Thanks, TVAD. That review helps a lot. The more anectodel information I receive the more comfortable I become:-) about doing this. Lokie, I will keep you updated. I email Dan last night and he was VERY prompt with a reply. That makes me feel better as well. I will probably take the plunge here in the near future and will follow-up at a later date. Dan suggested the full "truth-mod" which includes a tube analog stage. I am a little hesitant with tubes as I don't have much experience with them - everything I have is SS. I emailed Dan as to the "life expectancy" of the tubes and if by having the tubes installed will necessitate having to leave the unit on indefinately. Of course if I do have to leave it on, how will that affect the life span of the tubes? Also, if a tube does go out, how easy is it to replace and can I do it myself? A few unanswered questions left but I am hoping to hear from Dan soon on these issues. Thanks for your input everyone! Regards, Tony
Anyone modded a Sony 999es?
I have a Sony 999es DVD/SACD player. I made some inquiries on modifications about 2 months ago and saw one modifier was doing it but did not put in the new "superclock". Also did not mention exactly what was done to the unit. Another modifier emailed me directly saying he wasn't doing any mods to this unit. I have seen some reference to mods on this machine including the cut and paste job below:
"We have modified the SCD-1, the 777ES, and 9000ES. We determined that the transport and digital engine in the NS999 DVD player is the best Sony makes. The new 999ES is sonically superior to any previous Sony player whether stock or modified. It proves you don't need a 70-pound chassis in order to get state of the art performance. It is mainly the quality of the digital section that gives this player the advantage. The rest of the guts of the player are irrelevant, since we rework and replace them all anyway. We like Sony players because they convert PCM data to a DSD data stream, which is then decoded as an SACD would be. Most other ‘universal' players convert DSD to PCM, which in our view is counterproductive. We have looked at the other players and have found them lacking in comparison to the Sony. Sony's conversion of Redbook to the SACD format is at a very high resolution. In this player, it is equivalent to 50+ times over-sampling. Noise shaping and dithering are not required, so less data is lost or masked. With SACD, the data is presented in the same format as it is archived by Sony and no data is lost.
Richard Smith,
Audience Director of Design Development."
The problem with the above mod is that it is $5K - way too steep for me. I would love some feedback from some people who have had this unit modded, specifically who they used, how much, the turn around time and the before/after comparisons. I am really interested in improving the redbook performance but also the multi-channel SACD as well. Any feedback is appreciated!! -Tony
"We have modified the SCD-1, the 777ES, and 9000ES. We determined that the transport and digital engine in the NS999 DVD player is the best Sony makes. The new 999ES is sonically superior to any previous Sony player whether stock or modified. It proves you don't need a 70-pound chassis in order to get state of the art performance. It is mainly the quality of the digital section that gives this player the advantage. The rest of the guts of the player are irrelevant, since we rework and replace them all anyway. We like Sony players because they convert PCM data to a DSD data stream, which is then decoded as an SACD would be. Most other ‘universal' players convert DSD to PCM, which in our view is counterproductive. We have looked at the other players and have found them lacking in comparison to the Sony. Sony's conversion of Redbook to the SACD format is at a very high resolution. In this player, it is equivalent to 50+ times over-sampling. Noise shaping and dithering are not required, so less data is lost or masked. With SACD, the data is presented in the same format as it is archived by Sony and no data is lost.
Richard Smith,
Audience Director of Design Development."
The problem with the above mod is that it is $5K - way too steep for me. I would love some feedback from some people who have had this unit modded, specifically who they used, how much, the turn around time and the before/after comparisons. I am really interested in improving the redbook performance but also the multi-channel SACD as well. Any feedback is appreciated!! -Tony