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Yeah, but it still comes across as an overly expensive two-channel retro

*****It was my choice to disable the multichannel, as I have no interest whatsoever in MC, and keeping it would've degraded the two-channel sonics. If/when I sell it, it'll probably be to someone who's only interested in two-channel as well.*****

Sure, it was your choice to disable the multi-channel, but based on what you have presented it seems an oddity, a real departure, at best, to take a $14,000 machine, that by all accounts is a top tier two channel and multi-channel performer and then to almost completely gut it to the point that it can no longer perform to its potential which far exceeds any improvements that you can make for an additional $8,000! Because as a near SOTA multi-channel player (and two channel player) the stock Esoteric X-01 has far more potential, currently and in the future, to replicate a live music experience than anything you could add to enhance it’s two channel playback. You, especially, should know that.

And sure it’s your money, but that you were able to obtain the Esoteric X-01, at what you say was “stupidly priced” at $6000, is a singular occurrence not generally available/relevant to the rest of us even if we wanted to take that path.

Given the extensive/costly, almost global work that was done to the Esoteric X-01 I’m curious as to what you think would have been the comparative results if you had done the same level of mods to a former two-channel kingpin such as the Sony SCD-1 or other former two-channel king available for far less money?

Regarding the improvements you hear, you indicate that on the recommendation of RAM you found a used Esoteric X-01 and sent it to them for modding. Did you ever listen to the Esoteric X-01 in your system for any length of time (or at all)? Your comments suggest otherwise. I suspect that sonic changes were made, I really do. But can you be sure of “improvements” given the inordinate amount of time it took for the mods to be completed and that you never lived with the Esoteric making even a modicum of a chance for a meaningful comparison impossible?

In any event, the only two ears on the planet that had any hope of validating improvements you hear are yours. (It’s not like others in this forum or elsewhere can ever audition this one-of-a-kind project and compare it to the Esoteric X-01 or other gear the mod has so readily surpassed). While its true that your ears are the only ears that matter, since you have presented this as review I think it should be noted.

I do credit your comments for providing an informed view to the world of modding. But because you hold your comments out as a “review” and because you are a reviewer I hold what you write to a higher standard. I hope that readers think long and hard before they embark on what clearly is a long (the turnaround time would have been helpful to readers), expensive and circuitous route on a project that can go *seriously* wrong and fail in so many ways. Because in the short and long run a project that like you undertook can be far more costly than the expensive gear you lambaste in your comments.



Robert C. Lang

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