EMM Labs new XSD1 single box player

To be precise, it is highest model in the lowest end transport in the line of Esoteric transports - VOSP with the metal tray (see here: http://www.teac.com/esoteric/documents/TransportsEsoteric0408pq.pdf).

In any case, it is an excellent transport and I'm glad to see that EmmLabs has finally addressed the two shortcomings of their CDPs - a proper transport and digital inputs.

Except that the Playback Designs has very limited options in terms of dealers and they won't give you a trial like EmmLabs. So, if you are buying on blind faith and enjoy gambling with 15K, then go for it.

First review up here:

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/audio-visual/hi-fi-and-audio/cd-players-and-recorders/emm-labs-xds1-645292/review?src=rss&attr=reviewhi-fi

While I'm not a big SACD guy (very limited musical selection and uneven quality), the review sells the CD side well short; you don't have to care about SACD to seriously consider this player imo.

Also, the claim that the fit and finish leave something to be desired is, at best, laughable. While not up to the herculean efforts of my current Wadia 861se (certainly in the upper echelon of CDPs in terms of fit and finish) no excuses generally need to be made (well, other than EMM Labs making sure that the screws on the bottom of the unit are secured properly so that they don't come loose in transit, but since they are regular philips screws they can be tightened without too much trouble) and the ergonomics are superior to Wadia in at least one noticeable aspect - direct selection of digital inputs (Wadia, why is this so difficult to implement?!?).

You really won't get a proper feel for it until 500 hours or so.

Also, make sure you get the new November firmware (102_002) off of the EMM Labs site.

This is one of those things that I have complained to EMM about but they do not seem to care; ideally, they should not only list the version number on their site with date but also the change history. At this point, the only way to determine whether there has been a new update is to call and ask or to download the zip file from the site, unzip it and look at the revision number of the file compared to the last file you downloaded.

The XDS1 is relatively new and so far the updates have been monthly but I expect this to taper off over time.

Considering the fact that older updates aren't made available online, the latest update should be sufficient.

My pleasure.