Hi-Rez Highway: results....... by mikel

.....from my perspective.

this was pretty one-sided.....to my surprise. i really thought the Esoteric would fare better. it is possible that we were not utilizing the full capability of the Esoteric system. the manual is in Japanese.....we put the system together according to instructions from the Esoteric distributor given to my friend.

the Esoteric system consists of 5 boxes......the P-01 Transport and separate power supply.....the (2) D-01 DAC's and the G-OS clock unit. there are 3 BNC clock cables.....one goes from the G-OS Clock to one DAC, the second from the first DAC to the second DAC, and the third from the second DAC to the P-01 Transport. there are two power supply umbilicals from the Transport to it's separate power supply. there are two XLR digital cables from the Transport.....one to each DAC. then lastly there are 2 analog interconnects from the DAC's to my switchbox.

the BNC clock cables allow the external clock to be used as opposed to the one inside the transport.....this clock was set at 176k.

all power cables for the Esoteric gear were Elrod Signatures, both the Transport and Clock were plugged into my original Hydra.....both the DAC's were plugged into a dedicated wall duplex outlet.

both the Meitner and the Esoteric were on Zoethecus racks...except the Esoteric Clock unit and the Esoteric Transport power supply were on BDR cones on my concrete (carpet covered) floor. both these units were played thru my custom Jena Labs built switchbox......the Meitner used Valhalla XLR interconnect......the Esoteric used Transparent MM RCA interconnect.

the Meitner was likely more warmed up and settled in......the Esoteric had been moved into my room that morning and only powered up for an hour or so before we began serious listening. i assume that this Esoteric gear was fully broken in.

the build quality and excellent industrial design of the Esoteric gear was evidant......clearly a step or two above the Meitner gear.....too bad it's performance wasn't up to the same standards. the list price of the Esoteric is approx $25k for the Transport/power supply, $12.5k each for the DAC's, and another $15K for the Clock unit......65 large (Rockport territory).

we each listened to 5 or so cuts on both units (20 to 25 separate cuts).....this was over a couple of hours.....about 2/3rds redbook and 1/3rd SACD. the results were very consistent to my ears.

the Esoteric gear did have more texture and detail in certain aspects of the music......but not in a musically valuable way. it was more information but it was like seeing the surface of some natural object thru a microscope.....more detail but not a better sense of the reality of that object.....and not coherent in the musical whole. there were times when this 'ultra-detail' did seem to uncover additional musical truth.....but to my ears it was more a musical distraction.

in every other way the Meitner combo easily bettered the Esoteric gear. compared to the Meitner.....the Esoteric was lacking dynamic life, it's soundstage was reduced and much less dimentional......the Esoteric's soundstage was less deep and wide.....the width of the Esoteric soundstage was less wraparound.

the Esoteric lacked the smoothness and organic nature of how i imagine correctly recorded live acoustic music to be. the Esoteric lacked the weight and presence the Meitner delivers.....and the Esoteric lacked the drive and flow that is essential to my musical enjoyment.

all these perceptions were evidant on both redbook and sacd......possibly slightly more prominent on sacd. if i had to guess the reson for this performance gap.....i would say that the Esoteric gear suffers from PCM-itis......whereas the Meitner upsamples redbook to dsd and keeps sacd in dsd until analog conversion.

since i've got the new emmlabs CDSD transport i've not had another digital source in my room. clearly this transport is a major performace leap for the already standard setting Meitner gear......maybe the current SOTA Meitner is simply that much better than everything. i dunno.....i haven't had the Remiyo, the Weiss or any of the other current pretenders in my room.....if they can challenge the Meitner more power to them.....but i doubt anyone can compete at this particular time.....certainly the Esoteric is not remotely close.

this was such a one-sided event that it is cetainly possible that the Esoteric was not 'right' or not set-up properly. i don't want to make excuses for it......

i have a friend in France that just got this same Esoteric combo and thinks very highly of it......i have a hard time believing what i heard today is what he has been raving about.

i have simply related what i heard and my surprise at the lack of performance from the Esoteric.......i am not surprised that the Meitner was better....this i expected.....but i also thought i would appreciate what the Esoteric did.....but alas.....i was disappoined by what i heard from the Esoteric.....draw your own conclusions.

i don't want to speak for the others that participated in this event.....but i heard no comments that would lead me to believe they felt different than myself.