A friend of mine owned a Luxman D10 for about 8 months before selling and getting the top of the line Marantz SACD player. I heard the Luxman player on many occasions but never as a stand alone DAC. Easily the finest CD or SACD player I have used - the quality of the transport is amazing. The Marantz that replaced it is also extremely high quality. I don’t think you could tell the difference in any blind testing. Your wallet would know $6000 - Marantz versus $16000 - Luxman. The SMSL using the Rohm chip for $399 seems like a bargain if you want that chip. Being a brand new product and no returns allowed might be a gamble…. Probably best to wait for awhile and see.
The sound of BD34301 is very good. We sincerely admire the Japanese people's understanding of sound. Its definition lies between AKM and ESS. This is very musical. A bit like Marantz CD63, but with higher clarity! The sound is solid and sweet, not greasy to listen to it for a long time! I have listened to D300 for a long time, it is not worse than ES9038PRO, it has a different sound performance, which gives people who like music one more choice.
My other full-time listening colleague and I like this sound. At present, the price of BD34301 is very high, and it does not have built-in de-jitter like ESS. It must use external processing for de-jitter, otherwise the jitter will be very poor. So D300 has a dedicated clock processing module.
As for THD+N, although it is not as good as ES9038PRO, but this performance is far more than enough, we should focus on the music itself, not just measurement. However, measurement can ensure that it is correctly engineered, but it cannot fully reflect its sound performance.
Of course, sound performance has a lot to do with personal listening habits and other equipment. What I say is only personal words, and you should be subject to what you hear.
