Esoteric Digital Separates

Anyone considering separates should understand they are opening a can of worms.

I have spent more money on cables, shelves, and footers to optimize my digital components, than the cost of thecomponents themselves. While I have absolutely no regrets and the results speak for themselves, do not think that you can buy separates, throw them on any rack with stock PCs, and be done. Each separate is very sensitive to everything.

There is something to be said for the value and peace of mind of a single-box unit.

That is a good point in general however, given your separates (Wadia) and mine (Esoteric), I can tell you I made the same mistake and have since sold off the most costly cables) and found options that are available for less that give me 99% or better of what I had from 4-8x the price depending upon which cable you look at. I made the same mistake with one-box units as well in my entire system. There is a point where 2K, 3K, K and beyond cables fail to deliver a proportionately better return on investment. You can do more for less as I found much too late in the game...

Zephyr, We are in agreement that there are many overpriced/overhyped cables with too many compromises, along with many value cables with nice performance. I do believe there are some game-changing cables out there that bring an improvement beyond that of a component upgrade.

If someone was to go with the Esoteric K01, or the Wadia S7i, or the TAD D600, they would have quite a formidable set-up with either an HRS or SRA platform, and an NVS Silver Ultimate 1 power cable. This would probably exceed suboptimally set-up separates. Any of these combinations should be quite magical.

Not to divert from the op, but Zephyr24069, I see you use some VH Audio cables. Can you tell me of cable options that you refer to that offer more performance for less. I do have a couple VH Audio Airsine power cords.

I am using VH Audio Symmetry (all copper) XLR interconnects and am extremely happy with them. I also am using a pair of Symmetry-grade all-copper 110-ohm AES/EBU for the connections between my P-03 and D-03 and am extremely happy there as well. To give you some idea of the meaning of my 'happiness' my prior cables were Tara 0.8 XLRs with HFX Floating ground stations (1m and 4m) and a pair of 0.5 AES/EBU with HFX Floating grounds. I find the VH Audio Symmetry cables to be amazing in terms of what they give and also in terms of what they replaced.