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ESOTERIC, WADIA -- How do they really sound?

I have read and heard that upgrading your source to the highest level possible will make the greatest difference. This makes sense, in that once information is lost or poorly decoded, it cannot be regained.

BUT, I am dumbfounded at the opinion of expensive digital players out there. I did an exhaustive search on the forums on Esoteric and Wadia, and was shocked to find some very strong criticisms of deficiencies in products from both these companies, and Levinson and others.

Yet, you can find bang-up magazine reviews on all these products (no surprise, right?).

My concern is that some of the criticisms are rather severe, and surprising in items of this price caliber. For example. The soundstaging is pushed together, the tonal balance is off, the dynamics are compressed, the treble is bright, the sonics are thin, the bass is lacking, the digital volume control degrades the sonics, etc.

If you are buying used, and don't have dealers to take these pieces home, or feel unethical in doing so, how can you make any decisions based on this quagmire of information?

HELP!
saxo
guidocorona
4,114 posts
 
Saxo, a ceiling of $7K for a used X-01 is not unreasonable. There appear to be two such units listed now on Agon: one of them lists for $6.1K. If you got it and then you did not like it, you should be able to unload it at a very similar price.
saxo OP
98 posts
 
Sorry for the confusion. I meant $7K retail maximum, translating to $3-4K used.

As far as greed is concerned, just because the ignorant populace will overpay for something, does not equate with what the item is really worth. There is an objective construct ---- something made with $100 of parts is not worth $10,000 retail because the majority are willing to pay it.
zaikesman
3,017 posts
 
"That said, I understand the X-01 & X-03 use the Teac VRDS transport. This is considered the most rugged, advanced transport in the world. I'd love to have it, but the price of admission is too high. Of course, just because a player uses this transport doesn't mean the unit will have the best sonics in the world, because there are so many other design factors involved."
Not that I'm experienced with the transports in question, but there seems to be a shift beginning in this area, away from heroically-built (and -priced) real-time drives, to hi-speed computer ROM drives, that can make many redundant passes of disk data while the music is playing and send it to a large buffer memory for subsequent extraction and reclocking before decoding. The Meridian players are examples of this approach, but I haven't heard them either. Of course, as you say, this (or any other) technology won't necessarily be a guarantee of anything regarding the final sound, but the idea of lessening the criticality of reading the disk accurately in real-time, and the costs involved with that, does have an intuitive logical appeal.
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Saxo, you are not going to get even an Esoteric X-01. Just because you don't think it is worth it will not cause the price to be lower. It only means you will not buy it.
rex
245 posts
 
There is an objective construct ---- something made with $100 of parts is not worth $10,000 retail because the majority are willing to pay it.

If you can throw $100 of parts into a box and make it sound as good and work as well as Brand X's $10,000 unit, then you may have a point.

If you can't, then perhaps you should acknowledge that there are other factors at play besides the cost of the parts. Concept, design, engineering, construction and distribution have value as well. A quality audio component is more than the sum of its parts.
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