Yes good idea to be cautious of raves over a product especially from new owners.
I had one of the first Eastsounds in North America. Bought it about 15 months ago. I knew very little about the E5 at the time so I emailed a audiophile in Canada who owned the E5. I Was really very suprised by his response. Said he owned a audio store and sold CDP's that ran up to $9000, not sure if that was Canadian or American $$. He said the Eastsound sounded as good as any CDP that he sold. I still would take that with a grain of salt. However I have no question that if made and sold in the States it would run in the $2500-$3000 price range, maybe more.
The only other expensive CDP i have been able to do a direct A/B is the Musical Fidelity A5 which sells for $2500 which i had on loan for a long weekend. The A5 sounded very good. But in comparison it sounded more Hifi and less natural and Analog then the E5. I really didn't find any areas the A5 was able to equal or better the Eastsound. Just my opinion of course.
There is only one professional review of Eastsound that i have been able to find other then the reviews at Audiocostruzioni the Italian website you referenced. Its a review of the now discontinued E3 which is at Audioholic. The E3 sold for about 60% of the E5. They had a shootout between the Eastsound, Creeks $1500 CDP and a $3500 Lexicon universal player. Read the review carefully and you will notice the E3 beat or equaled the Creek and Lexicon in EVERY area. I take this review seriously. I noticed after the review that the E3 had replaced the Creek in Audioholic's reference system.
You may also want to go back to the Audiocostruzioni website and find a 3 way shootout they did with the Eastound, jolida and Cayin CDP. They don't go into great detail but do give numerical ratings for things like midrange, treble, build quality etc. Again if you look at the numeric ratings the only thing the Jolida was equal or better was the remote control ;)
Even though the poster above had only had the Eastsound for 2 weeks I completely agree with his accessments. The only things I would add is the background is dead quiet. Amazingly black background. Second if you do get an E5 run it unbalanced mode. The balanced mode runs thru the opamps. The unbalanced bypasses the opamps and runs in dual class A mode.
Honestly I doubt if you could go wrong with either player. Both seem to be extrodinary values.
BW Maxx
I had one of the first Eastsounds in North America. Bought it about 15 months ago. I knew very little about the E5 at the time so I emailed a audiophile in Canada who owned the E5. I Was really very suprised by his response. Said he owned a audio store and sold CDP's that ran up to $9000, not sure if that was Canadian or American $$. He said the Eastsound sounded as good as any CDP that he sold. I still would take that with a grain of salt. However I have no question that if made and sold in the States it would run in the $2500-$3000 price range, maybe more.
The only other expensive CDP i have been able to do a direct A/B is the Musical Fidelity A5 which sells for $2500 which i had on loan for a long weekend. The A5 sounded very good. But in comparison it sounded more Hifi and less natural and Analog then the E5. I really didn't find any areas the A5 was able to equal or better the Eastsound. Just my opinion of course.
There is only one professional review of Eastsound that i have been able to find other then the reviews at Audiocostruzioni the Italian website you referenced. Its a review of the now discontinued E3 which is at Audioholic. The E3 sold for about 60% of the E5. They had a shootout between the Eastsound, Creeks $1500 CDP and a $3500 Lexicon universal player. Read the review carefully and you will notice the E3 beat or equaled the Creek and Lexicon in EVERY area. I take this review seriously. I noticed after the review that the E3 had replaced the Creek in Audioholic's reference system.
You may also want to go back to the Audiocostruzioni website and find a 3 way shootout they did with the Eastound, jolida and Cayin CDP. They don't go into great detail but do give numerical ratings for things like midrange, treble, build quality etc. Again if you look at the numeric ratings the only thing the Jolida was equal or better was the remote control ;)
Even though the poster above had only had the Eastsound for 2 weeks I completely agree with his accessments. The only things I would add is the background is dead quiet. Amazingly black background. Second if you do get an E5 run it unbalanced mode. The balanced mode runs thru the opamps. The unbalanced bypasses the opamps and runs in dual class A mode.
Honestly I doubt if you could go wrong with either player. Both seem to be extrodinary values.
BW Maxx