*NEW* Esoteric N-05XD

After more than 3-month wait, this showed up at the door yesterday.

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Yeah, I'm tempted to come over to the dark side. I wonder if they will do D1X, N-03T and others in black?
 
I ordered one just like it!

I hope it doesn't take 3 months

Sounds like you loved your demo, Mark. Please do share your impression.

It’s breaking in nicely for me. Still has a way to go to hit 200 hours as Mike recommended. So far so good and no feeling of being underwhelmed whatsoever. Rich, big sound from the get go. I came from MSB Discrete, so it’s my bare minimum. Excited to explore its feature set such as headphone output, pre-amp function in the coming days, although this will mainly be used as DAC + media player in the rig.
 
If I recall correctly from my N-01XD days it means that the internal clock is working
 
Green light should mean external clock is active.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
Green light should mean external clock is active.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

I reread the manual, I only had the N-01XD for a couple of months, and it appears that we are both correct… depending on if you have the clock sync set to ON or OFF. I had it set to OFF as I only used the USB and NET input. In this instance the light is solid green indicating that the internal oscillator is being used.
 
On N-01 and P1 I've only seen the blue CLOCK light (because I use an external clock). On G-02X the clock light is green if configured for adaptive zero ground, and blue if configured for normal operation.
 
Clock light in green means what, no external clock?

That’s probably the case for me as I don’t have an external clock.

What’s good? I’d prefer to keep the color in black and I know most esoteric clocks don’t come in black.
 
hi guys, first post here and English is not my mother language so excuse me in advance :

I was looking for a new streamer with DAC in the 5K plus region and was leaning on a Ayre Digital Hub with the solo focus of Streaming Tidal via Roon Nucleus.
My other equiment is a SME turntable with Gold Note phono preamp connected to an integrated fom Luxman, the 507uxII. My old streamer is already sold, a Lumin.

Then, this new Esoteric N-05XD appeared and i am still intrigued if i can take advantage of its preamps capabilties, besides the more straightforward Roon Ready function.
So, if i understood correctly, with this N-05XD i would be able to connect my phono preamp to a XLR input and then from the Esoteric to my Luxman integrated also via XLR output. On this case, the integrated would work only as a power amp and i could control the volume and all other options via the Esoteric. Am i right?
If so, should i expect a sound quality upgrade on this solution comparing to my current, feeding the phono directly to the Luxman?

Any feedback is much welcome :)

Stay safe.
 
I can get a demo unit whithin some weeks or strech my budget...if my assumption of improving also by analog source is right.
Also, will not decide before a in house demo, of course.

Are we audiophiles or not? :sneaky:
 
Well, looks that i am going to find by myself ;)

Will let you know, if anyone interested.
 

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does anyone knows if using balanced outpus to my integrated Luxman and setting the volume control to variable(instead of fix) on the N5-xd i am turning off the preamplification of the Luxman ?

Tks.
 
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