Greg Weaver from Enjoy the Music rated the Esoteric P1X/D1X stack at Axpona in his "Best" category. below is his impressions appended:
http://www.enjoythemusic.com/AXPONA_...aver/page4.htm
388 – Esoteric
Esoteric introduced their upgraded flagship Transport and DAC, the Grandioso P1X ($50,000), and D1X monoblock DACs ($50,000/pr.) at this event. It may come as no secret that Esoteric has been on my radar for over a decade, affording some of the most engaging and analog sounding digital gear I've heard over that period.
The system also included the Esoteric N-03T Network Audio Transport ($11,000), and the Esoteric Grandioso G1 Rubidium Master Clock ($26,000). The linestage was the Esoteric Grandioso C1, which in turn fed the Esoteric Grandioso S1 stereo amplifier ($27,000), rated at 150 Wpc into 8 Ohms. Speakers were the over-achieving Avantgarde Uno XD (32,000/pr.), all cabling was from AudioQuest, and all room treatment, courtesy of Auralex.
Everyone who knows me knows I'm an analog guy, including Scott Sefton, Esoteric's National Sales Manager. However, Scott knows of both my ultimate desire to be format agnostic, and of my affinity for the Esoteric sonic signature. He had made a point to reach out to me before AXPONA to alert me to this new product introduction, and as such, there was no way I was going to miss this opportunity to hear the first upgrades to the Esoteric flagship digital playback products in nearly a decade.
Those who remember the dawn of "Perfect Sound Forever," will likely recall that the very first DACs were not Integrated into chips, but were built using discreet resister "ladders." In fact, some of the subjectively best sounding Digital to Analog Converters over the years have been of that ilk, not based on chipsets from the likes of Sabre or AKM.
The new P1X uses an entirely new transport, improving on Esoteric's Vibration-Free Rigid Disc-Clamping System, implementing an entirely new mechanism, with a much wider and lower center of gravity, leverages their own digital signal transmission interface utilizing HDMI cables, uses a multilayer, dual-chassis construction with a semi floating top panel, employs four independent toroidal power supply transformers and low-feedback DC regulators, and uses electric double-layer super capacitors.
The D1X employs what Esoteric has labeled the Master Sound Discrete DAC, with 64-bit resolution, supporting playback of 22.5MHz DSD, 768kHz PCM audio, and MQA, with all processing handled by Esoteric's own programmable FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array), and using their discrete resister "ladder" circuit design, as well as leveraging all the electronic and mechanical advantages used on the P1X.
During the demo, Scott played a number of optical discs for me, both Redbook CD and SACD, and I was also able to hear some of my own reference digital files. What I heard portrayed from these new Esoteric flagship components in this system was perhaps the single most accurate and musically engaging digital playback I've yet heard. Playing "Underture" from the Who's Tommy SACD revealed instrumental individuality and microdynamic shadings I've never heard expressed from that disc prior.
With this system, I heard the most refined, articulate, resolving, transparent, harmonically complete, spatially accurate, natural sounding digital playback, complete with texture, bloom, and timbral accuracy, in a manner that set a new personal milestone for me. This system rendered the most amazing sense of space, complex tonal density, and air in a way that I have rarely, if ever, heard from a digital rig. In short, my time in the Esoteric room here at AXPONA proved to be the most engagingly musical digital playback I have had the pleasure to experience.