Very, very strage what I red...Because I attended last year in New York when the sale manager of an local & important showroom made a comparison between the Esoteric X-01L and the Burmester 001 and the German cd player was sonicly much better in all parameters than Esoteric.
The sound of burmester 001 is rich, warm, detailed and lush side of absolute neutrality. Images are wonderfully solid and three-dimensional with the 001. In particular, the 001 excell at the depth and large dimensions, opening up the rear portion of the soundstage and tangibly portraying the back edges of images. With 001 the images are always correctly sized, and all of the soundstage's distancesbetween instruments, between the listener and the soundstage, and the size of the stage itselfadded up to a coherent, realistic perspective. In my very honest opinion the 001 is a gorgeous-sounding playera bit too gorgeous-sounding. For sure for what I listened in my audio system the Burmester 001 is one of the best digital front-end I've ever heard. As expensive as it is, I've heard digital setups that cost several times as much and didn't match the Burmester's magic.