Esoteric K-03 or K-01

Hi Guido, Crossing threads here, Great to see someone who hears the K-01 as I have. There may be many great " deals" out there, that perform highly, but for taste, you can't beat the Esoterics for overall sound and flexibility, at not such a bad price point if you start looking at there competition.

I'm in the middle of what will be a hard-fought upgrade transaction with a very difficult seller (have 40+ pages of email and other comms, glad to provide details on this challenge and the seller so people can avoid him,....communicate with me on in-mail) and after a month, finally have a P-02 installed in the system in place of my 7 1/2 tried and true P-03U Transport. The D-02 is still outstanding and will likely become a 'longer story' with a potentially legally troublesome ending (for the Valley Stream & Lynbrook NY-based seller in question) so the P-02 is feeding my existing D-03 Dual Mono DAC with incredible results.

The holy grail of this hobby so to speak, is to be able to achieve very detailed and accurate playback with all possible inner detail retrieved from the recorded medium while also having organic, musical and non-fatiguing playback. As much as I love the P-03U/D-03 combo all these years, it's hard to put into words what additionally the P-02 brings to the table. The difference and upgrade in all these key areas is not subtle and is incredibly impressive! I'm extremely happy with the P-02 after only 2-3 days and cannot wait for the D-02 to arrive!

I did think long and hard about the K-01X as a single-box path and almost went that route. The K's are the best single box players I've ever heard and I can only imagine the level of improvement the "X" upgrades will make.....I ultimately stayed in the multi-box domain for personal preference reasons alone.

Almost went for the K-01X but the change to P-02 and D-02 is finally complete with the help of another Audiogon seller while I work things out with the other (original seller) so that I could get a hold of a D-02. I am extremely happy with the result and blown away by the improvements over the 03 generation as great as they were...see my comments on my system thread and the other P02/D02 threads out there....