The sound
Contents
Well… What should we say about this Esoteric K-03XD SE, except: wow! What a beast of a CD player. And by that, your author does not mean that it is brutal. On the contrary! It sounds unprecedentedly refined, precise, insightful…. and super smooth. Sincerely: your author has never heard CD played this well. And it makes one think: what is the added value of high-res if this sounds so-uncompromisingly-good?
From the very first notes, the player still cold from its journey to our listening room, this Esoteric K-03XD SE sounds better than the streaming setup. And that’s not in the tonal balance or detailing. No … it’s in the authority. The calmness. The naturalness. This Esoteric plays without drama. Without saying: look how good and great I am! Or: hear how much detail and body I can present! Can you hear that? Impressive huh? No: this just plays exactly what’s on the record. Without shining in your system. Or polishing up CDs without you knowing about it.
Smooth and quiet
With every CD we put in the tray – and there have been quite a few, as you can imagine – we hear an equal quality: suppleness and calmness. How calmly this player plays! And that does not make the music boring. No: on the contrary! It gives us the space – and the desire – to listen to more and more music!
And the calmness in the playback also makes it particularly easy to listen deep into the recordings. We know the Gorillaz albums pretty well. And yet we hear new things. And things that were a bit obscured or “texture-less” come out just a bit nicer with this Esoteric. Very special, since we also have some albums ripped from the NAS and even in high-res… still, this Esoteric K-03XD SE sounds better. More refined. More controlled. More insightful. Wow.
To clock…or not?
Short answer: in our case, not. Let’s explain. This Esoteric K-03XD SE allows you to use an external 10 MHz reference clock. We have a great sounding Mutec REF10-120 on hand. ‘Cherry picked’ even because we also use it as a reference clock in measurements.
We used this Mutec – 50 Ohm out, decent 50 Ohm cable – to clock the Esoteric. Most of all, it sounded different. Not better. The Mutec provides a little more energy. A little more “punch” in the midrange, which also changes the staging a bit. In the end, your author preferred the Esoteric’s internal clock, because it brought more calmness and smoothness. Perhaps Esoteric’s 10MHz REF clock is a better fit….
I love CDs…
Yes… how glad your author is that he didn’t get rid of his CDs. Not that this Esoteric K-03XD SE can stay: it is WAY out of your author’s budget. But what this great player did show is that the CD is a wonderful medium. And that it is a crime to give it away for a few euros! Your author is going to save up…
Sometimes I wonder if CD wasn’t just the superior medium.. I find the calmness that you kept mentioning in this review is hard to find with streaming. Now I don’t have a streaming setup of 20k€ but still. It is not the first time I read or hear this kind of feedback from CD listening.
This is a 20.000 Euro CD player 😉
You can get to a streaming solution which sounds great, but not with streaming services. I still don’t understand what is happening, but even on gear that is known to have been well-engineered, local files still beat the streaming service.
Local files playback can be as good as CD though, you don’t need 20.000 Euro for that. In comparison, a good CD transport is still cheaper to get to the same result.
Thank you Martijn that is interesting. I guess all the network involved in streaming is the problem. A problem that disappears with CD or local files (when on internal disk or usb stick). Indeed that is what I felt when you did the livestream with the CD transports. There seems to be exceptional sound for not too much money.
You wrote: “… No: this just plays exactly what’s on the record.”
Without wanting to take anything away from the Esoteric and your enjoyment of it, when I read statements like this, I just shake my head. Of course, in the pedestrian sense, it’s literally true. But in a more meaningful sense, I want to ask the writer, How could you know what’s on the record? Unless, of course, you were there for every step from recording to mixing to manufacture.
Why would you know what is on the record just because you where there “from the recording to mixing to manufacture”?
I think the best audiophile digital playback setups can dig out even more, that was captured by the mic, than what the studio people where able to notice with their equipment (or rather in their relatively noisy digital environment).