Hello audio friend. I just spotted this forum topic. Not only have I compared these two players, but all three. I am both an Ayon dealer ( actually, Ayon rep and Canada's premier dealer ) but I also carry ( carried / now past tense )the Esoteric and have extensive experience with all 3 players. The Esoteric is a very good player, it is uick, detailed and spacious yet I find it balanced toward " performance " more than " musicality ". It gives you all the audiophile ooo's and ahhhs, but again, I have found it to be a player that focuses more on shear brawn delivery... For an extremely lazy sounding system, perhaps an EL-34 tube based system, it might be a good choice.
The Ayon players just seem to integrate just the right balance of performance and musicality blend. They too are very quick, detailed and spacious, but without the hard edged " here's your damn music " presentation if you know what I mean. The tubes output provides a supple and rich harmonic signature and detail, but never crosses the line becoming analytical or clinical sounding like the Esoteric can within most systems. The CD5 is simply over the top, and any reviewer whom has heard one will vouch for this. With a world class pure class A tube preampilifier output, many customers of mine who only have one or two sources are just selling off their existing preamplifiers and running direct to amp. Whats more, the CD5 offers USB, XLR, RCA direct inputs for streaming audio, PC connection or music server.Turntable owners who happen to have an outboard MM/MC phono pre, also benefit in yet another additional way by running their phono preamps outputs into the back of the CD5, thus producing an upsampled analogue signal from your turntable! You seriously have to hear this. One of my customers runs a full blown LP-12 through a Linto phono stage directly into the RCA inputs on the CD5, which technically then upsamples the analogue signal through the CD5's onboard pure tube DAC. Ayon is a forward thinking company, and the retail price of a CD5 with all these additional facilities, AND a world class tube cd player starts looking more like a helluva bargain against just another expensive redbook cd player that can only play cd's. If the Ayon CD5 or CD2 could only do redbook cd's and nothing else, it would STILL be well worth the price of admission at full retail when sonically compared to anything else out there. The CD2 and CD5 I cannot keep in stock, these units are my best sellers. I stopped carrying the Esoteric line months ago, when customers heard the CD2 and CD5 against the Esoteric, the results are constantly the same. The Ayon players are the ones to beat. Good luck to the competition.
Greg
www.imageaudio.info
