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.
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 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.
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.
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.
You must have a verified phone number and physical address in order to post in the Audiogon Forums. Please return to Audiogon.com and complete this step. If you have any questions please contact Support.