GuidoCorona

Greetings, I am the friend that Jimmy has mentioned. Berkeley was inserted in my system consisting of Esoteric X-01 Limited, Jeff Rowland Criterion pre, Rowland 312 stereo amp, Vienna Mahler speakers, all wiring/cabling/pc was Furutech Flux seires, power distribution was Furutech ETP-309. All components were powered from 309. 309 was connected to a dedicated outlet. Only heterogeneous connection was coax for connectin Alpha to X-01 provided by Jimmy with a BNC2RCA converter at the X-01 end. Furutech material are review samples. Rest of system is my own. Breakin on all components in several thousand hrs. including relevant inputs on Criterion pre. Breakin of wiring is approx 1,000 hrs. Pure X-01 connected to XLR input 2 on Criterion. Alpha connected to Criterion XLR input 1. Alpha DAC appears to have slightly better deep bass definition/handling than X-01 Limited. But starting with mid bass, a hump appears that creates non specificity and a humming on string bass, percussion etc. . . the hump appears to continue into the midrange. Treble of Alpha is slightly more emphasized than on X-01, but suffers of some slight raggedness and can intermodulate on chords and transients. General impression is of a slightly more energetic but also fatiguing presentation and less transparency than X-01. Granted, the coax wire we used may not have been ideal. Regards, Guido