Audiophilepure

https://www.whathifi.com/reviews/esoteric-k-05xd

The honest approach is thrown into even sharper relief when we play an SACD of Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring. This is a lovely clean Decca recording with the music conducted by Valery Gergiev and played by the Kirov Orchestra. Here we’re impressed by the clarity on offer and the sheer amount of information the Esoteric reveals. Just as impressive is the way this player manages to arrange all that information to deliver a stirring musical experience. This symphony is known for its drama, complex instrumentation and wild dynamic swings, and the K-05XD delivers the full experience with enthusiasm.

This player has a large-scale and authoritative presentation and images with pleasing precision. Instruments are layered with care and locked into position even when the music becomes demanding. We love the spacious nature of the soundstage and the general lack of clutter. The Esoteric’s impressive ability to dig up low-level details shines through in the convincing way it places the orchestra within the recording venue. There is nothing showy here, no attempt to make the recording sound more impressive than it is. Just a pleasingly accurate rendition of the original recording.

https://www.theaudiobeat.com/equipment/ch_precision_d15.htm

Where the CH Precision D1.5 MQA playback really shines, however, is with exceptionally well-recorded classical music, and nothing shines brighter than the Lisa Batiashvili and Daniel Barenboim disc of Tchaikovsky’s and Sibelius’s Violin Concertos. It comes in a standard CD package [Deutsche Grammophon 479 6038] but also in a UHQCD package with MQA encoding [Deutsche Grammophon Uccg-41048 484 2089]. It is a modern recording, made in 2016, and is thus fully MQA Studio. The improvement with the UHQCD/MQA disc is not subtle. The original disc was an exceptional-sounding CD, but the improvements with the MQA version, played on the CH Precision player, are nothing short of stunning. The soundstage opened up and details lost in the digital haze were fleshed out. How much does all this boil down to improvements from the UHQCD manufacturing and how much to the MQA? The newer disc is certainly a significant improvement played on a non-MQA player like the Neodio simply because of the UHQCD manufacturing, but MQA Studio encoding takes it into another league.

https://www.whathifi.com/reviews/technics-sa-c600

Mahler’s Symphony No.10 is a dense and demanding piece of classical music. The Technics does well, though to be fair if you’re after the last word in insight a well-chosen combination of separates will do better. Regardless, the SA-C600 captures the feel of the music convincingly, delivering a combination of drama and fluidity that grabs a firm hold of our attention. A claimed power output of 30 watts per channel (into 8 ohms) is pretty modest, but the SA-C600 exceeds expectations by sounding surprisingly authoritative and suitably large-scale.

The digital inputs maintain this high standard, provided the source is of the requisite quality, of course. It’s only when we feed a signal through the single line-level analogue input do we feel a tinge of disappointment, as it sounds a little more opaque and dynamically constrained than we’d hoped for. Oddly, the onboard moving magnet phono stage doesn’t exhibit these traits to any serious extent and sounds way better than is the norm from such built-in circuits. This phono stage is good enough for most price-compatible turntables, which is an unexpected but thoroughly pleasant surprise.

https://www.hifinews.com/content/kalista-dreamplay-xc-cdsacd-network-player

As I mentioned earlier about these streaming services, they may not offer the sheer quality available elsewhere, but they’re a useful function to have – in the case of vTuner, it’s free music after all, and a lot of it from around the world – and the DreamPlay XC delivers it in a consistently enjoyable fashion. Radio 3’s stream may only be 320kbps AAC at best, but the music still communicates well via this player.

Push up into the DXD and DSD resolutions the DreamPlay XC supports via its network connection, and while that warmth and smoothness remains, the player is fully able to demonstrate the advantages of more data being moved to deliver the music. Play trumpeter Angelo Verploegen’s relaxed When Night Falls set, a typically intimate recording from the Just Listen label [JL028; DSD256], and the result is a remarkably effective evocation of the three musicians – Ed Verhoeff on guitar and Eric van Der Westen on bass – just sitting down and playing together, recorded straight to DSD256. Yes, there are other network players that might bring out more of the studio ambience but very few will match the wonderful late-night cosiness going on via the DreamPlay XC, entirely befitting the gentle theme of these sessions.

https://www.hifinews.com/content/electrocompaniet-emc-1-mk-v-cd-player

Upgrades over the previous generation of EMC 1 are a new (unspecified) drive unit for the player’s top-loading mechanism, refinements to the balanced analogue circuitry that sits downstream of the Cirrus Logic upsampling and DAC chips, and improvements to the vibration-cancelling properties of the chassis. Connections are exactly the same, however: balanced XLR and unbalanced RCA, plus coaxial and optical digital audio outputs enabling the EMC 1 MKV to be paired with an outboard DAC, operating in transport-only mode.

Back around the front, the display’s illuminated blue text is large, making it easy to note track number and time elapsed, and it can be dimmed fully. The supplied plastic remote control is less impressive – lightweight compared to the player itself – and festooned with buttons that are of no use here. However, it makes operating the EMC 1 MKV a breeze with keys for direct track access, search, shuffle and various repeat play options.