brodricj
Senior Member

Having to get off the couch to change a record, or CD for that matter, is always stressful.

That's my reading of it. Makes no difference to me KPIP v1, v2, v3 or whatever. It's not an attribute I care about.

The FPGA is part of the DAC circuit, it's not the whole shooting match.

Mike, are you getting your K1X upgraded to SE?

Only Grandioso level units can be upgraded.

The Esoteric rep from Japan was at the show. He said they were thinking about building a Grandioso level network transport in a way which leads you to believe they were actually doing it. If you think N-01XD SE sounds good (which is based on a Lumin...

No. There is only one DAC. It accepts PCM or DSD signals. PCM upconversion, and PCM to DSD conversion happens in a FPGA prior to the DAC. The DAC is just a software algorithm in an FPGA. So there are two FPGA's one of which is dedicated to the...

They are sigma-delta modulator DAC's with flow pass filter. PCM signals are processed as PCM, or PCM signals can be converted to DSD before being converted from digital to analog. Esoteric also give you the choice of upconverting PCM signals before...

That is a very good point.

The pricing mentioned there is interesting: "Those after the last word in stereo disc replay should start here Tested at £11,650 / $12,000 / AU$15,000" Let's convert to USD. UK price for K-05XD = US$14,500 (includes 20% VAT) Australia price =...

Just highlighting the reality of living in the worlds most isolated capital city. The last two new cars I bought the dealers didn't have any cars they could show me. None. The wait for a new Kia was 6 months from placing order. You couldn't test...

I'm the opposite. I've never demo'd a speaker before I ordered it. And never test drive a car before ordering it. The only demo I've done is the Halcro Eclipse power amp, and the Ether Regen. Everything else is bought sight unseen, including cars....

Back in the day S3, S5 and S7 were about half the price of today's Mk3's. That's a lot of money for a dealer to wear to have demo examples sitting in a show room. Speakers of this pedigree could be drop shipped with confidence, and presumably that...

I have an Esoteric front end, but when I saw on the Esoteric YT channel that it takes three days warm up for M1X to sound its best I crossed it off my list for further consideration.

I vaguely recall reading an AW interview where he explained why there won't be a new version of the S7. Of course, he might have changed his mind since then.

He's their marketing guy, of course he'd say that. But he's probably right.

They've probably gazed into their crystal ball and concluded they can set that price and still sell as many as they can build, so it doesn't matter if the high price is opening up the width of the consumer radar.

I dare say S5-3 will be a S7/M2 killer. It might also be an M3 killer.