Thought I’d provide a 2024 refresh from an X1 owner since early 2021. I recently auditioned the Rossini Apex in my system for 4 days as a potential upgrade to the X1. The Bartok is the more obvious competitor, but it lost (in pre-Apex guise) back in 2021, and the purpose of this audition was to find an upgrade.
Bottom line: the Rossini was initially quite notably superior in the areas of decay, natural timbre on drums, mid-bass presence and articulation, detail of overtones and harmonics. But then I found that I was 4 versions behind on the X1 firmware, and that the X1 also has a DSD 128 upsampling option for 44.1 material like the Rossini was configured to use. After applying the firmware upgrade and upsampling configuration option, the X1 was fully equal, and nearly indistinguishable from the Rossini Apex within the limits of my system and hearing resolution.
I’ll be holding off on upgrading until I have space and budget for a Vivaldi stack (which is quite definitively better and I haven’t even heard the Apex version yet). Bottom line, the X1 is still a phenomenal value and (at least within my limited system) matches the performance of mid-range SOTA from one of the best brands in digital.
-Paul
System: Burrmester 948, Lumin X1, McIntosh MT-10 + Clearaudio Stradivari, McIntosh C500T with NOS Telefunkens, 2x McIntosh MC500, Sonus Faber Il Cremonese Ex3me, SF Gravis VI