A Review of The Denon DN-S5000 Single table-top CD-deck

Blow! And Rats! A mistake in the review already – Did I just say this was a single CD-deck....well, it sort of, and sort of isn’t...in some ways it’s the same as having two CD-decks, and two of everything in your CD-collection. Be sure to read up about this units Alpha Track and Hot Disc features, covered later in this review.

The DN-S5000 is essentially one of Denons world-beating DN-D9000 Dual CD Rack-mountable CD-decks, sliced in half, and with a large motorised rotating platter on the top and a few extra’s such as “Mirror mix” added. The only features dissected out in the surgery are the 9000’s 6 on-board effects of Delay, Flanger, 2 x Filters, and 2 x Transform effects.

Favourite, essential features are still retained from the DND-9000 including Alpha Track, which allows you to Cue, Play, Scratch and Mix two different tracks from the SAME CD at the same time, at different pitches, into different channels of your mixer. The 4 seamless loops, and seamless splicing is there too, as are the 2 x 15 second CD-quality samplers. However, some additional surprises are in-store for the proud owner of a DN-S5000.

The unit weighs in at a robust 5.7kgs, which is 12lbs 9ozs for Mikees benefit. The unit is compact at a mere 285mm wide, 111.5mm high, and 327mm deep, from front to back. Its power consumption of a mere 18watts will cause no headaches in power supply capacities, unless you’re planning on plugging 178 of them into the same plug socket!

“Just Connecting you now...”
The connection on the rear of the unit are really well recessed, and I mean REALLY well recessed – its as if someones taken a Rubik Cube sized bite out the back of the player. I have some very large, heavy duty, gold plated Phono leads which sometimes cause me physical problems in some units, but not so in this case – I was able to push the 5000 right back against the wall, and the 5000’s casing touched before any part of the plugs did – neat. The recessed section is home to no less than 10 connections – I know, I know, you were expecting 2 yeah? Left and Right. Here’s a run down of the connections.

1 & 2) Main Left and right (You knew they had to be there somewhere)

3 & 4) Left and right ALPHA TRACK – Yes, while your playing say, Track 7 out to your audience, you can cue up, pitch adjust, and play ANY other track on the same CD, into a different channel of your mixer. These are the separate sockets which allow you to do this.

5) Digital output for Main track – A phono/SPDIF socket

6) Digital output for Alpha track – A phono/SPDIF socket

7 & 8) Fader Start sockets for Main Track, and Alpha Track – using a 3.5mm jack socket each

9 & 10) X-effect sockets In/Out.

The X-Effect sockets were originally intended as a link for accessing the more advanced functions of Denon CD-decks, using special X-effect controls on a Denon Mixer, such as the DN-X800. However, you can also use the X-effect sockets to link two DN-S5000 CD-decks up together – which presents a very interesting and again, world beating piece of very useful functionality, which I’ll cover in a few moments.



Round Round Baby
The most notable feature of this compact unit, is the motorized platter. This can be made even more notable by adding an ordinary vinyl single record to it (adaptor provided), or by adding your own custom slipmats under the see-thru surface disc. Making your own slip mats for the DN-S5000 is as easy as printing them off of your own PC and simply trimming to size – so, having your own logo spinning around infront of you, is inexpensive and easy to achieve.

Loading a CD into the motorised front slot, and hitting the internally illuminated Play button, will start the platter rotating, ready for you to mix, scratch or cue the track, directly.

The outside edge of the platter, is an angled silver design with vertical stripes machined into the edges. Just like on an old vinyl record deck, the silver edges, and the platter itself, can be dabbed with your fingers during a mix to help bring two tracks in sync with each other. All movements of the platter are detected by an optical sensor hidden under the platter, so, if scratching, even the slightest twiddle or subtlest flare from the lightest touch, will be faithfully reproduced during a scratching performance.

Nudging the platter with your fingertips, is one way to either slow the playing track down, or speed it up briefly, in order to beatmatch with another track, however, you’ve also got Pitch bend + and – buttons to allow button-accurate nudging of the playing track. A second set of Pitch bend + and – buttons are provided for manipulating the Alpha track also.

To the rear left of the platter, is The Source control, which allows you to choose what you’d like the platter to control – The main track, the Alpha track, or the Sampler. Next to this, is a two way flick switch called Scratch Direction – Set the switch to “Both” and move the platter back and forth. You’ll hear the scratch sounds as you’d expect. However, flick the switch to “Forward” and you’ll only hear the scratch sounds as you move the platter forward – no sound is heard as you move the platter back. This simple idea means that no matter how fast you manipulate the disc for “baby scratches” you and your audience will only hear the bit you want them to hear, not the back cue. Normally, you’d have to hurl the crossfader over to the other side of the mixer at the end of every forward move, or wrench a channel fader down into the pit of its slot, only to reverse that movement a fraction of a second later, ready for the next forward part...1000’s of crossfaders were harmed in the making of this move. Not now though – some impressive rhythms can be produced by simple alternations of the Scratch direction switch, between Both and Forward.


I can see clearly now...
At the back left corner of the main surface, is the display window, which covers a multi-line, multi-coloured display. Now, whilst the window of the display is flush to the surface of the player, the actual display underneath has been thoughtfully angled very slightly forward, so that the actual display can be seen by you, the DJ as easily as possible – if they’d simply angled the window also, so the back of the window was higher than the front, any overhead lighting would have been angled into your eyes. A simple, but effective piece of DJ-like thinking – possibly spawned from Denon’s considerable interaction with the DJ community.

The display shows you all the usual information such as Minutes, Seconds and Frames (One frame is 1/75th of a second), together with the track number – and even text information from compatible CD’s, CR-R’s, and even CD-RW’s. Also on the display are coloured, graphic indicators of each of the CD-decks four seamless loops, its 4 hot starts, its playback mode (Continuous or Single – single is where the player automatically pauses for you inbetween tracks – handy if you’ve a tendency to leave your faders open) . Also the status of the players excellent “Key Adjust” (formerly known as “Master Tempo”) feature, which means that songs don’t sound like chipmunks when speeded up, or Darth Vader, when you slow them down. The right hand side of the display is home to the platter effects indictors – if any of these are lit, you’ve got a platter effect on. Lets not keep you in suspenders, sorry, I mean suspense any longer – lets mention the platter effects...

The Platter effects.....
No, I’m not referring to the way young lovers feel when “Smoke gets in your eyes” gets played... The DN-S5000 has several platter effects which can be applied singularly, or in multiples in some cases. Platter effects are turned off and turned on...(oh err missus) by the buttons toward the 5’oclock position of the platter.

Drag Start – When you start the track, it can be made to sound as though its starting off at a slower speed than needed, and gradually builds up to the right speed – like an old record deck.

Brake – The opposite of Drag Start. When you press STOP, the track doesn’t stop instantly, instead it slowss toooo aaaaaaa sssstooopoooppppppp as if you’d pulled the plug out the wall, or turned a vinyl deck off mid-play. A scratching trick that’s almost as old as “Fresh” or “ahhhh” (although nothings quite that old – Yawn!)

Echo – Clever! With echo selected when you hit STOP the track stops but a BPM sync’d echo tails off over a few seconds, in perfect time to the beat of the track.

Reverse – With reverse selected , everytime that you hit the Play button, the play direction reverses – great for adding a little remix flavour to instrumental breaks. Playing forward the display would show 1m: 30secs, 1min 31, 1 min 32 etc,etc....hit reverse and it’ll go 1min 31, 1min 30, 1min 29 etc... Unlike the reverse feature on one or two of the last vinyl decks, the DN-S5000’s reverse feature is instant, theres no time, or BPM sync lost waiting for any vinyl to slow down from one direction, stop, and then set off in the other direction

Dump – a very useful feature both for adding an occasional remix highlight to a track and also superb at disguising rude words within otherwise usable tracks. Quite difficult to explain though – but here goes... When you press Dump, the sound is reversed, when you press dump again to come out of Dump mode, the forward sound resumes from the point on the disc that you would have got to by then, had you never pressed dump in the first place.... with me? Nah! Didn’t think so... Heres an example. Lets say that the word “Shack” is a rude word (stick the word “Radio” in front of it and it can occasionally offend, so I’m told). And now consider the lyrics of “The Love Shack, it’s a little known place where...”. If we play that section and hit dump before, and then after the word “Shack”, the audience would hear.... “The Love evoL , it’s a little know place where...”... (see...told you it was difficult to explain...)


As you like it....
Nows as good a time as any to mention two things firstly the DN-S5000’s Preset Menu.

Now, we all have our favourite preferences as to how we’d like things to behave. For example, many CD-decks I’ve used, will let you choose either the time that has elapsed, or the time that is remaining until the end of the track. Theres usually a button which allows you to change it from whatever option it reverts to on power-up. And that’s a snag with some other decks – every time you switch them on, you’ve got to change that setting, and this setting etc, to get things back to the way you like them. Not so on the DN-S5000. In the presets menu, you simply tell it how you want it to perform, and which functions you want set in which way, and it remembers them, every time you switch the unit on. Options in the preset menu include:

Auto Cue on/off – We all know that music rarely starts at 00mins:00seconds:00frames on a CD track. Autocue, automatically looks for the first sound in the track and cues to that, rather than 00:00:00.

Pitch range 4%,10%,16% or 24%. - The DN-S5000 offers several different pitch ranges, including 50% and 100% which you can switch between at a moments notice – here in Presets, you can choose which one you’d like the unit to be in when it powers up.

Platter Mode Effects – If you’d like the Platter effects such as Drag Start, Brake, Echo etc, to be switched each time you power up, you can.

Auto load time – Every worked with a CD-player that only keeps its drawer open for a few seconds, then invariably sucks the disc back in just as you make a bid to grab it? Yeah, me too. Here you can choose 10, 15, 20, 30, 60 or 90 seconds before the unit pulls a disc that you’ve ejected (but left sitting in the loading slot) back in. If you’d rather it didn’t do this ever – you can simply switch auto-load off, altogether.

End of Message – Would you like the CD-decks display to start flashing at you as a warning when the playing track nears the end? Here you can set a warning period of anywhere from 10 to 90 seconds – no excuse for giving them “a little bit more of that track you’ve just been dancin’ too” now...

Power on play on/off – Hand for the Christmas season, if you’re block booked with the gear set-up for days at a time – this option start playing the CD inside, a few seconds after the power is turned on. Put your entire sound system on an external time switch and have background music start up hours before you get there.

Fader Start mode – many mixers nowadays have fader start when you move the crossfader, or the channel faders – but what would you like the DN-S5000 to do when the fader is slide down to off? Would you like it to Pause where it is (handy for Musical Statues), or would you like it to return to the cue point, where you cued the track up to in your headphones? This latter option is great for remixing – you can st, st, st stutter the track in, simply by using the moving the fader on the mixer.

Single/Continuous: Many CD-decks offer single track play, which stops the playback when the track ends, but normally, you’ve got to remember to switch the feature over to that setting. Forget to switch it on, and you normally only remember when you’ve left a fader open, and the beginning of Darudes: Sandstorm, starts whining its way over the top of “Lady in Red”... opps. With this setting, you can choose “Single” as the default, and never worry about it again.

The way that YOU choose to have all these presets (and there are more) set, will then become the default for your DN-S5000 – but you’ve always got the option to change any of functions at any time during the night – So, if for example, you like to have “Single Play”, but want “Continuous Play” during the buffet, while you nip over to the bar, and out to the loo, and over to the buffet yourself – (if invited, of course), then you simply press the “Single/Cont” button of the unit at the beginning of the buffet and that’s all there is to it. The next time you switch the unit back on, it’ll be back in single mode, just the way you like it.

“Hot Starts Baby tonight...”(Apologies to Donna Summer)
Toward the upper right of the machine, are 4 glowing buttons – labelled A1, A2, A3 and .... (wait for it) A5...just kidding... A4... These buttons do several things, but primarily are Hot Starts. Hot starts, or Hot Cues as some older units call them, are a way of instantly jumping to a chosen point with in a track, whether the CD-deck is playing already, or not. On the DN-S5000 you can set the 4 hot starts to ANY point on the disc, not just in the same track – so, say you’re down to your last song of the evening – and you’ve decided to open it up to the audience as an instant request spot – while the other deck was playing, you’ve loaded up “Best smootchies in the world ever – volume 26”, cued up 4 nice tracks in your headphones and hit A1 for “Angels”, A2 for “I did it my way”, A3 for “New York, New York” and A4 for “I’ve had the time of my life”. You open the fader on the mixer and take votes for the last song – the clapometer goes into the red for “I’ve had the time of my life”, so you hit A4 and start packing up... no tricky track changes, no hitting “next track” 6 times whilst nattering on the mic to cover the gap... its there.

Hot starts can also be set and used “Live” as the track is playing, and it couldn’t be easier to do. Unlike some other CD-decks, theres no “record” button to press first, before, and after loading any of the 4 hot starts, you simply hit A1 or A4 etc,etc, to load it. This makes it possible to load individual beats into A1 through A4 consecutively – great for creating fill-in’s and other remix tricks. Simlarly, if you want to start a song off at the instrumental breakdown that’s in the middle of the track and then jump to the 1st beat of the beginning of the song, you’re only a press away from doing that.


Super Dooper looper love...
Seamless loops, truly great things. Lets say that you’ve put the ordinary 3 minute long radio version of a song on, and the dancefloor has suddenly filled to bursting...they’re cramming up, they’re nudging your light screens, and squeezing arms over to your speakers to put their drinks on...you’re feeling great, and so are they – the problem is, theres only 90 seconds of this fabulous song left. Shame.

Never mind “Shame”, you wait for the 1st beat after the chorus, and hit A1, to set the beginning of loop1, you wander over to your CD’s, choose the next track, take a swig of your water on the rocks, sing along with the audience on the next chorus, and then, on the 1st beat after what would normally have been the last chorus, you hit B1 to end the loop...seamlessly, you’ve added a loop and the audience are happy for longer – a few minutes later, you decide that the audience are ready to move on, and you casually nudge the “Loop Exit” button, which doesn’t have to be done on the beat. The “loop” icon on the display breaks apart graphically to show that the loop, wont loop this time, and low and behold the track now plays normally, as if it had never heard of loops.

Similarly, you can set loops up in your headphones before playing the track out to the audience. For example: The bride and groom have told you that they’re ready for their first dance in 10 minutes. Ten minutes later, you check that they’re both in the room, you give them the rousing mic build-up and introduction calling them up to the dancefloor, and hit play...argh...Uncle Jeffs suddenly accosted them on their way and wants to give the bride a hug – there goes your perfect timing for the intro finishing just as they gently merge into each other arms as the first lyrics cut in.... With loops you can set up a perfect loop in your headphones say between 10 seconds and 30 seconds on the track (with the vocals starting at say 31 seconds)...the track will play from 00:00:00 as normal, all the way up to 30 seconds, then it will seamless loop back to 10 seconds, play though to 30 seconds, back to 10...etc,etc. Uncle Jeff (who, you find out later, isn’t really her Uncle, but always liked her to call him that) finally allows them on their way, so, you hit Loop exit and, the moments saved.

Everything you’ve just read about on seamless loops is possible with just one loop – most Cd-deck have got one loop – The Denon DN-S5000....has 4 seamless loops. This means that you could set up a loop on the intro of a track (for easy mixing in, from the previous track), a loop on the chorus, a loop on the instrumental breakdown, and a loop near the end for mixing out of....thats a whole lotta looping going on, and its you that’s in control of when each of those loops exits.

More Hot stuff...“Hot Disc” is a feature specific to the DN-S5000 and its got plenty of uses. Now, as you’d expect from a classy product like a Denon, if you push the Eject button while the CD inside is playing – it wont eject the disc, since silence is a scary thing to a DJ, and not favoured much by audiences either. However, if you press and hold the eject button down for more than 3 seconds, the DN-S5000 loads in the next 35 seconds of track (in about 4 seconds) and spits the CD out, and carries on playing – with a countdown timer on the display. Now 35 seconds isn’t a huge amount of time, about one sixth of a song? 32 beats of a dance track? Enough time to load a different CD and cue up a track?, well, yes to all these, but...35 seconds is also more than enough time to set up a seamless loop of say 4, 8, 16, or 32 bars and mix your next track, from a different disk, into that loop. You almost don’t need two DN-S5000’s.

I’ve done a riverboat disco a few times where the amount of set-up space was basically a shelf, and not a very wide one at that either. I took along one DN-S5000, one mixer, and simply used Alpha track to go from one track on a CD to another, and Hot disc to go from disc to disc. Hot disc could also be used if you’re using your main deck as a constant backing tune, and you want to swap CD’s in the other deck, overlaying 3 sounds off of 3 CD’s (or more) altogether.


Oi! Cut that out!
Some songs are just too long – in fact, talk to any village hall caretaker, and he’ll tell you that every single last song of the night is too long...but how do you play a 4 minute song, in a 3 minute gap – especially when the ending 30 seconds of the song are so distinctive, everyone will moan loudly if you simply fade the track off early. “This sounds like a job for Seamless Splice...”

With a quick press and hold of the “Splice” button, the A1 and A2 buttons change colour to yellow – showing that they’re in seamless splice mode. Now, in your headphones, you can set the beginning ,and the end of a whole chunk of the track that you want to remove. For example: In Robbie Williams: Angels, there are (at least) two parts where he says .... “and through it aaaaaaaalllllll, she offers me protection” (I though the man was supposed to bring his own protection)...so, you can easily splice out the bit between the first “and through it “ and the second “aaaaaaaalllll, she offers me....”, and no-ones any the wiser – not even the caretaker whos just about to call the speaking clock, just to re-enforce the fact that he thinks its time for his Ovaltine.

Thanks for the memory...
There are a number of other things that the DN-S5000 remembers even after you turn its power off...Memo points – and each DN-S5000 has 5000 memo points. What are memo points? Oh! Well...Memo points are really clever.

We’ve already read how you can set up cue points, hot starts, seamless loops, seamless splices and all sorts of other wonderful things that make the DJ’s life easier and the night run smoother. Shame that we’ve gotta loose all those settings when we switch it all off at 1am... well... we don’t have to. Any loops, cue points, splices etc that you’ve set on a track can be saved into one of the DN-S5000’s 5000 memo points. The next time you put a CD in the drive, that you’ve previously saved some info about eg: a couple of loops, a splice etc, the DN-S5000’s display flashes the word “Memo”. If you then choose the track that’s got memo points on it, the “memo” word stops flashing and the display says “Load Memo points?” – pushing the “yes” button, brings up the word “loading” and a couple of seconds later, all your stored memo points for that track are loaded back in automatically. All the seamless loops, the cue points, the splices – The business !

On my units, I’ve got splice versions of most of the common “night enders”, often with one, or two splices memo’d for them – If I want to end with Abba’s 4 minute classic sing-along of “thank you for the music” and I’ve only got 2 minutes, I use both saved splice points, if I’ve got the luxury of 3 minutes, I’ll only use one of the splices. There, never have a 01:02am finish again.

Aha! I hear you cry, (and I’m guessing, you’re not requesting “Take on me” from a certain 80’s boys band), “What happens if I add memos to a CD in drive –A-, but then insert the CD into drive –B- - only the drive that I’ve stored the memo on will recognise the disc.”. You’d be absolutely right on any other make of cd-decks, however, with the aid of a simple (cheap) stereo 3.5mm jack lead, if you connect the two DN-S5000’s together using their X-effect connectors on the back – Both CD-decks will recognise each others memo points – that’s 10,000 memo points recognised by both decks, simultaneously, and instantly.

A free sample...
Well, not free/three samples but two samplers anyway. Both of the DN-S5000’s two 15 second samplers can be played singularly, looped, reversed ,and have their beginning and end points trimmed. A creative feature of both samplers is that they record their input from the final stages of the DN-S5000’s output – therefore if you start one of the samplers recording, and perform a 15 second scratch routine on the platter, then the sampler will record the scratch sections, not just the normal playback of the track. The same goes for using the platter effects which we discussed earlier such as Brake, Drag Start, Reverse etc. This means that you could add, for example, a brake effect to the end of a songs chorus, as the song falls into an instrumental breakdown – or add some sampled tricky scratching into your already detailed mix, simply by doing the scratching into the sampler in advance and then hitting the sampler playback button when you need it.

The samplers can also be scratched using the motorised platter – which means that you can scratch one notable part of a track over itself, or scratch a clip from one CD, over the backing track of another – and of course you could make the backing track last forever, for non-stop practice, using one of the DN-S5000’s 4 seamless loops.

Another interesting point, is that the sampler output is through the Alpha track sockets on the back of the unit, which means that your samples will come through on a different channel on your mixer, allowing you to easily control the volume, EQ and effects on the sample, without affecting the original channel.

Upon reflection...
Mirror mix is effectively an easy way of reproducing an old turntablist trick called Beatjuggling. On Vinyl, beat-juggling would be achieved by having two copies of the same track, and running one copy a fraction of a second behind the other copy. So, if the track had lyrics of “In the mix”, a few quick, alternating flicks of the crossfader would bring you “In, In, the, the, mix, mix”, with each repeated word coming through on a different channel of the mixer – allowing you to add different EQ, or other effects to each channel, eg: “IN, in, THE, the, MIX, mix”. Mirror mix allows you to set how delayed the mirror’d output is, in simple beats eg: Delayed by Half a beat, delayed by one beat, delayed by two beats etc.

Its an MP3-for all.
If for either legal, financial or reliability issues, you’ve not ventured down the lap-top route – you’ve probably thought how nice it would be to transfer all your music down into a 10th of its size (or smaller) by converting it to MP3 (with SG6 license and permission of course - see “The Answer” thread, on DJs United.). In fact you’ve probably thought about reducing the number of CD’s that you carry around with you, every time you have to carry’em.

Now, its all very nice having 200+ tracks on a CD, but how are you going to remember whats on each one? You’d have to print the writing on the CD label and insert card ever so small... Well, its no surprise that Denon have not only thought of that, but have provided a great solution too.

As well as supporting CD-text, which tells you, on the DN-S5000’s screen the title of the CD-text enabled CD that you’ve placed in the unit, and the artists and track title of each track, it also lets you search by Artist name or Song title alphabetically through the entire disc – even whilst its playing a track from the CD. Say that you knew that there were five tracks by T-Rex on a CD of 70’s hits that you’d compiled , but you’re not sure which track numbers... Its easy – just turn the parameter knob to choose whether you’d like to search by Artist Name, or Song Title, lets pick “Artist Name”, select “T” and scroll through all the artists beginning with “T” until you get to the T-Rex ones, then simply hit the Cue button and after a few seconds of the screen showing “Searching” (all while the original track is still entertaining your audience) the DN-S5000 will prepare that track for instant start, at your command – all in the brief moment of time that you’d have spent looking for your torch to squint at a tiny printed track list – a very workable alternative to the dilemmas of double-clicking.

Swap Shop
Obviously a big part of any CD-deck is the motor and laser system. Indeed it’s a shame that a tiny laser could stop you playing, or performing on your DN-S5000 – well, it doesn’t have to.

Like its dual rack-mountable big brother the DN-D9000, the DN-S5000 has user replaceable drives, which cost around £99 (eg: piece of mind on 2 decks for only £50 per deck). With a Philips screwdriver in your hand, you’re only 4 x front screws away from being able to slide the drive completely out of the front of the unit. – No need to flip the unit upside down, or take any casing panels off, or anything like that – easy. On the back of the drive, there is a 4 way power connector, and a flat ribbon connector – both of which simply unplug and will look very familiar to anyone who’s swapped/installed a PC CD-Rom drive.

Excluding the time taken to turf out the entire kitchen cupboard, frustratingly yelling “Are you sure that you ‘avent ‘ad my yellow ‘anded screwdriver?”, the whole drive swap takes 2 minutes – achievable, therefore within the time taken to play a track on your other DN-S5000 – and still give yourself time to cue a track up in the fresh drive.


Conclusion: At around £500 to £600 its not the cheapest single CD-deck around, although with Alpha track and Hot Disc features, you’re almost getting 2 CD-decks for the price anyway. The DN-S5000 gives you almost every feature available on any CD-decks, and several features that simply don’t exist on any other machine.

You might not use all the features, all the time, right from day one, but its great to know that they’re there. Features such as Alpha track, come into their own time and time again as Compilation CD’s and single artist “greatest hits” CD’s take over our music collections, instead of CD-singles. Good, clean, editable seamless looping can aid the smooth running of an enjoyable show, and of course seamless splicing to finish “Cinderella-like” bang on the stroke of midnight could even get you back onto the local village hall caretakers Christmas card list. Unrivalled performance technology.

Good review Gary

Gary made me get S5000's I wanted the technics becuase I liked the way they looked but I am more than happy with the Denon, its far better than the other choices on the market......

I now look forward to the my pioneer is better than your denon debate

PIONEER?! The debate is over. Pioneer gear make heavier and longer lasting door stops than Denon.

One could say each to their own......but the Denon DJ equipment, pound for pound, is 'better value' than the Pioneer 'equivilents'.
However......
if Pioneer knocked £599 off their 'top models'.......ooh, look at that pig fly past!

It's always going to be down to the choice of the individual at the end of the day, but a strong variable that is often over looked in buying any 'durable' or respected named equipment is 'product support'. Again, Pioneer are 'points' down when compared.
Yet again, however, the 'support' can also be part attributed to the 'place of purchase and 'after-care' on any product!!!!

Good review Gazza

Gary!

Great revue Gary, having had a pair of these babies, I know they are simply the best. The only reason I changed to the 9000 was the question of portability. But the 9000 has all the features as above appart from the platter.