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New Esoteric K-03XD

Just bought this SACD Player a month ago. 
It took me a while to get into the hidden menu. 
It sounded great with CD’s, amazing actually. 
I tried it with 2 SACD’s I had lying around. 
One was a Sony Demo, the other a SACD from a friend. 
They sounded great, but not as good as my good CD’s. 
I bought a few more, all remastered old recordings. 
I was disappointed. 
There was a review on The Absolute Sound about a similar Esoteric. 
The reviewer said when it was set to “default” it wasn’t overwhelming. 
He went into the hidden menu and changed some settings. 
Today, I started experimenting. 
I'm glad I did. 
I'm listening to “Trinity Sessons” on CD, by the Cowboy Junkies. 
I've never heard it sound this good !

The reason for the post is, have anyone else changed those settings, and which ones. 

128x128stevizzy
stevizzy's avatar
stevizzy OP
114 posts
 

One thing I’d like to mention is the SACD’s I bought were not Classical or Jazz. 
They were music I usually listen to. 
Supertramp, COTC, Allman Bros, Live at the Filmore, Dire Straits, Bob Dylan, and other old records I hade on Vinyl Years ago. 
All the Classical and Jazz I have are mostly on CD, HDCD, F2 and DMM.  They aren’t SACD and they all sound excellent. 

 

tomcy6's avatar
tomcy6
2,584 posts
 

Hi stevizzy, Are you referring to the upsampling and filter settings?

I have read on forums that it takes a couple hundred hours to burn in each setting.  So, if you like it now, it should get better.

yoyoyaya's avatar
yoyoyaya
733 posts
 

@OP. The recordings you bought on SACD are bandwidth limited, so they are not going to benefit much from being transferred to SACD.

Esoteric's players decode DSD natively. However, for CDs the default Org non conversion setting, IMHO, does not sound as good as 2FS.

Unless you are using the K-03 as a USB DAC, the other upconversion settings are irrelevant.

I prefer the standard M1 filter setting but your mileage may vary - accessed under the PCMM heading in the menu.

mahler123
3,302 posts
 

A really good SACD player should also enhance plain vanilla red book CDs

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