New Esoteric P02 D02

I am waiting to hear the new Esoteric D1 Grandioso converter that is replacing d01vuk. I will compare it to d02, d03 and I will try to hear dCS Puccini one more time.
D02 still sounds a bit forward and dry for my taste. According to some European reviews K series players roll off treble a bit earlier than previous players with SACD. I still like SACDs better on D03(more fluent and musical if not as detailed) than D02.
D01vuk and even D03 sounds more laidback. There is definitely old and new sound of Esoteric.
I am hoping that the new D1 Grandioso will offer best of both worlds.

Hey Pharma, How's everything, well I hope! Just wondering if you have any news on the sounds of the new Grandioso's. I'm not sure they can even be purchased in the States, but if so, I hoping you got your hands on them and have a few words on there performance. Anyhow, hope this gets this thread fired up again.

The new Esoteric D1 is truly wonderful sounding on my system. It has taken me almost 1 month to run it in. If you have a chance you must listen to it. My CDs have never sounded so beautiful. It is a open and lush. Of course, high-res material sound wonderful as well. It must be heard with a very good USB cable. By the way, Esoteric has a free music player on their website for both Windows and Mac which can be used on their DACs. It can play back native DSD and can also load the music directly into RAM. I had decided not to go with the G1 and use computer playback entirely.

Happy New Year to all of you...hope you are all still enjoying your Esoteric gear! I would love to be able to move up to the Grandioso P1/D1 level but that is just not in the cards as they say....

I'm in the middle of what will be a hard-fought upgrade transaction with a very difficult seller (have 40+ pages of email and other comms, glad to provide details on this challenge and the seller so people can avoid him,....communicate with me on in-mail) and after a month, finally have a P-02 installed in the system in place of my 7 1/2 tried and true P-03U Transport. The D-02 is still outstanding and will likely become a 'longer story' with a potentially legally troublesome ending (for the Valley Stream & Lynbrook NY-based seller in question) so the P-02 is feeding my existing D-03 Dual Mono DAC with incredible results.

The holy grail of this hobby so to speak, is to be able to achieve very detailed and accurate playback with all possible inner detail retrieved from the recorded medium while also having organic, musical and non-fatiguing playback. As much as I love the P-03U/D-03 combo all these years, it's hard to put into words what additionally the P-02 brings to the table. The difference and upgrade in all these key areas is not subtle and is incredibly impressive! I'm extremely happy with the P-02 after only 2-3 days and cannot wait for the D-02 to arrive!

I was able to find another D-02 in 9/10 condition from an outstanding seller on Audiogon (see my most recent feedback, this guy is great to deal with) and solve my immediate issue; the D-02 has arrived and is up and running with the P-02 as a matching set thus replacing my tried and true 7 1/2 year old P-03U and D-03 which will get posted shortly.

All I can say is "WOW!" in terms of the improvements that the new 02 combo brings to the table; they extract so much more from anything I've thrown at them and provide a massive sound stage with incredible depth and great imaging while still providing a very organic and musical presentation. In addition, the frequency range and particularly deep bass resolution and extension of the new 02 combo is truly "off the charts!"

I've experimented with various settings in the first 24 hours and thus far I am tending towards burning in the following combination first;

- upconversion PCM->4Fs (176.4) on P-02
- digital filter set to On (P-02)
- P-02 set to output ESL3 protocol
- upsampling set to 176.4 (D-02), ELS3 *dual XLR inputs"
- digital filter set to FIR1 (D-02)
- clock frequency 176.4 with G-03x driving (will try D-02, no G-03x at some point)

I've read several reviewer/other posts and have tried S_DLY1 (apodizing) filter1 as well as NoFilter on the D02 and NoFilter on the P02. Thus far, the above seems to be the best overall settings for my ears and how the units sound now but we'll see how things burn it and how it turns out overall. I will also try up-converting to both PCM via Dual XLR at 352.8 and PCM->DSD up-conversion at some point though initial tests of each seemed to indicate the above list is where I am going to start.

There are so many options with how these can be configured (have not even gone near the USB input yet!) that I look forward to a long and happy set of experiments and alot of listening with these units.

As for that seller of the first D02, a legal demand letter has been issued late last week, and the hunt will continue with the appropriate outside agencies if the DL is not responded to per its terms. If anyone's been through anything like this and can provide feedback/additional ideas please let me know through 1:1 private in-mail. Thank you!