Esoteric F-05 Integrated - any opinions?

greginnh,

I have been listening to the F-05 over the last few days through Magnepan 3.7i's.  I love the overall sound and am considering replacing my PrimaLuna pre and power amp to simplify - an integrated amp with phono and DAC card fits the bill.  The F-05 I am listening to only has about 20 hours on it.  I've found the top end a bit dialed back - not soft or smooth but less present.  Did you experience any changes in that area after a full break in?

cmaronmurphy - I found that my F-05 seemed to open up fully at about the 100 hour mark.  Using my Aerial Acoustic 7T speakers, I can't say that there was anything lacking in terms of presence in the top end. 

My F-05 just arrived yesterday. At first hour of running, the sound quality was not better than my previous pre-amp/power-amp system, which cost only 1/3 of F05. I was worried my wife will not notice any upgrade.

After few hours of running, F-05 performed better and better. Even my wife is not sensitive at sound quality she still can feel improvement.

Originally, my target was Accuphase E-470, but the dealer I visited have no E-470 for demo. They introduced me F-05 and MBL C51.

Since I have no chance to audit E-470 and I read this review......

Thank you greginnh. I am very satisfied with F-05.

ktliao88,
Congrats on the new acquisition!  I am glad that you and your wife are happy with the F-05.  It's a great integrated amp and for the money, there are few others than can compete when considering all the built in features it has!  You should continue to see slight improvements in sound quality over the next 50 hours or so.  This amp also responded very well to experimenting with different power cords!

My F-05 have run 36 hours.  It is quite warm on the front top and has some smell out after continuously running of 24 hours.   Now there is no more strange smell.  

I am currently using two Oyaide gpx-r power cords for both PS Audio P5 and Esoteric F-05. I still have few more power cords / signal cables for experiment. 

One of the motivations for my upgrading to new amp is the using of XLR cables.  My previous amps accept only RCA cables.  I connected both RCA and XLR cables between DAC and F05 for comparement. By switching the input from RCA to XLR, the increasing of sound spaciousness is very noticable.  

The function of XLR REC out is also perfect for my using of headphone amp.   My DAC ( North Star Supremo DAC) delivers RCA and XLR signals simultaneously.  I used to connect XLR to the headphone amp and RCA to pre-amp.  Now I can use XLR cables for both speaker and headphone system.  It seems e-470 has only RCA for REC out? This adds one more benifit for my choosing of F-05.