DAC for my Esoteric X-O3 SE??

Is this really a serious question?

APL DAC-M

I own an Esoteric UX-1 and I found out that adding a Yamamoto YDA-01 or an Exemplar-Xindak DAC the sound improvement was -and still is- huge.

Daniel

I have an X03SE going into an esoteric G25u upsampler/clock into a berkeley dac directly into amps and as good as the esoteric sounds by itself, this does make redbook cds sound beter.

Why would you want to use an external DAC with a player of this caliber? I would either move up the line and/or into one of their new "K" series players or look into separates (i.e. DAC paired with an Esoteric transport). However, I doubt either of these moves will "astound" you since the X-03SE is widely considered one of the best value players Esoteric ever made.

For what it's worth, I have an Esoteric X-03 SE into a Bricasti M1 with a HiDiamond Ref cable, RCA to BNC. I like it.

I think Cerrots suggestion is worth a try, especially if you can borrow the additional pieces before you buy.

I actually have an esoteric x05. My dealer convinced me just to try the Bel Canto dac3.5 with the outboard PS. I also thought why should I use a dac with such a good player.
From the 1st minute - just wow. The bel canto took my digital section to heaven.Greater detail, sheer musicality and everything sound so alive and so right, very close to analog sound. Needless to say, the BC stayed at my house. Right now the esoteric serves as a transport.

A very highly regarded player to resort to experimenting with dacs in my opinion. More highly regarded than the x05. But to each his own.

I was just wondering, since my Esoteric is four years old if there was a quantum leap in store if I purchased a state of the art DAC

Both Srajan Ebaen and Jean Hiraga at one time owned the Esoteric UX-1 and interesting preferred the Yamamoto DAC than the Esoteric`s internal DAC. Same as you Daniel.
I use The Yamamoto DAC and find it superb and utterly natural.
Regards,

I have an Esoteric UX-3 player and experimented with using my Wyred dac 1 as an external dac. I found that the dac in my Esoteric player gave me a slightly laid back and much more relaxed sound. Since I play mostly rock on this player, I find it to be the best of both worlds. I use my laptop as a music server through the Wyred dac and have found it to bring out the best sound of my mostly classical and jazz music.

Personally, I would keep what you have unless you have a lot of money to blow through. You already have a better player than most people have and you may make a very small improvement in sound, but will probably have to spend northward of 5K to achieve it. Just think of how many cd and sacd's that money could buy.

Bob

Bob..your advice makes the most sense...MORE MUSIC!! And thanks to everyone else who answered my question.

I am a dealer for both Esoteric and the EMM Labs products,

the new DAC 2X SE is mind blowing and has an even more analog presentation than the $23,000.00 D02, this ia an amazing piece of digital technology,