Any K-01X reviews out there?

[mchydro]

Originally Posted by audible1

Had the time to do a few A-B comparisons of the K-01x (with Rb clock) transport vs USB. This was from discs I ripped myself with the mac superdrive onto the internal ssd on the macbook. Files were streamed via usb, jriver, either at native 44.1 or upsampled to 352.8kHz.

There is certainly something quite magic about Esoteric's transport.

I have had a few friends over with good ears and we have all agreed that the playback is best via the Esoteric transport. It's just got more body, depth, attack, image etc etc. Not to say the USB playback isn't good. It is very good. If I didn't have the original disc I probably would never really have objected. However, for absolute reference, we have found that the transport is the way to go.

On both usb and native transport I have set up oversampling to 8Fs, SLY2 digital filter. The default USB setting is NOS, with no DF. The change of the USB settings made a huge improvement on my system. But not as good as the transport.

Looks like I'll be playing discs most of the time for my critical listening but I'm also happy with the convenience and good performance of the streamed input.

Interesting. Does burn-in come into play at all when comparing the sound of the transport vs the sound of the usb? Does anyone have an explanation for audible1's findings or have had different results?