Esoteric K-01Xs vs EMM Labs DA2 Reference

[gadawg]

Late last year I acquired the EMM Labs DA2 Ref Dac and while I’ve loved how it sounds I’ve missed spinning the shiny silver discs. Recently I ran across an opportunity to acquire a new K-01Xs so I decided to get it and see if it could possibly sound as good as my current Dac and give me the ability to spin my CDs again and the few SACDs that I have. Since this is a new K-01Xs this will be a thread I’ll update as it breaks in and ultimately post my decision as to which to sell and which to keep. I know I could have added the TX2 transport if I could find one and I know EMM Labs won’t be in the transport business for much longer so that kind of led me down this road. So on with the show ...

I was truly amazed at how darn heavy and well packaged the Esoteric was. FedEx guy complained all the way up the sidewalk according to my wife. I got it out of the box and on the rack without any fuss and once it was all connected it powered up with no issues. I’ve read all the fuss regarding the remote from the previous model and unfortunately this one seems to have the same shortcomings as I’ve read about. That said it was very easy to hold the mode button for 2 sec in order to cycle through the various setup options. The XLR output defaults to their ES-Link protocol so I changed that to XLR2 to match my Levinson pre and left it with no Upsampling and no filter.

I have my N100H connected via WW Platinum Starlight 7 USB which bested every other USB cable I compared it to earlier this year including some very expensive options.(At least in my system) That said I started with my SACD version of Mark Knopfers Shangri-La. Right out of the box I have to say that I noticed that the K-01Xs has really great detail in the lowest octaves. Where before I was thinking my system might at times be a bit muddy that impression was immediately gone. I also noticed what seemed to be better clarity between different instruments playing. When before sounds sometimes merged now they are clearly separate in space even if by only an inch or two. I then went to one of my favorite 2xDSD albums from Diana Panton If the moon turns green because with the EMM Labs Dac the soundstage is incredibly holographic and seems to envelope the entire room with sound not only left to right but front to back of the room. With the Esoteric the left to right soundstage while a bit compressed was still mostly there but the 3D front to rear holographic effect was now gone, replaced by a bit of depth from the speakers to the front wall. Gone also was the silky smooth vocals replaced with a bit of edge to female vocals and grain in the midrange compared to what I’m used to.

After 24 hours of playing non stop it’s a bit less edgy and grainy but still not near the holographic soundstage of the DA2. I also cycled through all of the upsampling options and with nothing broken in I like the original setting with no filter the best so far. Seems to provide a bit sharper focus than any of the upsampled options. Again this is with only 24 hours on a unit I really don’t expect to be able to make a real decision for another 500 or so hours. I will say that today I noticed that guitar strings seemed sharper and more detailed than what I’m used to as did brass instruments. It should be really interesting to see how the 2 units compare once the K-01Xs is fully broken in. I’ll provide the next update as I notice real change with the break in process.

George