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Pioneer doesn’t well handle mediocre chatter regarding its products, especially when the chatter is surrounding competition. For a few years now Pioneer has waged a war with the other large manufacturers for top honours within the highly competitive and contentious SQ sound-off arena. See, unlike the good old eighties and nineties, it’s no longer sufficient to produce ‘good’ products if one wants to win competitions for sound quality. To succeed, you need a source unit that can not only output an extremely clean sound but can also process that sound stream to remove any and all imperfections. Welcome to the Pioneer DEX-P99RS – one of the rare decks that can achieve this without the use of additional processors attached.
FLAG-BEARING PIONEERS
The DEX-P99RS is Pioneer’s latest offering in a long line of stunning flagship head units from the early P9, through the P90 and now onto the P99. It is capable of playing numerous media formats with clarity superior to many other decks on the market. The unit is designed to offer you complete control over every aspect of the source thanks to its extremely powerful processing chip set. Playback abilities include AM/FM radio and CD of course and extend to soft formats such as MP3, AAC and WMA (with variable bit rates from 8-320 kBit). On the subject of the latter; the deck also has a handy little process which Pioneer calls Sound Retrieval. This basically improves the quality of low bit rate MP3’s by retrieving compressed data and reconstructing it to more closely resemble the original score. Besides all the processing held within the confines of the unit, the DEX-P99RS also has the patented Pioneer ‘Bus’ plug on the rear, meaning all matter of things from external iPod and iPhone interfaces to DVD/CD changers and navigation can be added. A USB port is also included for the use of digital media devices.
The DEX-P99RS is a very clean unit and should be given its status. The motorized flip down face is smartly finished with a neat blend of brushed black aluminium and blackened Perspex and has a solid, strong feel unlike many other cheap and flimsy head units. Two rotary knobs are located to each side of the screen, the left being the main volume and mode controller while the right is the toggle knob that allows you to control all the deck’s abilities and adjustments.
Despite looking nothing like any other current Pioneer (the premium ones have always looked a little different) it is still very easy to familiarise yourself with. The open button is at the top right of the face and when it flips down it does so without much noise. I actually like the display itself, although I suspect I’ll be at odds with many young folk out there. There are no jumping dolphins, no race cars and no space shuttles blasting through into outer space. No, thankfully Pioneer (who introduced the jumping dolphins, just quietly) saw past this frivolity and realized that the kind of person who would purchase this deck would be just like me – someone who ‘listens’ to the music and ‘looks’ out the window. Therefore the display is black with simple white characters with even the buttons backlit in a soft white light. It can be inverted though if you get the itch for a little more colour. Overall it just looks like the Rolls Royce of head units rather than a two-pac racer from Japan. The controls can also be accessed via an equally clean-looking remote control which is actually wisely laid-out unlike previous models which had buttons everywhere. Even the remote has a central rotary commander although it is flush mounted. The feature repertoire is also impressive. Starting with the radio receiver, it is the latest Pioneer super tuner and provides you with a clean and powerful radio signal. There are three sets of six presets for FM and one set of six presets for AM. On the matter of sound processing abilities, you’ll be surprised to hear the unit doesn’t actually have many of the basics. Being a high-end audiophile deck, it offers balance and that is about it. There is no fader, no mix or anything else like that. However if you did want front and rear output you can set the crossovers flat (this will output a full 20Hz-20000Hz signal). There is also no internal amplifier which irradiates the risk of noise leaking into the signal.
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