AMR / EMM / PLAYBACK Designs

Please note that the XDS1 comes with a very nice upgraded power cord from Kimber. This is not ultimately what you will want to use but may be satisfactory in the short run. Power cords are easy to change, SACd players much harder.

Bar81, I did not mean to imply that EMM only works well with incredibly expensive power cord.
It kind of surprise me though. Usually, even with stock cables, I expect a unit to work ok and give a reasonable performance. Better matched cable certainly should elevate the performance. However in EMM case, it seems like wrong cable can significantly deteriorate the sound quite a bit.
I never listened to it with stocked Kimber cable however.
My friend is now reporting also good result with Stealth Dream and he will compare Stealth to Elrod again before he make his decision on power cord.

Suteetat,

With regard to your earlier point, the issue with the SACD and switching inputs appears to be resolved. And you haven't heard anything yet. The upcoming firmware update (just a few small issues left to iron out) takes the XDS1 to another level; it is subtle but significant if your system is resolving enough (and I thought it was impressive when I bought it back in November).

Bar81, thanks for the information, I will let my friend knows since I was at his place a couple of weeks ago, he still did not know about any fix on switching input problem between high rez and SACD. Also, do you know if the new firmware will make XDS1 accept 24/176 and 24/192 input?

I am under the impression that this update is a sound quality enhancement (again, it has been described as "subtle" so owners should temper their expectations, but, in my system, the enhancement was significant) and bug fix. I know that, mechanically, the inputs are capable of 24/192 and I understand that this feature will be enabled in the future but I do not have any more information than that. In any case, given the dearth of music available at that quality imo emm should be commended for focusing on the core sound quality of the player and bug fixes prior to adding checklist features that are currently not particularly useful to the great majority of owners.