Hello, I just purchased a second hand Esoteric K01X SACD player. It arrived today via ground shipping. I unloaded it, powered it on, and it immediately displayed a flashing "TRAY!" message, which I assume is an error message, as the tray will not open. Is this one of the dreaded tray problems that the Esoteric brand apparently has been reported to have on some forums? Any ideas as to the fix? (Fortunately, I can send it back to the previous owner, as a last case scenario, as it arrived flashing this message, but I would have preferred to at least listen to it.) Thanks.
Answering my own question: After almost giving up, I thought I would try to turn on the player while holding down the eject button, and I got some Japanese characters, which may have reset the machine. Then I turned off and turned on the device again, and it worked. So, at least for me, turning on the device while holding down the open/eject button worked. Now, at least, I get to compare this to my old standard player!
I have heard of manufacturers having secrete button pushes that enable or disable features. Some used by service personnel for diagnostic procedures. Well done.
My Audi has some special features that I found on YT by using a combination of push buttons on the steering wheel. Go figure!
Alright, so after the first few hours of listening, and doing A-B comparisons with my previous CD/DAC: The Esoteric K-01X is definitely a step up in CD performance, with much more clarity, a more precise sound stage, smoother, and richer texture / sound.
However, the SACD part is rather disappointing: the CD portion, and playing SACD’s as CD’s sounds phenomenal, but playing SACD’s as SACD’s sounds worse than my old CD/DAC. Confusing, but I’ve played with some of the filters, and SACD’s still sound pretty bad.
My system is Sound Lab M745, Lamm M2.2, Manley Steelhead, and now the Esoteric K-01X.
When you use the SACD, click CD Layer on remote and cycle through until you get SACD 2 channel. By default, I believe it goes to SACD Multichannel. By playing it in multichannel, you are missing a lot of information, hence the lousy sound. I had the same problem with my Esoteric UX3 SACD player. You may want to go through the menu because after you did the reset, everything defaulted back to original.
Thanks for your input, but it has been on 2 channel SACD when I play SACD. Here's what I hear: comparing SACD multichannel to SACD 2 channel is about the same difference as SACD 2 channel to CD.
Now I tried different recordings and it seems that Jordi Savall's SACD recordings from Alia Vox follow the above pattern, but an SACD recording from Channel Calssics sounds the way you would expect, so possibly it's a problem with the Alia Vox label, and not the Esoteric SACD player... I'll do more comparisons tomorrow to find out. Right now, it's time to shut down my system.
I can relate to your playback experience. A number of years ago, I auditioned the DV-60 model. To my ears, the SACD playback is superb. The CD playback suffered. I could not appreciate the sound via those (3) filters. The presentation and sound were dark and veiled. Completely opposite with SACD presentation and sound. Odd.
I played SACD recordings by other labels, and they played fine, and sounded great. It seems only to be a playback issue with only Alia Vox SACD, as the CD on Alila Vox sounds great.
I'm very happy with the Esoteric K-01X after one week! The only problem is playing the SACD of one label, but even playing CD on that Alia Vox label sounds phenomenal with the Esoteric, although I'm sure the Yamaha is good as well.
The Esoteric K-01X has been performing flawlessly since I purchased it, and got the TRAY error to fix itself by pushing the ON button and the OPEN button at the same time, and holding it for about ten seconds, which allowed the system to do some sort of self-check, and fix itself.
I was just reading back over my posts here, and I don't presently have the problem with SACD vs CD that I apparently commented about; however, I have switched out some gear since then. In fact, I'm mostly listening to vinyl, but this Esoteric CD/SACD player is a main component which got me more interested in upgrading my sound system overall.
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