Esoteric
Grandioso D1X
Introduced 2019$31,670 MSRP
The Esoteric Grandioso D1X is a dual-monoblock D/A converter, with left and right channels housed in fully separate chassis, built around Esoteric's in-house "Master Sound Discrete DAC" — a fully discrete, FPGA-based delta-sigma converter designed entirely in-house rather than using an off-the-shelf DAC chip (nicologyjp). It uses Esoteric's proprietary ES-LINK5 digital transmission format to achieve extremely high native resolution, and the 2023 "SE" revision added a new discrete clock module and an upgraded analog output stage (Esoteric official news).
MSRP
$31,670
Used market · Good
$31,250
-1% vs MSRP
as of Sep 1, 2026MSRP to used market
From $31,670 at launch to $31,250 today.
Specifications
- Weight
- Left channel 23.1kg (51lb); right channel 23.0kg (50-3/4 to 51-3/4lb)
- Max DSD
- Up to 22.5MHz (DSD512-equivalent) via ES-LINK5 and USB
- Dimensions
- 445mm x 132mm x 448mm (17-5/8" x 5-1/4" x 17-3/4"), including protrusions
- Launch price
- ¥3,500,000/pair (~$31,670) released March 1, 2019
- Current price
- £53,000/pair (UK, Jordan Acoustics); $55,000/pair (US, Playback Distribution)
- Analog outputs
- Balanced XLR/ES-LINK Analog (mono, one per channel), 100Ω output impedance, 5.0Vrms max; unbalanced RCA, 47Ω, 2.5Vrms max
- Digital inputs
- 2x ES-LINK, 1x XLR (AES/EBU, dual or single mode), 2x RCA (S/PDIF), 1x optical, 1x USB 2.0
- DAC architecture
- ESOTERIC "Master Sound Discrete DAC" — in-house FPGA-based, 64-bit/512Fs delta-sigma modulator, dual monoblock (one chassis per channel)
- Power consumption
- 20W
- Max PCM resolution
- Up to 768kHz / 48-bit via ES-LINK5; up to 768kHz/32-bit via USB
- Signal to noise ratio
- 113dB
- Total harmonic distortion
- 0.0007% at 1kHz (D/A operation mode M3)
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