How much better is Esoteric K-03 vs K-05?

OK Jeffkad
To make you feel better I had k-05 for 3 weeks.
Natural sounding player with good amount of details and when properly burned in does not exibit digital glare. After that I decided to listen k-03 and k-01 (my dealer had a demos). K-03 is much more resolving and more dynamic player and I think, best/price combo in esoteric line. But I end-up buying K-01 :), because I am running K-01 direct to amplifier and K-01 was worth the price from what I heard. Please be patient and burn each filter option at least 300 hours before jumping to conclusions.

Tboooe, yes K-01 have digital volume control, but because of its 8 dacs per side and 32 bits the impact of the loosing bits is not audibel at all (for me). Two important factor to consider when driving direct,
1.Input impedance of the amplifier. It should be in a higher (like 50 and up) digits.
2. Using great ICs.
So far I like to drive my krell 302e direct. May be if I got very good pre-amp (at least on a level of ARC 5se or esoteric c-03) I might have gotten even better sound (more life) from my system. But this costly and I will not go this road (I can’t even arrange a demo). That was the one of the key reasons I went with k-01 instead of k-03, driving direct K-01 is more harmonically rich and coherent. One thing to notice, before make any judgment on esoteric driving direct any amp, one needs to burn the digital control "ON" option for a good 300-400 hours.

Jeffkad,
I tried, as some experienced guys on this forum advised, the 4x up sampling with s_dly1 filter, but the sound (in my system) still had been more analytical that I wanted it to be. Later I found K-01 and K-03 overview of some guy and he recommended no upsampling and S-DLY1 filter.
I decided to try this combo and felt ( after braking in this combo) that this is the best combo for me. The sound became much more natural with bigger soundstage and more air. I really enjoy it now.