esoteric products
FYI: The ONLY reason I compared Esoteric & Oppo is those are the only 2 digital front ends I have owned in years; & what I wrote is my experience in owning both. The P-10 was a stunning transport for it’s time; to my ears it sounded much better than the flagship P-2. Still no luck on finding a repair shop, which was the reason for my post. |
I feel your pain. Tossing the P-10 transport is painful and so is the shipping and repair bill. I bit the bullet a while back by replacing something mechanical with a server/computer. My most humble opinion would be to use the huge savings from the shipping/repair costs to upgrade the dac to something from the same stable like the Directstream/Junior and play ripped redbook files from there. Happy hunting! J. |
PS Audio Directstream Junior vs rivals... http://www.digitalaudioreview.net/2016/08/digital-audio-comes-of-age-with-ps-audios-directstream-jun... |
I found someone (Northwest Audio) who without seeing it, is guessing it would be an easy fix ($100-$300) & is going to diagnose at no charge. I will be very happy if that’s the case. Re streaming; I am going file on most new music & loading on Flash Drives (+ backup; btw I’m looking for a couple old external hd’s that will work with XP; the chipset that allowed XP to see over 2 TB has been removed from all current manufacture as far as I can tell). With that said, the Esoteric/PS Audio sounds better on 44/16 then the Oppo; but I guess I could pop the Flash Drive in the Oppo for 44/16 & run an SPDIF to the PS Audio for 44/16. I hadn’t thought of that until you’re mention of streaming. It would make an interesting comparison; as back in 1992 I clearly preferred the sound of the P-10 over the 5 times as expensive P-2. The P-10 was much fuller sounding then the P-2 (I believe the d/a used for that comparison was a Meridian.) My main focus today is hi-res digital; but I still have thousands of cd’s (& a couple thousand albums as 44/16 files). Robert Harley recommended the SL3 to me at an in store in 1999 or so. Only high end purchase I’ve ever made mail order without hearing the unit, & a choice I’ve been quite content with. I did buy a McCormack DNA-1 here; but I already had heard & fallen in love with that amp before I bought it. |
