I have been in similar position for over 10 years. I bought a few highend CD playback systems, maybe not the finest like dCS Vivaldi or Esoteric Grandioso but something a bit more affordable like Esoteric P-03/D-03, Emm Labs flagship models (last one with full clock support and mod it) and some others.
I tried to search for highend music server that can sound good like highend CD transport but I couldn't find one, ever. I'm a close friend with Esoteric distributor for over 10 years so I heard all kinds of things about Esoteric with my own ears for years and also about companies using Esoteric drive too.
After reading for a while, I feel like there's a lot of computer audio enthusiasts believing that computer audio can actually sound better CD transport because it's newer, having more advanced technology with variety of combinations to make impossible possible. Well, I'd be like that too before I bought highend CD transports (and turntable) to learn with them.
I believe the most common problem we have in that thread is most serious computer audio experts never once own the best of CD transports before so he never understand the suffering, the anguish of those who have the better references and struggling to fit in with the lesser one.
This is a story from my own experience who owns $30k digital sources in system ($20k for transport/dac and $10k for masterclock+Rubidium). I also modified transport/dac/clock for better sound too so it actually costed more than $30k. Please take it with the grain of salt.
Back in the days when I first took Esoteric CD transport after getting its DAC. I believe it was Esoteric P-05 model to match with D-05 model I bought to use with Weiss/RME interfaces. I laugh at how terrible CD transport was in my room but CD transport actually sounded a lot better when I bring servers to shop demo room.
After repeating the process of system optimization between my own room and using shop demo room as reference for a while, I felt like P-05 is possible to overcome but P-03 is still better. I decided to upgrade to P-03/D-03 combo later and guess what. I found P-03 sounding much worse in my own room. But I wasn't happy about that since I also realized my system was optimized poorly for CD to shine.
I believe it took me about a year or so to make Esoteric P-03 sounding better to the point that I can bring most of its potentials in my room now. After swapping to my own ultimate server which is already better than most servers I can find, it sounded horrible and my friend told me it's too bad for making a comparison. That's when I thought it might be impossible after all.
After that I spent over 3 months researching again from scratch and came up with a new breakthrough that could bring computer audio to enjoyable level to switch between Esoteric P-03 and my own server. However, it's still technically impossible for HDD/SSD to outperform optical media. Even USB slotin LG drive can sound better than best MLC SSD I spent over $600 to buy at that time.
The research takes on and technology improves. I tested on new Linux kernel, OS X updates, and Windows updates consecutively and ultimately I found Windows is still the platform that I can bring the closest performance to highend CD transport with kernel performance capable of fetching resource every 100ns where Linux hits limit at 100,000ns.
I also published my Linux based optimizations as a form of optimized Android ROM in portable devices. At least it's effectively enough to maintain 100% satisfaction rate from hundreds of clients so I believe I made a fine progress on Linux side too as I also spent years calibrating every single parameters for perfect dynamics reproduction.
When I reached $100k system level and I appreciate music as $100k system performance from $30k source quality. Any server I put on including flagship server in market I considered buying made my system performance drop significantly down to the point that I consider old used Esoteric X01D2 or dCS Puccini will sound better in my system. That's how bad computer audio was for me at that time (Now is a lot better).
And if you happen to own the best of CD/SACD transport like Esoteric Grandioso P1 or dCS Vivaldi Transport like him, the gap will be wider when I was familiar with Esoteric P-03 or dCS Scarlatti Transport in my own system. Well, I didn't buy dCS one though because I didn't like it but Vivaldi with new firmware update is nice to my ears now. Also, you need to give it a lot of time for optimizations. Latest speakers I bought took me over 2 years to optimize to reach the optimal performance I'm listening today.
Aside from him, there's actually a few audiophiles who felt disappointed and disillusioned in digital audio but afraid to share his thoughts. These unspoken thoughts can mostly be found from private conversation when he felt safe enough to share his honest thoughts with you.
I'm sharing this story with as a fellow highend audiophile guy who want to find the best stuff that can help me appreciating music with quality on par to truly highend CD transport here. I've been in computer audio for over 10 years and I never feel like I belong to anywhere because people like us often be misunderstood and most of them won't understand our sufferings.
I still enjoy music as I listen to YouTube regularly and I'm happy with smartphone and laptop speakers sound quality too. I believe proper optimizations with good reference will help people realizing how much more your system can grow. Today I'm enjoying my $100k system with optical output from TV also but not as much as good servers though.
Regards,
Keetakawee
I tried to search for highend music server that can sound good like highend CD transport but I couldn't find one, ever. I'm a close friend with Esoteric distributor for over 10 years so I heard all kinds of things about Esoteric with my own ears for years and also about companies using Esoteric drive too.
After reading for a while, I feel like there's a lot of computer audio enthusiasts believing that computer audio can actually sound better CD transport because it's newer, having more advanced technology with variety of combinations to make impossible possible. Well, I'd be like that too before I bought highend CD transports (and turntable) to learn with them.
I believe the most common problem we have in that thread is most serious computer audio experts never once own the best of CD transports before so he never understand the suffering, the anguish of those who have the better references and struggling to fit in with the lesser one.
This is a story from my own experience who owns $30k digital sources in system ($20k for transport/dac and $10k for masterclock+Rubidium). I also modified transport/dac/clock for better sound too so it actually costed more than $30k. Please take it with the grain of salt.
Back in the days when I first took Esoteric CD transport after getting its DAC. I believe it was Esoteric P-05 model to match with D-05 model I bought to use with Weiss/RME interfaces. I laugh at how terrible CD transport was in my room but CD transport actually sounded a lot better when I bring servers to shop demo room.
After repeating the process of system optimization between my own room and using shop demo room as reference for a while, I felt like P-05 is possible to overcome but P-03 is still better. I decided to upgrade to P-03/D-03 combo later and guess what. I found P-03 sounding much worse in my own room. But I wasn't happy about that since I also realized my system was optimized poorly for CD to shine.
I believe it took me about a year or so to make Esoteric P-03 sounding better to the point that I can bring most of its potentials in my room now. After swapping to my own ultimate server which is already better than most servers I can find, it sounded horrible and my friend told me it's too bad for making a comparison. That's when I thought it might be impossible after all.
After that I spent over 3 months researching again from scratch and came up with a new breakthrough that could bring computer audio to enjoyable level to switch between Esoteric P-03 and my own server. However, it's still technically impossible for HDD/SSD to outperform optical media. Even USB slotin LG drive can sound better than best MLC SSD I spent over $600 to buy at that time.
The research takes on and technology improves. I tested on new Linux kernel, OS X updates, and Windows updates consecutively and ultimately I found Windows is still the platform that I can bring the closest performance to highend CD transport with kernel performance capable of fetching resource every 100ns where Linux hits limit at 100,000ns.
I also published my Linux based optimizations as a form of optimized Android ROM in portable devices. At least it's effectively enough to maintain 100% satisfaction rate from hundreds of clients so I believe I made a fine progress on Linux side too as I also spent years calibrating every single parameters for perfect dynamics reproduction.
When I reached $100k system level and I appreciate music as $100k system performance from $30k source quality. Any server I put on including flagship server in market I considered buying made my system performance drop significantly down to the point that I consider old used Esoteric X01D2 or dCS Puccini will sound better in my system. That's how bad computer audio was for me at that time (Now is a lot better).
And if you happen to own the best of CD/SACD transport like Esoteric Grandioso P1 or dCS Vivaldi Transport like him, the gap will be wider when I was familiar with Esoteric P-03 or dCS Scarlatti Transport in my own system. Well, I didn't buy dCS one though because I didn't like it but Vivaldi with new firmware update is nice to my ears now. Also, you need to give it a lot of time for optimizations. Latest speakers I bought took me over 2 years to optimize to reach the optimal performance I'm listening today.
Aside from him, there's actually a few audiophiles who felt disappointed and disillusioned in digital audio but afraid to share his thoughts. These unspoken thoughts can mostly be found from private conversation when he felt safe enough to share his honest thoughts with you.
I'm sharing this story with as a fellow highend audiophile guy who want to find the best stuff that can help me appreciating music with quality on par to truly highend CD transport here. I've been in computer audio for over 10 years and I never feel like I belong to anywhere because people like us often be misunderstood and most of them won't understand our sufferings.
I still enjoy music as I listen to YouTube regularly and I'm happy with smartphone and laptop speakers sound quality too. I believe proper optimizations with good reference will help people realizing how much more your system can grow. Today I'm enjoying my $100k system with optical output from TV also but not as much as good servers though.
Regards,
Keetakawee
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