Ive owned the Esound E5 Signature for about a month. While I cant compare it directly to 2 or 3K players (since Ive never had a cdp in that price range) I find the Esound to be very analog sounding. My prior digital front end was a Toshiba dvd used as a transport into a Kora Hermes dac running some very good NOS tubes. I much prefer the Esound to the dvd/Kora set up. The E5 has a very balanced presentation with no part of the frequency spectrum favored. From deep deep bass to sparkling highs its all there. I purchased mine thru Cattylink and had them do the 120 hour quality test. It was a small leap of faith to send that amount of money to the other side of the world but everything went perfectly and one week later the E5 was on my door step. My gut feeling is this unit will compete with anything twice its price and I hope to soon compare it against more expensive cdp`s.
