2. digital
  3. 1052700774

Shanling T100 to the T200 shootout

I got a chance to listen to these two players today and was wondering what others think about these. First these are both really good players. I was listening to them on a really high end Krell (not sure the models .. really big monoblocks) and B&W signature 800 system. For me, I did not hear any memorable difference between the two for redbook CD. Some people have stated the T100 sounds better but I liked them both. SACD was quit interesting... I used the following disks: Chick Corea Rendezvous in NY, Moussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition (telarc), and Monty meets Sly and Robbie (telarc). The last disc showed very little difference between CD and SACD I think do to the heavy bass like that dominates the recording. The CC showed little difference in instruments like the vibraphone and vocals (which surprised me) but a significant difference in the Piano. In CD mode the Piano seemed to be almost secondary to vocals and the vibes. In SACD mode the piano really stood out. It became really obvious that he was playing really fine grand piano and not something smaller. looking back at the liner notes it turns out to have been a 9 ft Yamaha concert grand. You could really hear the hammer hit. On the Moussorgsky the whole orchestra was bigger, more dynamic, and cleaner..

The one thing that did not really change was the imaging, both imaged well. The soundstage was not much bigger or wider it was just cleaner somehow. I'm thinking about picking up the T200 but I can get the T100 at a great price.

I only spent a couple of hours and would like to hear from someone that has spent some time with these players...
Thanks
Bruce
btrvalik
ben_campbell
1,169 posts
 
Trelja,
I've no doubt there is a large amount of truth in what you say however I simply cannot accept that any failings on SACD must be down to something on your list.
Consider this.
There are have been several posters recently on the Miles Davis mailing list who state that both Kind Of Blue and Black Beauty sound worse on SACD than they do on the last remaster--this shows to me at least there are some flaws in SACD,they find others marginal in comparison to CD and some have a list of about half a dozen that sound superior to CD in their systems.
ljgj
955 posts
 
The only way SACD will make it or any format is if all discs are issued in this format and that they are all hybrid at the same cost as regular redbooks. This way all players could be made with the SACD capability in the future and at all price points including car audio systems. We would then be where we are today with redbook players and the various price and quality points of them. Anything else and it doesn't really fly very far. Why can't developers see that?
bluefin
111 posts
 
Again, people are arguing their horses running faster than cars because of emotion. Any one think their PC's 386 running better than P4 here? Because your horse running faster than a crappy car, does not mean any car will lose to your horse. Get a newly released symphony SACD recorded in DSD, and hear them yourself. New technology like SACD is invented 20 years after Mile's. Do you really want to use this thing to judge a new format? ?? ???
Even you have Leica, it is hard for it to have a reprint from a picture taken 20 years ago. Go out and shoot today. Don't keep claiming your picture taken by old Kodak 20 years ago is better than today's Leica. The reason of so so picture is because even a 100% perfect copy machine can't convert old picture to new ones. Free yourself to take new pictures today and tell other people what you see. The real limitation is short of new SACD recording, but we can boost it. If audiophile don't, who will?
I also have more LP and CD than SACD, but to tell you from my heart, accoustically SACD is better than CD and it is easier to use and keep than LP. (I also agree with Trelja that LP still sounds best to me so far.)
btrvalik OP
61 posts
 
I decided to pick up the T100 yesterday... and I love it. I brought it home, set it up. popped in a few favorite discs and enjoyed... no analysis required. My basic thoughts at this stage are that I will optimize my 2 channel setup for redbook and my HT setup for SACD & DVD-A. My 2 channel system is based on CJ tube gear and the shanling, my multi channel system is based on rotel, and tweaked to death halfer amps. I've got tubes to work there magic on redbook and SS for the extra punch of SACD (with less need for smoothing)

So here is the big shocker...

I really like upsampling... I've always thought this was pure marketing hype... just a new word for oversampling. I did not really pay much attention to upsampling when I was at the store... just so happened that the players I like the most: cary musical fidelity, and shanling all up sample. I also really liked the sim audio players which do not.. The T100 lets you switch it on/off on the fly so it is a real easy A/B. The shocking thing to me was that I notice more of a difference with the upsampling on/off than between SACD & CD. ...Don't go nuts I'm not saying upsampling is better than SACD.. As discussed here before upsampling is just oversampling with a different noise shaping..no more information.. To me the soundstage seems bigger and deeper..but why?

This got me thinking a bit...

Here a complete guess so don't take this too serious... The thing I do for a living is build Voice /IP gear for large telephone carriers. One of the things we do is generate something called comfort noise. VoIP can be heavily compressed depending on the codec used. When it is received on the other side, the background noise has been removed via something called silence suppression. The dead silence (between words) is not desirable to someone listening on the other end since they are use to hearing background noise. Voice quality is judged with something called a MOS (mean opinion score). If we inject artificial noise (comfort noise) into the receiving end the MOS jumps by a huge amount. There is obviously no new information in the audio stream but it is pleasing to the listener and get a higher subjective score. If we measured the signal it would be worst since it contains more noise... I'm wondering if there is a similar situation in audio with tube gear, vinyl, and upsampling, etc... vs transistors, CD, and SACD.
bluefin
111 posts
 
In a church, lots of echo (but phase is random due to many reflections) and we love it. In a samll room with mirrors, echo is too strong and coherent, we hate it. Tube add some distortion, we may like the extra harmonics. You are right about these except upsampling.

Upsampling or true higher sampling like SACD allows DSP to operate at lower noise and DAC is easier to achieve good result compared to original CD. But it means to be "more accurate", not like privous bad things turning out to be good. Even though it is less noisy does not mean it has no distortion. Processing DSP and DAC in real CKT is not distortion free, so different methods of upsampling still carry it's own charactor(from different distortion) on the sound. That's why different upsampling machine still has its own flavor. You may like the flavor. Yet don't forget that upsampling has more added flavor than SACD because upsampling is still engineering added iteration v.s. bit by bit real SACD. And engineers have the freedom to sweat it more on upsampling trying differnt iterations but there is no game on SACD(not needed anyway).

There is a negative side on upsampling. Some musician or recording engineer may protest the upsampling because it use the same method to DSP process all CD's. In the end, it will make all CD's sound more or less the same(or say close). And it might be smoother than real live one is, even the performer intends to make it rough. There is a dangerous thing, good or bad singers all sound pretty smooth, you can't tell good v.s. bad singers and recording engineers any more. Keep adding the same sugar to every cake can be "unwanted" at some point. You can't tell its blueberry or redberry, all you got are sweat cakes.

The nice thing is that you still can use all your CD collections.

"Tube" is kind of doing the same thing, so it all depends customer's choice. Enjoy the music.

BTW don't forget that you like upsampled one because its DSP/DAC operating at higher rate like SACD. New CD machines take the idea and try to improve the sound. Does it tell you which format is better technology?
More to discover