Technics SL-PD1000 CD Changer Review

One of the most popular audio components these days is the five-disc CD carousel changer. At little or no more cost than a single-disc CD player, a carousel changer makes it possible to play music for hours without having to reload discs, and most changers have all the operating and programming features of a single-disc machine.

The Technics SL-PD1000, in addition to the conventional features of five-disc carousels, provides a number of unusual operating modes that, as a group, distinguish it from the others.

In its general appearance and operation, the SL-PD1000 is typical of carousel players. An open/close button on the front panel causes an almost full-width drawer to emerge from the lower part of the panel, revealing two disc-loading wells. The Disc Skip button rotates the carousel to allow up to five discs to be loaded, and a second touch on the open/close button closes the drawer smoothly and quietly.

The display window on the panel normally shows the number of the disc and track currently playing and can be switched via the remote to show the elapsed or remaining time on the track or disc. It also has a symbolic display of the loaded carousel positions, giving the user a clear picture of the player’s invisible interior.

The basic CD operating controls (stop, pause, play) are full-size buttons to the right of the display, with smaller buttons for fast search and track skipping. Above them is a row of small yellow illuminated buttons, numbered 1 through 5, that indicate the loaded disc positions (the one for the playing position glows green). The nearby Disc Skip button (not illuminated) rotates the carousel to place any disc in the playing position. Used in connection with the disc- and track-selection buttons, a Program Mode button allows up to thirty-two selections from the five loaded discs to be played in any order.

On the opposite side of the panel is a group of buttons that operate a number of additional programming features. ID Scan is a “music sampler” that is very convenient when you’re looking for a particular selection on a disc. Pressing the button rapidly moves the laser pickup to the approximate midpoint of each track and plays it for 10 seconds before going on to the next track. To play the current track from its beginning at any time, you merely push the play button.

One of the unusual features of the SL-PD1000 is called Memory Reserve. Normally, a CD changer goes silent for a few seconds when it changes discs. The interval before the new disc starts playing is punctuated only by the mechanical sounds of the changeover. When the Memory Reserve button on the SL-PD1000 is pressed, its digital audio data stream is passed through a 4-megabit digital memory, which can store several seconds of program, and playback is from the memory, not directly from the pickup. Therefore, when a change cycle begins, the last few seconds of music in the last selection on the current disc continue to play from memory, uninterrupted, while the discs are changed, effectively shortening the change time by about 3 seconds. Memory Reserve can also be used to shorten the intervals between selected tracks on the same disc.

A green LED next to the Memory Reserve switch indicates that it is active. During a change, the light blinks rapidly whenever you are hearing the delayed program. When Memory Reserve is used in conjunction with ID Scan, the result is called Parade Scan. The transition between scanned tracks takes place almost instantaneously, giving the effect of a nearly continuous flow of music (especially with a disc having a large number of brief selections, such as a sampler).

Technics recommends that the Memory Reserve switch be left on at all times since it has no deleterious effects on other playing modes. The only reason not to use it is when the player’s digital output is required, since that feature is disabled by Memory Reserve.

The SL-PD1000’s random-play mode can select tracks randomly from one disc or from all five. An interesting variation of random play is Spiral Play, which plays the first track of Disc 1, followed by the second track of Disc 2, the third track of Disc 3, and so on until all the tracks of all the discs have been played. There is also a useful Delete feature that can select up to thirty-two selections not to be played and store them in the player’s memory, where the information remains as long as the player is plugged into a power source.

Other features include a repeat function that is effective on all the other programming modes; Auto Cue, which puts the player into a standby condition at the beginning of each track, ready to start when the play button is pushed; and Edit Guide, which automatically programs the player for tape dubbing in accordance with the length of the tape so that no tracks will be interrupted before they are completed (a 4-second silent interval is left between tracks).

The SL-PD1000 comes with a remote control that duplicates virtually every front-panel function, including power switching and programming, and adds some of its own, like the time-display control. The rear panel has analog phono-jack outputs and an optical digital output.

The performance specifications for the SL-PD1000 are typical of today’s better CD players. Like other Technics CD players, it uses MASH 1-bit digital-to-analog (D/A) conversion to preserve signal linearity down to the lowest levels. Technics says that the changer’s automatic digital servo system for the playback laser improves disc-tracking performance with eccentric, warped, or scratched CD’s.

The SL-PD1000 proved to be better than average in tracking through gaps in a disc’s information layer. Playing the Pierre Verany #2 test CD, it showed only a slight tendency to mistrack through 2,400-micrometer interruptions in the recorded pattern (or even through two of them in rapid succession). The player is exceptionally resistant to physical impact in spite of its relatively light construction; we were unable to make it skip with the hardest palm or fist blows we dared to apply to its top or sides.

The SL-PD1000 was very quiet, even during change cycles, when many changers make surprisingly audible mechanical sounds. Track changes over most of a disc’s surface were rapid, often under 3 seconds even without Memory Reserve, and nearly instantaneous in many cases when Memory Reserve was used. Disc changes typically took 8 or 9 seconds in the worst case (between disc positions 2 and 5 with Memory Reserve off).

In short, the Technics SL-PD1000 is an ideal changer to produce background or party music as well as nearly continuous playback of multiple-disc sets.

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