Regard

Guy;-)

P.S. your show reports are the best on the internet..the pictures quality is awesome.

Well, I guess I should apologize in advance foir the typos I will always, without failure (I know because Neli likes to point them out to me afterwards ) put in my posts. And my main language is English.

As far as the Esoteric players go, they seem to keep coming out with new ones, so much so that it seems even their fans have a hard time keeping up. I think there is supposed to be a 5 box version now? Anyway, I am sure I have not heard their latest - so I cannot comment on how they sound.

As far as ‘best’ goes… what does ‘best’ mean?

There are some people who conscously pick their Esoteric over the Emm Labs. Excluding those who do not spend the time and effort to break in the Meitner - that still leaves a few people who try both players (or any other players for that matter) and chose something besides the Meitner. How can this be?

These things I really wonder about.

I can think of two basic reasons for these kind of decisions, these Choices that Mystify:

1. They prefer a specific sound and the Meitner does not give them that sound

2. Their system is unbalanced and the Meitner just does not work well with it.

How do yoiu tell if you may be in camp 1 or 2?

In my experience the Meitner is above all TRANSPARENT. This is exactly what I strive for personally, a transparency, a suspension of disbelief, a purity that lets magic happen.

In my way of thinking right now,:

Details make it real to the mind,

Harmonics make it real to the heart, and

Transparency makes it real to the soul.

I do not believe one can have transparency without Detail and Harmonics, but it is so much more.

Some people want DETAIL above all else. If you read their posts and reviews, they talk about eeking every last detail out of the music and little about how enjoyable the sound is. Or about how real and continuous it is.

Some people want a warm, melodic FORGIVING harmonic presentation above all else. I suspect many of these people are in recovery from a very digital solid-state sounding system (been there, done that), but most probably just want their music to be enjoyable-sounding above all.

2. Unbalanced systems are a real problem - because the system may reject an excellent component because it doesn’t ‘fit in’, causing an infinite loop of iteration as their owner strives for a better sound but keeps coming up against incompatibility problems.

For example, one person with Boulder amps and I think Wilson speakers did not like the Meitner - said it was too ‘bright’ and ’solid-state’ sounding. Well, he was hearing his associated components, perhaps for the first time, and did not like it! So, even though he and I may have the same preference for transparent souind, he out of necessity must get a player that is more forgiving if he is to keep his other components (thereby never reaching his goal of superb magical transparency).

For me the Meitner is the best digital. I adjust the associated equipment in the system to optimize the sound for it. When I just want to listen and not ‘explore strange new worlds’ I enjoy music with the Audio Note pair. I suspect Neli prefers the Audio Aero Prestige - much of the time. In a few days we will get the Audio Note CDT Three transport - upping the bar once again.

To my ears, with our calibre of equipment, we carry the best digital we have heard. We are lucky to be able to carry exactly what we think is best with respect to digital (whereas we cannot carry, say, the Boulder $$$ preamp, Avalon speakers, etc. because of geographical constraints). There is only one other line of digital that we may be interested in…. stay tuned!

Hope this helps you decide what YOU might consider ‘best’,

Kind regards,
Mike.

Guy;-)

Regard

Guy La Rue
Canada