My Esoteric N-03T is broken

Don’t worry, you’ll love your cable way before this 1000 hours. It’s only a few days, and the Dragon 48 has made my DMP sound like it’s never sounded before. Way better than the first day. It’s sounding close to the Esoteric when the Esoteric was using the RAL cable. Man, this Dragon is something else!!

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I think the music sounds better at night than during the day even with a regenerator. Tonight the sound is really blowing me away, even better than last night. The sound really opened up tonight with so much power and life. I hope this breaking in never ends. I don’t miss the Esoteric as much any more. This DMP is fantastic playing files. So is it with the single layer SACDs.

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FWIW, I suspect that you will find the DMP lacking when you swap the Esoteric back in (assuming it is a superior pice of kit).

Aural memory is a fickle and fleeting thing.

You’re probably right, but that’s not going to stop me from enjoying what I’m listening to now.
I honestly can tell you I have never heard the DMP sounding this good before, and I believe the AQ Dragon has something to do with it.

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Update: The Esoteric is at the service right now being repaired. The darn thing cost me $180 to ship FedEX to about 500 miles away and the warranty does not cover it. I believe they cover shipping it back though. It’s only a streamer. Why do they make it so heavy. 50 lbs shipping weight.

The DMP is filling out my listening gap quite well. It’s incredible sounding with its USB input. And playing some regular 16 bit CDs sounds even better than many of my really good SACDs. They’re mastered in 32 bit though.

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In which case you should tell them to not return it to you until they have convinced you that they found the problem, not just the symptom and that it was verified that the repair fixed the problem, not the symptom.
If the problem is not fixed you will face many more FedEx bills.

When I got my Stellar Gain Cell DAC repaired and asked what the problem was, they told me that they replaced a PCB, when I asked what problem caused the PCB failure I got no answer.

So I asked the dealer to give me a good deal on alternative equipment.

I don’t want thousands of Euros costing equipment to fail within its expected life time. And in case it does I need to know what the problem was in detail otherwise I have to assume that it will fail again soon. And that is absolutely not acceptable.

Good point, I certainly don’t want this to happen again. I’ve been very lucky with my equipment, but not my servers. First my Aurender’s hard drive failed and now this Esoteric. It’s way past the 30 day trial period so the Esoteric is not returnable. It does have a 3 year warranty though. I’ll have to resell it if I decide to get something else.

It also make sense to keep the original packaging and double box in good order too.
They charge a 25% restocking fee if any of that is missing. My brother paid over $350 to get the box and packaging for his Bryston 14Bsst when he traded ii in.

I keep the boxes till after warranty period when we are in need for that storage space. I traded the SGCD in with all packaging and original paperwork,

However I find it ridiculous that a consumer has to pay for shipping or anything else in warranty cases.

The functionality of the very expensive equipment in the manufacturers specified conditions is solely the responsibility of the manufacturer. He got the boxes to you, he can also take them back under warranty. There is no excuse, the fact that you can not use the equipment when it is under repair, while you paid a lot of money for it is already a burden on the consumer. The consumer should not be faced with any cost as long as the equipment is under warranty.

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I agree wholeheartedly. It is the fault of the manufacture that the equipment is defective and the consumer should not have to pay in any part to have it resolved. That is definitely a rule that should be changed.

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However I find it ridiculous that a consumer has to pay for shipping or anything else in warranty cases.

Seems if return shipping costs are a concern regarding a component’s warranty this should be understood prior to purchase. If one finds it unacceptable look elsewhere for a manufacturer whose warranty terms fits your criteria. From what I understand PSA’s terms are generous.

I think that strictly from a manufacturers standpoint they really dont know if the fault is a warranty claim or not until they see the unit and decide.
There are many less than honest consumers that would send the machine in for warranty work when they caused the problem themselves. I believe that is the reason for requiring the transport costs having to be born by the consumer at least until the cause of the failure can be determined. If the cause is not abuse then the manufacturer should repay the shipping costs to the consumer.
I dont think anyone here is in the “less than scrupulous” group but having a line of retail items I can verify abuse by the customer is a big percentage of warranty claims that get refused.

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I would be OK with getting shipping costs back after it was verified that the failure was not caused by misuse of the consumer. But unfortunately I have never seen such construction.

I am lucky that I live in a small country with dealers in reasonable distance. I must admit that I enjoy visiting the dealer to see what new equipment he has to demonstrate. My dealer ships it for me, he is honest and considers it his part of the bargain.

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Being able to QUICKLY diagnose an issue and then ship a replacement part with clear instructions as to how to swap the new part for the old was nice. Getting the new part in one week with zero charges for anything was better still. The repair taking ten minutes tops and resulting in an upgrade, well shucks. The bar is set pretty high.

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Unfortunately not all manufactures want their customers to be digging into their products to do the repairs theirselves. There is too many incompetent consumers out there, even with proper instructions, and they want to test the unit after the repair to see if it is working properly. With Esoteric, just opening the cover voids the warranty. The warranty is only good if you bought the product from an authorized dealer and proof of purchase is required. It can only be repaired in the country where you bought it. All Esoteric products has a 3 years parts and labor warranty. I’m learning a lot about this warranty thing.

My Esoteric is finally on an UPS vehicle for delivery today! I’m so excited!! Soon I will be able to refresh my memory of the incredible sound from this transport. And to hear for certain how it stack up to my new PST transport. It’s some interesting times ahead.

It took over 2 months to replace the defective ethernet board. The repair shop said it took forever for Esoteric to send the replacement part from Japan. They’re having a pretty big Covid thing going on in Japan too.

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I got my Esoteric up and running and Oh My God it is good. Good as my PST is, out of the box, the Esoteric has more resolution and liveness. But it is a lot closer than you would think, that’s saying a lot for the PST. Overall cost for the Esoteric including cables and power supplies is over $20k. PST with Dragon cable $8.5k.


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There’s some explaining I have to do on why initially my brother and I thought the PST’s SQ has an edge on the Esoteric. The last time we listened to the Esoteric before it broke, I did not have the SR Galileo UEF power cords on my power amp and preamp, and no NBS Omega 0 on the P20. I do have those cables in when I got the PST. Those power cords made a huge difference. That doesn’t take away the fact that the PST is the best I’ve heard when I got it. And I will continue to use and enjoy it playing my truckload of SACD’s. But the Esoteric is in another league, just like no matter how good the upcoming DS MKII is, the TSS will undoubtably be even better.

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That is a swell looking piece of kit.

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Thanks Al, and one heavy son of a bit%h too. I just had my exercise for the week moving the darn thing around.

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Since one is transport and other a streamer I suspect you use files on usb stick with both to compare SQ? How does Esoteric compare when streaming Qobuz to sacd discs on PST, is it even close then? Just trying to figure out how good that Esoteric is as streamer also,because I think this is the first time when someone finds that any streamer actually beats PST :slight_smile: