Esoteric X-03se versus Victor XL-Z999EX

[Papa Lazarou]

Meninblack has just left for the drive home, taking his lovely Victor cd player with him. A most interesting 2.5 hours.

We started off with the Esoteric so John could get used to my room and system. The Victor was left warming up for at least 30 minutes before the listening began. We regularly alternated between players so we could gauge their sonic differences. Both players put up a strong account and they were both good with differing presentations.

Towards the end we connected the two players to each other with an optical cable and compared their transports. Both very good but it was possible to hear the X-03's offered more insight and detail.

My take on the two players?

The Victor has a noticeably softer sound - it doesn't expose poor recordings to the same extent as the Esoteric. It has a quite prominent midband with strong bass and slightly rolled-off treble imo. You could say it sounds more analogue in it's presentation perhaps.

The Esoteric has stronger/fuller bass with a slightly more laid-back midband. There is more openess to it's sound and far more high frequency detail, it is more ruthless in exposing poor recordings. If you feed it a half-decent disc it's often the better listen by a fair margin, feed a poor one and this may be reversed.

Both are superb players, i'd be happy with either, but given the choice i feel the X-03se is the superior player. It should be given that its at least a decade newer. However the Victor can be had for around 2 grand secondhand, if you could find a used X-03se i suspect it would be nearly double that.

They're both highly capable players imo, with a warm, fluid sound and no digital nasties.

 

[jonjin]

Papa Lazarou wrote:

Both are superb players, i'd be happy with either but given the choice i feel the X-03se is the superior player. It should be given that its at least a decade newer. However the Victor can be had for around 2 grand secondhand, if you could find a used X-03se i suspect it would be nearly double that.

Both great players imo.

You guys have too much fun!

Must say, I have been very impressed with the X-03se since I last heard it at the bake off (Jon's I think)... well in touch with the music and would appeal to the analogue-brigade amongst us...

JJ

 

[Biscuit]

pretty much matches what I felt after a brief listen to the X-03 and a longer spell with Vicky, the Esoteric was definately more accomplished overall

Still don't know which I'd choose to own though.....

 

[Testure]

Be interesting to hear it from MIB perspective. So would you say the Victor has the upper hand for vocals, more rich perhaps? Sounds like the victor's presentation is similar to the CD-7, but probably better (the victor that is)

 

[Papa Lazarou]

Not necessarily Testy no - on some recordings the Victor was warmer but i felt the X-03 dug deeper into the recordings offering more depth.

TBH vocals were excellent on both players, they're quite hard to separate in this respect. I would say the Victor sounds quite different to the Cd-7 too.

Looking forward to reading MIB's write-up - although we seemed to find fairly common ground in our opinions.

 

[Testure]

Papa Lazarou wrote:

Not necessarily Testy no - on some recordings the Victor was warmer but i felt the X-03 dug deeper into the recordings offering more depth.TBH vocals were excellent on both players, they're quite hard to separate in this respect. I would say the Victor sounds quite different to the Cd-7 too.

Have to agree the detail retrieval on the X-03 is phenomenal!, but not in a harsch or clinical way

 

[meninblack]

Thanks Papa for an interesting evening and a jolly nice Indian take-away to boot!

Papa's Bel Canto amplification and WB Arcs make for an extremely revealing system, almost totally neutral and transparent, making it fairly straightforward to pick out nuances of difference in source components, which was useful.

What about the Esoteric vs Victor? Well, both players are detailed, both have a presentation that is full-bodied and slightly on the warm side of neutral, both play music in a natural and enjoyable manner. You wouldn't chuck either of these out to make room for a minimax - or much else, for that matter.

Differences? The Esoteric is slightly more detailed, more analytical, and probably flatter in its frequency response. The Victor is slightly more "analogue" sounding and pushes the mid-range further forward in the mix with less emphasis on the low bass and the top treble.

Which is better? In absolute terms, the Esoteric is the more accomplished player by some margin. 13 years of development have not been wasted!

Having said that, there are circumstances where the Victor would be an easier listen, and system synergy should also be taken into account. A very revealing system like Papa's can unearth things from the disc that are best left there, from the point of view of enjoying the music!

A good example was my new Stranglers album - Suite XVI. This sounds pretty good on my system, but was exposed as a compressed horror on Papa's. Swapping the Victor back into the mix helped a lot with this one, although it still wasn't great. Similarly, some vocal tracks on the Esoteric revealed a lot of sibilance in the recording, which the Victor nicely removed. The Victor also tamed some bass boom coming from one corner of Papa's room - a speaker positioning issue, but difficult to solve in the space available.

(Note to Phil: that dog would make an excellent bass trap if you could find some way of fixing it to the wall!)

Connecting the optical output of the Esoteric to one of the Victor's handy digital inputs and playing it through the Victor's DAC and K2 processor showed that the increased level of detail retrieval was down to the transport section. The XL-Z900 transport in the Victor may have been a super-mech in its day, but let's not forget that its day was 1993! Interestingly, this set up (Esoteric transport/Victor DAC) was excellent for vocals, and reproduced k.d. lang's version of Hallelujah better than either of the two players managed on their own.

In terms of system synergy, the Victor certainly gels better with my big-banger Rotel Michi amps and Dynaudio floorstanders than it did with Papa's system.My system has a ton of bass and a slightly unruly treble when pushed, so the Victor's presentation is ideal. I also suspect that some of the treble roll-off we heard may be down to the three-metres-for-seven-quid interconnect we used: my home made pure silver ones do give it quite a lift in this area.

Would a buy an X-03 if the Victor died? YES. But I might be tempted to look for a Victor XP-DA999EX DAC/K2 Processor/Master Clock unit to go with it.....

 

[enjoy_the_music]

Hi,

Very interesting results!

The Victor i have is on its way to italy (sold for even more than the price asked here!

)

I have since found my new reference...the Stellavox ST2 DAC. Time aligned DAC developed by Goldmund...hooked up to the Victor the sound is unbelievable.

Like MIB says with a clock upgrade the Victor player would be stunning..some have complained about it's softer performance but many love it's more forgiving nature.

History lesson

:

The 999EX was last produced 2001 so its not mid-90's.

The XL-Z900 was early-mid 90's.

Then the XL-Z999 from 97-99

 

[enjoy_the_music]

:lmao:

meninblack wrote:

(Note to Phil: that dog would make an excellent bass trap if you could find some way of fixing it to the wall!)

 

[Papa Lazarou]

The Esoterics also respond most positively to external word clocks - Mr. C has demonstrated this to me.

 

[griffo104]

Good write up guys, sounds like a fun evening was had.

Having listened to both these players recently I think the guys have summed it up perfectly.

I think the point about poor recordings is the most important thing for someone like me - Saturday proved something for me that I really wasn't prepared for with regards to listening to a favourite album.

As good as the Esoteric is, for me the Victor is probably the one I would choose for myself, simply as Papa mentions it's more forgiving of poor recordings - How could I face the world without Minor Threat, Godfelsh, Jesu, Ministry, Dead Kennedys, Fugazi, Minutemen, Swans, etc..

However it does suggest that there is a point where the hifi becomes too good ?

 

[enjoy_the_music]

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/esoteric2/g25u_2.html

Heres a review of the Esoteric Clock...i say clock.

The Stellavox is a DAC and Clock alignment in one cute box...quite funky.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

enjoy_the_music wrote:

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/esoteric2/g25u_2.htmlHeres a review of the Esoteric Clock...i say clock.

The Stellavox is a DAC and Clock alignment in one cute box...quite funky.

Yes, read this before. The one i heard was a studio clock with upgrades by Coherent Systems, said to perform at least as well as the official unit (far cheaper too)

 

[Papa Lazarou]

griffo104 wrote:

Good write up guys, sounds like a fun evening was had.Having listened to both these players recently I think the guys have summed it up perfectly.

I think the point about poor recordings is the most important thing for someone like me - Saturday proved something for me that I really wasn't prepared for with regards to listening to a favourite album.

As good as the Esoteric is, for me the Victor is probably the one I would choose for myself, simply as Papa mentions it's more forgiving of poor recordings - How could I face the world without Minor Threat, Godfelsh, Jesu, Ministry, Dead Kennedys, Fugazi, Minutemen, Swans, etc..

However it does suggest that there is a point where the hifi becomes too good ?

I take your point Griffo - however your disc would've sounded much better if the amps and speakers gelled properly.

 

[meninblack]

enjoy_the_music wrote:

History lesson

:The 999EX was last produced 2001 so its not mid-90's.

The XL-Z900 was early-mid 90's.

Then the XL-Z999 from 97-99

Yes - but from what I've read the basic technology goes back to the two-box XL-Z1000 of 1993, with mostly twiddling in the later versions - although the K2 processor was supplanted by the later "extended" 20-bit and 24-bit V2 models.

Richard - do you know what the pin assignments on the XLR analogue outputs of the Victor are?? We thought about running it balanced, but I had a suspicion they were different from the Esoteric so we didn't risk it.

 

[enjoy_the_music]

Hi,

No XLR is all the same. I've tried it on many occassions and now use the digital XLR/AES output direct into the DAC.

Richard

 

[meninblack]

enjoy_the_music wrote:

Hi,No XLR is all the same. I've tried it on many occassions and now use the digital XLR/AES output direct into the DAC.

Richard

Are you sure about the analogue ones? I ask because I looked at the rear view of the XL-Z900 on your eBay advert, and the label on the back suggests that pin 2 = cold and pin 3 = hot, which is the opposite of the Esoteric. Of course, later models may have fallen in line with conventional US/European practice.

 

[Biscuit]

wouldn't swopping hot and cold just change the phase, or would it do something bad?

 

[Testure]

meninblack wrote:

enjoy_the_music wrote:

History lesson

:The 999EX was last produced 2001 so its not mid-90's.

The XL-Z900 was early-mid 90's.

Then the XL-Z999 from 97-99

Yes - but from what I've read the basic technology goes back to the two-box XL-Z1000 of 1993, with mostly twiddling in the later versions - although the K2 processor was supplanted by the later "extended" 20-bit and 24-bit V2 models.

Richard - do you know what the pin assignments on the XLR analogue outputs of the Victor are?? We thought about running it balanced, but I had a suspicion they were different from the Esoteric so we didn't risk it.

Even if Pin 2 and 3 are different, the worst that could happen is you have a reversal of absolute polarity (which happens many times throught the recording process). Would'nt have caused any harm

To clarify this is not the same as having 1 channel out of phase (like incorrect wiring of speaker cables)

EIA Standard RS-297-A describes the use of the XLR3 for audio signal level applications:

Pin

Function

1

Chassis ground (cable shield)

2

Normal polarity ("hot")

3

Inverted polarity ("cold")

Some audio equipment manufacturers reverse the use of pin 2 (properly the normal input) and pin 3 (inverting input). This reflects their usage since before any standard existed. Pin 1 is always ground, and many connectors connect it internally to the connector case.