Nice piece of engineering. Looks far better at home on the hifi shelf than in the promotional pictures. Delicate and revealing sound. Improved on my Cambridge Audio preamp by a large margin (and the Cambridge is pretty good to begin with). Most appealing was the bass cut/boost. Without degrading the sound noticibly Quad have added this nifty bass control feature that will suit those who like me who live in an apartment and have the speakers placed close to the wall. Not so impressed with the other tone control feature, tilt contol. Haven't seriously listened to this, but I will admit that I should spend more time and then pass judgement in a later review. The 99 preamp most impressed me with its handling of phono signal. It turned my Thorens turntable into serious cd quality sound. It is seperb in this area. Easily surpasses the 3 phono preamps I previously used. The 99 has a statley appeal, presenting the signal in an honest fashion that can reveal the true quality of a recording. It is possible that a poor recording with be revealed for what it is, and you may find yorself not enjoying what had previosly been acceptable. So I am a proud owner of an A1 piece of equipment and am enjoying my music collection like never before. Well done Quad.

Interested to see an appraisal of the Quad Preamp as I only got mine a few days ago.
Have already got a 99 CD-P and 909 Amp, these were purchased on Ebay last year, originally the intention was to use the system to play only CD's but also because of the CD-P's versatility to accept digital inputs from other sources including DVD Player, PVR etc.Unfortunately with such a system I could no longer use my NAD 4020 tuner and had to settle for radio from Freeview. I don't regard myself as a highly critical listener but I do think it is lacking "something" compared with what I remembered from my old system with analogue FM.
Well, this pre-amp triumphantly puts this right!. I have now listened to my NAD tuner again and it sounds excellent ( through the Spendor S5e's). Have listened to some CD's as well and though it is early days I would say at least as good as the CD-P/909 system, I think possibly better.
Thoroughly recommended.

PS Any Quad 99 tuner owners out there, I would be interested in any comments, comparisons with other tuners