Esoteric K01X SACD player TRAY! error message

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!  

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.

@stereo5 

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.

Thanks!

@68pete 

Really not much info in it.  Have you read it? 

@jafant 

Thanks for sharing your experience.  

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.