Pioneer Premier DEQ P9 Components Inside

For me, this is a quite surprise when I bought this used Pioneer Premier DEQ P9.

The Premier name is actually a Japanese version of the Pioneer car audio. The DEQ P9 I bought here is a stand-alone DSP and an universal digital preamplifier for high-end car audio. It is released on early year 2000 and it came from the Pioneer ODR family which the name ODR is the optical digital connection between the receiver unit. This DEQ P9 is intended to pair with the Pioneer DEX-P9 as an complete high-end car audio package.

I bought this unit quite cheap for one reason.

Let's take a look inside first.

As for many digital unit for the car audio application such as DAC, DSP or sound processor, their appearance are mostly lean and simple. Their multi function mostly controlled by the head unit or others computer based unit paired with it. Same like this Pioneer DEQ P9, the appearance is so simple and plain with only the input and output connectors at one side of the unit.

As usual for the hi-end unit like this, the chassis is using copper material, specifically for this unit is a combination with the steel material for the top cover.

I disassembly this unit which is quite easy with several screws that need to remove first to access the components inside.

The main control unit board is attach to the cooper chassis. This is basically a power supply circuitry covered with steel shield, then the main DSP controller circuitry, volume controller circuitry and the pre-amp circuitry.

The top board which is covered with the metal shield is for the digital processor unit board.

Actually it is a DAC circuitry inside.

As you can see, there is a treasure inside this DSP board. There are 6 pieces of PCM1704 P-J IC inside.

The PCM1704 here with one dot mark is the new Texas Instrument mark for the J grade DAC IC.

As you might know that this PCM1704 is the latest vintage R2R multibit DAC from Burr-brown before the TI acquisition and this is also one of the best R2R multibit DAC to date which capable to process 24 bit data but already end of production long time ago.

And that is the reason why I bought this unit.

Because finding the original DAC IC such as this PCM1704 P-J with reasonable price seems impossible right now, so the only way is taken out from the old unit like this.

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