Year after year I love the sound of Esoteric at the CES. I sort of had been waiting for them to jump on the BluRay bandwagon, and was a bit dissapointed this year to see them focussed on the 2 channel mode.

I had a discussion with Mark Gurney head of Marketing at Esoteric and asked him. I specifically mentioned Denon and Marantz which are building very robust looking BR machines. His comment was that TEAC is waiting for the next generation componentry for BR (me fill in: From Pioneers next gen unit?) which should be more discrete and substantial physically. Right now all the integrated components are designed to lower the cost to compete with HD DVD. This is not the phillosophy of TEAC ESOTERIC.

I am really crossing my fingers because as 2 channel audio passes into oblivion NO COMPANY IS BETTER POSITIONED to introduce a NO HOLDS BARRED MEGA FLAGSHIP UNIVERSAL DISC BASED SYSTEM.

I say Mr. Gurney build it and they will come. I would like to demonstrate to Mr. Gurney and his associates that they are missing a boat they are uniquely qualified to exploit. Im going to put my thinking cap on before I diagram it, but it is a prototype no holds barred execution of their disc clamping transport, master clocks, and dtoa converters for the purpose of playing strictly multichannel 7.1 formats in 11.1 channels.

In the meantime did you know that teac makes the drives used in Nasa and in general aviation?

Ed Meitner recently adopted the Esoteric transport in his players, there is no better validation. But the opportunity is there to take global masters clocking to unify the timing of all digital audio and video components thru the 3dlp
projector itself!

I say it is an interesting pet project worth pursuing.

http://cineramax.com/CES_2008/Esoteric.jpg

http://cineramax.com/CES_2008/Product-Matrix.jpg

Peter;

Esoteric/Teac does have the coolist and most highly engineered digital boxes and transports (i'm not saying the best sounding). but most of their really top level stuff is targeted at the High End audio 2-channel marketplace......mostly because Home Theatre software keeps getting re-invented every 24-36 months and the 2-channel audio enthusiast is more long-term with software and will spend $20k-$60k on a source.

most top level audiophiles have literally thousands of pieces of software (and potentially millions) to play on their expensive players. today; after 2 years of 1080p software; most of the mega-titles are still not issued in these new formats. there is simply not yet a case to be made for more expensive hardware.

when you can purchase SOTA Blueray and HD-DVD boxes for under $1000 how can Esoteric justify any huge commitment? Esoteric would need to re-engineer it's transport to do Blueray and HD-DVD......which might not be a sensible business decision.

granted; there is not a huge market for $20k+ CD/SACD players......but there is one. Home Theatre people might spend $20k+ on a Front Projector or screen or room......but so far not for a player. How much better might an Esoteric be than the Toshiba XA2?

Max, maybe two channel is dead to you, and to many of the masses, but it remains a large niche market. And the future of two channel lies not in expensive Esoteric transports, but in CD drives to hard disk and then out again to stereo preamps. That's the future.

Mike: You make many good points as usual, I need time to comment on them all.

Steve I agree with you the future of 2 channel audio, but that is just one alternative future, in the realm of 500,000 hardware budgets for home theater it is certainly plausible to have a PO3 Universal with BR (forget HD DVD) feeding 7.1 HDMI 1.3 digital into a surround processor like the tact that converts the 7.1 into 11.1 channels outputting digital into 6 esoteric dacs (d05) driving Mark Levinson's or whatever.
http://cineramax.com/CES_2008/TCSjackP.jpg
All of these devices would be governed by an esoteric master clock which in turn would synch to the smpte code of directv, the Blue Ray (server/changer), and the 3dlp projector.
http://www.teac.com/esoteric/images/GO3X%20_Large.jpg
http://www.teac.com/esoteric/images/G03X_rearLG.jpg
http://www.ese-web.com/160u.jpg
Even the superkontrast is synched look at the control menu (lower left)
http://cineramax.com/images/Menu%20Tree.JPG

Granted it is expensive, but I have never apologized for toiling in that range as it inevitably trickles down big time within a decade to us pooh folks. Without question. There is a safety net for Teac to invest in a multichannel Uber Transport including BR. The people in the industry, there are 600 big shots in LA alone, probably 300 in NYC, 50 in Miami, you arelooking at a 5,000 target market for a 200,000 electronics package that is a write off to these folk.

A blueray player from Esoteric, Sim Audio, Mark Levinson or Theta would be very interesting indeed.
I however doubt we are going to see such players in the near future, just look at how long it took before Krell, Mark Levinson and many of the other high end company`s started to offer DVD players with HDMI output.

No sooner that this guy told me Marantz and Denon were using cheap components (from a Panasonic BD30) that this whole 5 db Dolby True HD deficiency bug came out.

With Pioneer coming out with more robust discrete circuitry in their next gen BR (I asked) and if they can see a market potential, NO Company by being : A)Top experts in the field and B) Being Japanese (to deal directly with Pioneer in procurement and QC) is better qualified than TEAC ESOTERIC.

I have recently been comparing every surround music format imaginable and can conclude that DTS Master HD and Dolby True HD 7.1 is it.

No need to evolve any further, the entire Montreaux summit BR series and many others (like celine diones, the eagles etc.) should fuel generous software offerings to justify elaborate multichannel megasystems based on high end BR-universal transports, master clocked , and d/a'd, to the discriminating Home Theater aficionado that is just a surround sound audiophile awaiting empowerment.

http://www.teac.com/esoteric/images/P-03Web.jpg

PO3 Universal $17,200 (http://www.teac.com/esoteric/P-03_Universal.pdf)

http://www.teac.com/esoteric/images/D-05Web.jpg

http://www.teac.com/esoteric/images/D-05Web.jpg

http://www.teac.com/esoteric/images/D-05Web.jpg

http://www.teac.com/esoteric/images/D-05Web.jpg

D-05 Dual Mono Digital to Analog Converter $7,000Ea. (http://www.teac.com/esoteric/D-05.html)

You nit! the timing stuff in the barco menu has nothing to do with what you are rambling about.

If you are feeding an HDMI source then you have all the reclocking and signal restoration happening as a part of the TMDS (this is the actual signal inside a DVI or HDMI connector) Timing is not needed because it is "agreed upon" by the two devices. and the EDID is also handed over. that is how the rate of the signal is agreed upon. (This is the simplest description i can muster, all of you who pore over the documents, please hold off, it is not needed)

This master clock stuff becomes moot once a decent hard drive based system comes about.

... just look at how long it took before Krell, Mark Levinson and many of the other high end company`s started to offer DVD players with HDMI output.

i agree. even esoteric for that matter. they were close to being in the top few manufacturers at the time who offered an upconverting 1080p dvd player (dv-60), but its video processing was inferior to denon models costing much less as well as a few others. not that its video was not good, but cheaper models were much better hence it was hard to justify the price difference (even though the esoteric ananlog section was miles better). so, i also think its gonna be hard to make a product that will be somewhat competitively priced and still be alteast on par with current blu-ray players. in theory, the "best" blu-ray player said to be released will be the denon 3800 at around $2k i believe and even at that price i think its hard to justify since sub $1k players will probably be 97% as close in pq. where most of these companies can justify the $$$ is in their analogue section, which imo, esoteric is very good.

This master clock stuff becomes moot once a decent hard drive based system comes about.

Sorry, I don't follow you. Why does the master clock become moot?

My understanding is that regardless of transport type, it's better to run the clock signal separately than to have it embedded in the S/PDIF or AES/EBU signal.

Peter

http://cineramax.com/CES_2008/Format-Hierarchy.jpg

Peter what are you saying..... don't you know all transports sound the same??;):p

Here are the posts we lost last night.

http://cineramax.com/CES_2008/DTSMasterhd7.jpg

http://cineramax.com/CES_2008/TrueHD.jpg

NOTICE : Tha Brave One is indeed NOT in Dolby True HD only DD. Go Figure.

Esoteric producing a Blu-ray player would be wonderful. I've spent some time with the DV-60. It's hard to say if Blu-ray will catch on. I remember discussing potential business ventures with some fraternity brothers ten years ago. A couple decided to open gas stations, Shell stations to be specific. All decided that video stores were not going to be around much longer with the rise of the internet and therefore not a good investment. Now ten year latter, both guys who purchased the Shell stations sold them as they did not get the results they expected. Has the internet yet had much of an effect on video rentals? My local stores look as busy as always. Bottom line is there are no guarantees. Someone, some high-end company, is going to have to take the risk and see if they can make a profit.