For the secondhand money, this is simply a brilliant player. Fast, tight, detailed, spacious and refined but not the most natural in timbre. For example, Rega sounds more real, less synthetic, but that’s a minor thing because you can’t get better sound for the dollar. In standard shape, the XA50ES can be slightly too technical but this is easily addressed by installing the LCaudio clock upgrade. This makes the player more refined, more focused but at the same time more natural and more relaxed while maintaining speed.
While my personal XA50 was modified by Array, this didn’t represent a huge audible change. On many occasions I have had on loan other, standard, XA50’s and they sounded much the same.
The picture below more or less marks the transition for me from analog photos to digital ones. At the time that I purchased my XA50ES, I did not yet own a digital camera… can you imagine?
Christian thank you for your review of the CDP-XA50ES; I recently aquired one leaning on your recommendation and indeed have it output to an external DAC. My quedtion is, I know of the accolades for the CDP-XA7ES but do you know if there are differences when it comes to the coaxial digital output? The XA-7ES would also be output via coaxial. Thank you for this opportunity to reavh out and hopefully a reply in return.
I’ve only compared them using the analog outputs (and the output stage is indeed different) but given that the same transport mechanism is used and I suspect the digital path is no different, I would wager that the coaxial outputs should be highly comparable between the two players.
Six of One; Half Dozen of the Other. Both the XA-50ES & XA55ES are essentially, exactly, the same players. The differences are embellishments not sonics…no one but the Bionic Man Or Bionic Female would be able to tell them apartment. THe 50ES is exactly the same as the XA55. I worked for US Pioneer, 1976 – 1995 and both players are marketing items: one more expensive than the other. The Laser and Optical mechanisms are exactly the same…one more transformer does don’t ensure any sonic differences. Any wise Audiophile knows: you never buy the top tier because there is where the profit; instead, you buy one or two levels below and that is where 95% of the sonics are to be found!