Pioneer DEH-P88RSII

High quality single DIN CD tuner with Time Alignment, 16-band EQ, Crossovers and facility for automatic setting of both. The deck will play many digital file formats and can be used with Bluetooth devices or hooked to a wide range of ancillary equipment. You will need extra adapters to do this, as they mostly connect via the Pioneer iP-Bus system, so you can hook these devices up ‘daisy chain’ style and they will all be operable from the headunit.
However, this deck is not aimed at a multiple connection of buckets of digital low resolution recordings but rather for competition and audiophillic use. It is the deck used by Team Pioneer and only two notches down from the ODR or Optical Digital Reference decks. The display is white Organic Electro Luminescent (or OEL – now called OLED by many) and the button lighting is also white. The removable front panel is Aluminium and far more solid-feeling than most. You get a full-featured, rather than card-style remote control and on the fan-cooled rear, just like the Clarion HXD2, you get three high-voltage (5V) signal outputs that can be configured from Front/Rear/Sub-nonfade to High, Mid and Low frequency output by way of a quality internal crossover on the DSP chip. (Digital Signal Processing) You can alter frequency points as well as the slope of these crossovers and can set them up as either two-way or three-way. The deck comes with a microphone to use for the automation of the time alignment and equalisation functions.
– Competition-grade audiophile design
– 4 x 50w (MOSFET Power IC)
– Three preouts: Front/rear/sub or mid/high/low RCA out @ 5V
– White OEL (OLED) display and button illumination with dimmer control and sub-display output
– Plays CD-DA, R/RW; AAC; WMA; WAV, MP3
– 24-BIT Burr-Brown advanced-segment Digital to Analogue converter
– High performance DSP chip
– Digital Two-way or Three-way dividing network with adjustable slopes to 24dB per octave
– Time alignment with auto function
– Digital sixteen band equaliser +/- 12dB with 2dB steps and auto EQ system
– Five preset EQ curves and two user-customisable ones
– Digital independent L & R 16ch EQ
– BBE, Sound Leveliser and Listening Position Selector
– Display and/or internal amp may be switched off
– Rear Auxiliary analogue input via 3.5mm microjack
– Wired remote input & Pioneer iP-Bus sockets
– iPod Control with optional CD-IB100II
– Bluetooth handsfree with optional CD-BTB200 unit via iP-Bus connection
– TV Tuner control/DVD player control
– Multi CD player control and disc titling functions
– Cell phone auto muting
– Multiple languages settable for display including Russian
– D4Q+ FM/AM tuner
– Motorised removable Aluminium front panel
– Remote control supplied; CXC 5717, 22-button, with five-way commander key
– Signal to Noise Ratio 105dB
– Rear fan cooled
Review by Adam Rayner
Sometimes this job is easy as hell and this is one such day. The DEH-P88RSII is a true slice of High End Heaven and one of those pieces it’d be nice to play blind to a set of “real” HiFi reviewers up against a home unit of good repute. I reckon it’d be deemed top quality. It’s delicious and clever and pretty.
To start at the front, the DEH-P88RSII has a very attractive front panel and display. Understated rather than flashy, it nevertheless uses the blingiest of all technologies – OEL – developed by Pioneer along with TDK and is now a decade later finally getting into TV sets from Sony. Although fabulous in full colour, the system used has been a monochrome white-scale with white LED illumination for the buttons. Compared to the units back in the Eighties using regular tiny white light bulbs to illuminate a button each for Dolby B and Dolby C tape hiss reduction, (“What’s ‘tape’ and what’s ‘hiss’?” asked the young person”) it looks utterly futuristic. Pioneer’s top end has gone through the full shiny blingy bit and back to tasteful, refined and classy. Very 21st C.
The remote control it comes with has all the functions you could wish for, although accessing the details through the front panel is pretty easy too. It has all the simple stuff like a pretty picture diagram for the left and right balance and so forth but this natty graphical user interface just goes on and on. Way further than most units, as all sorts of exotic-looking stuff comes up. The crossovers controlling what comes out of those three sets of potent 5V preouts are the real story. I love the animations, though and the OEL representations of VU and voltmenters are cool, too.
You’d be bonkers to buy one of these and not run actively from the triple set of RCAs out the back. One amp for the tweeters, one for the mids and one for the bass. All running without their own crossovers set to nothing bar simple safety-net settings. (I’d always set an amp crossover to keep the bass out of your tweeters in case you mis-operate the front end for even a moment at enough power to do harm.) That said, I gather that there are sound off competitors going out with just the headunit power of one of these running full range with active bass, which gave me pause for thought.
The seat Listening Position Selector looks like any other but in the P88RSII is married to a genuine Time Alignment system that enables you to correct the path length offset. This can be set by your decision or else done via the supplied microphone automatically. Likewise, you can pick a choice of the preset equalisation curves offered up, or else make your own curve through the front display, or even allow the system to set itself in your car automatically.
So it’s a powerful weapon for the sound off entrant who wants real control but for the simple audiophile, sending a super clean full range stereo signal to single good amp and with a known good set of front speakers, it’ll be heaven.
That’s what the bench test was, with a Genesis ST100 amplifier driving a set of Bowers & Wilkins Leisure Monitors LM1. Only cheap compared to B&W’s £44k snail shells with vapour-deposited Diamond tweeter diaphragms, but still very high quality and with enough resolution to be able to tell.
I’m seething with irritation at losing a disc I loved, so am trying different audiophile recordings as this thing is a bit hectic with its 105dB Signal to Noise Ratio. A B&W world music disc proved amazingly crisp but wasn’t what I wanted to hear. Likewise the quietly bonkers set of recordings that Alpine brought out to demo their HDCD F#1 Status kit sounds fabulous but a bit silly. So I went and got Frankie Goes To Hollywood out. An awesome recording made by Trevor Horn at the height of his powers, it’s still huge. Hearing Peds say “In Xanadu did Kubla Kahn,,,, a Pleasure Dome Errrect” with the rolling of the ‘rr’, was damn rude. You could hear the space in the bathroom at Trevor’s house where he recorded the splashy sounds in the background for the huge intro sequence. I have heard this track a thousand times but this was still a real treat. I found myself acting like a fool at the desk. (Doing hand actions, oh the shame.) It was the real acid test of losing the plot and just wanting to sit and enjoy it, that only happens with the best stuff. This was as hard to get head down and keep typing over as I have ever had bar the mad Clarion HXD2. The only thing wrong was that I wanted it to be in my car with a huge and clean high end audiophile system to play through, driving up the side of Dartmoor at Dawn, going “HOO HAH!……HOO HAH”
But then I had to play Adele’s “19”. I have an odd thing with Adele (Like Jane Monheit off the Dolby True HD disc) as she is scrumptiously yummy to look at and I fancy her like crazy. The voice is a gift from her creator and with enough playback resolution I get a real emotional hit from hearing her sing. If I can “see” the look on her (and Jane Monheit’s) face with my mind’s ear, then it’s special. So the old Eighties gay icons came out of the deck and in went Adele’s soft cockerny tones.
“Feeling up his girl like he’s never felt her figure before” I was in a heaven of her making. The power and yet the soft smoky tone, along with the London intonation that I so adore both Lily Allen and Kate Nash for, but in different flavours, was all there. Even the sound of air constricting in her throat as she reached for the girly-falsetto at times, was just wonderful. You could hear it all. The detail retrieval of this deck is phenomenal.
So much better than the lossless file playback from my Dell PC, as despite the Dell having a Diamond Audio sub-sat system plugged into it, you can’t polish a turd and the Dell’s audio signal op-amp is dire. This was lovely, just lovely and again, I had to be strong and self-disciplined to carry on instead just gouching right out and getting nowt done.
The DEH-P88RSII is dripping with other cunning stuff. I haven’t even begun to cover all the bits like Bluetooth and iPod control with accessories up its iP-Bus, nor how it’ll read yer shitty MP3 recordings but this is about reading quality music from quality discs for quality people. I bloody love it and there is no way in the teeth of hell that Pioneer are getting this one back in a hurry. It has now become the new “known good” deck to test pretty much everything else that isn’t a head unit from now on. So it’s the new Talk Audio reference head unit.
For its looks, performance, panache and general fabulosity the P88 earns enough glory to be given a coveted Talk Audio Best Buy flag. Get one of these and you will be exhibiting unarguable taste.
Pioneer DEH-P88RSII, Welcome to the Pleasure Dome!
Sound Quality 9.0
Appearance/Display 9.0
Ease Of Use/HMI 9.0
Features 10.0
Value For Money 10.0
Overall rating 9.4