 90s I blind bought a Technics Bitstream player. I was attracted by its ability select tracks for recording to cassette (C30, C60, C90 go!). Biggest audio mistake ever, it sounded like dog dodo in comparison with the Denon. I kept the Technics solely to make cassettes (for the car) & I bought a NAD, much better. The Technics eventually went to the Sally Army. That said, my present CD player is a Panasonic DVDA-110 with beautiful sounding DVD Audio DACs. The lesson here is never blind buy audio gear!
You said it!
Nice looking unit
I had the technics Slp 500 in 1986 then a SLP990 in 1988 then this 999 in 1990 brilliant in its day 👌
I bought this in 1989. The first disc in was Laurie Anderson's 'Strange Angels' - also from that year.
Two years later, I moved up to the Naim CDS. Despite their vinyl snobbishness, it turned out they could make a CD player after all. Strange that.
Technics components were quite underrated back in the day. But keep in mind, Japanese models were nicer, Technics cheeped out the rest of the world models. Still were nice but lacking few little things that separated them from a good component and a great component. I have converted a lot of my EU models by upgrading them with parts from the Japanese models. They became much more pleasing to both listen and look at! Also, just purchased the SL-P999 off of the Japanese auction and gonna do few mods to it. Can't wait to see and hear how it turns out.
It is funny, that the engineers in those days did use digital filtering a lot (with detrimental results) together with the now still highly praised multibit DACs, which we use now mostly without oversampling and digital filters of any kind, and even with passive I/V converting! In those days it would have been "mentally" not possible.
It is not funny. It is the victory of audiophoolia over science and reason. NOS and filterless is both theoretically and demonstrably wrong, yet there is a cult following of people who do not know better, think the distortion they are hearing is 'natural' and 'analog like' and are being taken for a ride by some manufacturers who just produce what is fashionable on any single day. Good thing the serious designers and brands amongst them call it for what it is.
@@razisn You may be right, in a theoretical sense. But the digital filters applied in the first place were all theoretically right too, but often sounded dreadful, because linearity did not correspond with phase and timing, and we do a lot better now. And I do disagree about the demonstrable bad sound quality of some NOS Dacs, because it simply is not true. They can (!) sound very good, in spite of some obvious technical flaws (which are normally corrected outside the DAC). The measurements normally made are not always correlating to what and how we hear - and that is an old and ongoing discussion among Audiophiles. As an audio professional who also works on the creation of the sound on the different media, I know how different and sometimes weird the artificial techniques can be to get the "natural sound" we then later admire in the recorded music. We need to continue to explore how and what we measure to get real and meaningful results.
@@razisn Well said.
@@klaushollinetz7494 Filterless produces distortion and artefacts. There is no ifs and buts about this. You like artefacts, distortion and edgy curves no problem with me, just don't say it is either natural or a better approximation of the analog signal.
@@razisn Unfortunately, also digital filters create distortion and artefacts, there is simply no way around. There are several ways to overcome the principal problems in digital to analog conversion, and they all have their goods and bads. Once badly but probably perfectly linear filtered in the digital domain, there is no way to recreate the timing and phase correct signal anymore. - Or do you really think one of these perfectly linear but pre-ringing filters do represent the analog signal better? Do you really know how digital filters actually work? Since the beginning of audio digitalization, we have come a long way developing filters of any kind, but there are still great differences between DACs, although the engineers wanted to make us believe that "digital" was and is always perfect for all those years. It simply is not.
"Your baiting" careful now. A man of your age can hurt himself.
Was there a Naim cd player available at this price point in 1989? Curious how they would compare, both sonically & at holding their value to this day. Love your channel, as always.
I had the Technics Slp 1000 it was fantastic,looks the same as that
I'm sitting here looking at my Technics P555 I found at Pawn shop for $12. It worked perfectly when I got it home.
A classic 1 bit dac7 based DAC by Mission called the dac5 still sounds amazing.
Hi, did you both manage to get to the Bristol hifi show?
Yes, it was fun.
I have 2 of 999's and a 770. The VU display is different between the two models. The 770 & 777 are 18 bit where as the 990 & 999 are 20 bit sampling. The fast forward & reverse cueing wheels function differently between the 999 and 990 as well as the 777 vs 770. The stange thing is that it has a disc indicator when a CD is inserted, but why, as you can tell there is a CD loaded when the track information is displayed
It is very quick at track selection with its linear drive motor for the lazer.
They are 600 at the moment thanks to this pair no doubt..
Sorry!
Mike
The main thing i take from this review is that when the SLP 999 was using its own dac you said you didn't notice a massive sound quality drop from when using it with the chord Hugo dac ? Now that is a mega selling point for me
Hello. Does this player read CDRW discs?
Hi, I haven't used CD-RW for yonks, so didn't try. I know for a fact it plays CD-Rs, though.
@@MrVinylista Thanks
What I don't get is when people swap the SL-P999 mech( when there's is broken) for one of a lower spec for say a P350.. then aren't you losing all the high end features like the 20 bit dac of the P999??? Or is that all done on the board and not the mech?
Had the 999 for many years. Played everyday for hours for about 7 or 8 years until I bought a Marantz 63 Ki Sig.... bad move...I sold the Sig and used the 999 with a MF X24k dac. Then bought a MF Xray. Sold the 999. It was a solid player. Better than the Sig but not as good as the Xray.