I'm rather surprised and a bit confused. I have an Esoteric F-05 driving Egglestonworks 9se speakers, Pontus II dac, Spacedeck table with a high end Van Den Hul cartridge.
I had heard some mid range clang if you will at moderate to high volumes for which I had to adjust tone controls on the Esoteric quite dramatically. I became concerned maybe they weren't getting enough wattage from the Esoteric.
I wanted to see what some additional wattage would do, and wanted to do it as an experiment as cheaply as possible.
In my system after 1 day of break in the soundstage expanded (although vocals rather fixed centrally, depth variable was impressive), clarity improved, and for what it's worth stopped needing to use my tone controls. Maybe a touch thinner but all other parameters improved. I really couldn't believe my ears so had multiple friends with great ears listened. The all voted for the 5. Guess I'll keep it. Dang.