Esoteric K-01


Has anybody had an opportunity to listen to the recently announced Esoteric K-01? I was also wondering about the price. Thanks
thefirstchorus

Showing 4 responses by zephyr24069

Keeping to the topic: I utilized a G-0s in Rb-oscillator mode at 176.5 clocking rate with my UX-1 Limited; I did find a perceivable improvement in the sound. It was more subtle in some ways but was there and was noticeable when the clock was removed. I also agree with a prior poster that for synchronous digital playback a hyper-accurate clock (ppb rating, not ppm) does provide benefit. With single box players as I mentioned above, the improvements are more subtle, however, with multi-box stacks (like the P-03U/D-03 combo), the improvements are very noticeable, obvious and missed when the clock is removed.
Alex: It's been a couple years but as I remember it, the differences for re-clocking the UX-1 and the UX-1 Ltd with the G-0s were subtle and were noticeable only in the upper-mid and particular higher frequencies in terms of removing a slight harshness around instruments' output in these frequencies. There was a very small improvement in the imaging precision (i.e. location of a specific instrument in the sound stage). Candidly, the upgrade from UX-1 to Limited Edition did much more than the clock but nothing was as important as going to the P/D separates both with and without the clock. As I mentioned above, the differences were small with the clock for the single-box player but with all material I did hear them. With respect to DVD-A, there are not that many 176.4hz tracks (at least on the DVD-As that I own) as most of them put a number of different track types on a single DVD-A and do not often go beyond DVD-A tracks in the 96/24 realm. For DVD-A, I found that I had to switch between 88.2 or 176.4 clocking depending upon the material in question for best results. For SACD, I tried 88.2 clocking as well as 176.4. I wound up leaving the clocking at 176.4 for SACD playback (and do also with the P-03U/D-03/G-0s combination). As I mentioned before, the differences with the clock in Rb mode are MUCH more meaningful with the stack over the single box players.

Interestingly enough, I did see a visible improvement in the already impressive visible imaging and up-scaling performance of the UX-1 Limited and the P-03U when playing both traditional and Superbit DVDs when using the G-0s clock at an appropriate clocking frequency. If any of the above is psychological (I did not do full blind A/B testing), I do not believe the effect on video playback is though others may disagree...
Guido...I don't own a K-03 or K-01 but when I talked to Mark and Tim from Esoteric this past April at Axpona about them (they were showing a K-03), they told me that breakin time is consistent with the P-01, P-03U/P-03, UX-1, X-01, C-03 pre-amp, etc....plan for 300-500 hours with unit getting incremental nuances/refinements after 500 hours. There is a lot of circuitry in the K series models, plan for good levels of break in. The thing I've always found myself wondering is when you have multiple choices for upsampling (DSD versus the various levels of PCM like the P-03 units provide) if you need to run separate breakin times for the 2-3 major modes of the transport or DAC in question. To be on the safe-side with my P-03U and D-03 I did in fact fun 300+ hours on DSD upconversion as well as 300+ hours on PCM at 176.4.
Has anyone heard (and bought) the Estoeric P-02 D-02 combo as yet? I am interested in particular in the performance of the D-02 as compared to the older D-02 as I may take a step-wise approach to upgrading my P-03U/D-03 combo.