Hi Guido, Great hearing from you, I was in Your area for a Super Bowl a few years back, and stopped into Antonne's to catch some tunes, wanted to see where Stevie Ray Vaughn got famous! Great time, listening to music live sure makes this hobby tough. There are times when I have it dialed right in, and it sounds live, only for the next song to expose the truth. There are so many variables and preferences to explore, to chain together a perfect combination is like winning the lottery, it happens, but theres alot of luck. We can throw our opinions around, and rank components, and talk about preferrences, but this is very humbling, and at a great cost. A great cost for me anyway. I don't have any dispossable income to use on this stuff, so I need to make good decisions, and thats why I bought Esoteric . I like the design philosophy, the house sound, the styling, and the resale. Esoteric is a sound you either like, or not, very few in betweens. Its about detail at the cost of so called musicality, its about deliniation of sound like no other, its about extreme bandwidth and dynamics, at the cost of sweetness. But, dialed in with the right cables, and speakers, its about those moments when all those separate sounds become a whole like no other . And the whole analog digital thing, if we liked spinning records, we wouldn't be on this thread trying to feel right about what we buy, we would be slugging it out on some analog thread doing the same thing.
So for my money, the Esoterics stand the test, great looks, good resale, terrific dynamics and detail, and a sound I can live with without second thoughts. The X-01 is an excellent transport, I still have my X-01/D2 in the chain for multi channel music. Still can't listen to the Eagles Hotel California in 2 channel . There are some things we like better than others.
And , oh ya, its not like the media is helping us out with this stuff. Thats the biggest problem of all, listen to some of the music they sell us, and the stuff we play it on makes it sound evermore what it is, crap!! That seems to be what we should be sharing about, what media to stay away from, not matter what we chain together, feed it junk and junk comes out!
But anyway, I think your set up is pretty cool, reading about the DAC you are using, it is highly regarded. How much did it improve the X-01, I haven't played my X-01 through the D-02, maybe I should give it a try!
So for my money, the Esoterics stand the test, great looks, good resale, terrific dynamics and detail, and a sound I can live with without second thoughts. The X-01 is an excellent transport, I still have my X-01/D2 in the chain for multi channel music. Still can't listen to the Eagles Hotel California in 2 channel . There are some things we like better than others.
And , oh ya, its not like the media is helping us out with this stuff. Thats the biggest problem of all, listen to some of the music they sell us, and the stuff we play it on makes it sound evermore what it is, crap!! That seems to be what we should be sharing about, what media to stay away from, not matter what we chain together, feed it junk and junk comes out!
But anyway, I think your set up is pretty cool, reading about the DAC you are using, it is highly regarded. How much did it improve the X-01, I haven't played my X-01 through the D-02, maybe I should give it a try!