A day at Axpona 2011: Esoteric & Audio Physic





The Audio Physic speakers were fronted by some spectacular electronics from Esoteric. Prominently displayed? The new $13,000 K-03 SACD/DAC. I have to admit it — it’s hot. Sadly, it wasn’t playing every time I stopped in. However, the Esoteric RZ-1 integrated proved very capable driving the German Audio Physic Virgo 25 speakers, and that big Esoteric amp/pre separates produced some compelling music. Everyone has always told me all manner of horrible things about the “Esoteric sound” — thin, lean, metallic, dry — and I can happily state that none of that was true of this room.

This was also one of those rooms that mixed things up quite a bit, so every time I went in, some different combo was playing. Now, everything in this room was unfamiliar to me, so I have no way to suss out what contributed to what, but I can say that the sound quality was very fine. What I needed was a lot more time in this room to sort through all the options!

Notice anything interesting? That big digital display on top of the K-03 is an M2Tech Young DAC. Sneaky!








About Scot Hull 1063 Articles
Scot started all this back in 2009. He is currently the Publisher here at PTA, the Publisher at The Occasional Magazine, and the Executive Producer at The Occasional Podcast. There are way too many words about him over on the Contributors page.