New, Very Interesting CD Transport


On John Darko's website today we learn of the brand new Shanling ET3 CD Transport. And for $729 USD it looks really capable. Top loading with Philips SAA7824 drive. AES/EBU, coaxial, TOSLINK and I2S digital outputs. Plus Wifi and Bluetooth. USB to connect to a external HD and built in upsampling, too. It even will output digital to USB for connection to a DAC but not with upsampling.

Here's the skinny:

https://darko.audio/2023/06/shanlings-et3-cd-transport-comes-with-two-twists/

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So has anyone actually tried this new Shanling ET3 CD Transport? If so, please give us a report on your impressions, and which other transport(s) you were comparing it to, as well as information on the other important parts of your system involved in the audio chain during the test.

Makes me want to order one and get my collection of Monster CD Sound Rings out of storage.

I’m having a more difficult time refuting ‘71’s cheap CD player claim than his stance on power cords. I used a cheap drive and software that compares results to others that have ripped the same CD to store a bit perfect copy on my Aurender and that copy compares to Qobuz streaming. This does use an error checking step that isn’t available with a player. I always thought that cheap transports provided error prone reads, or more transmission errors, but not sure that this is always the case.

I’ll note that the review posted above is limited to a review of features and is pretty limited should you be using this review in order to make a purchasing decision. On another topic, I just received two Chinese made rice storage bins and I can report that they each store 15Kg of rice, but no Wi-Fi, or USB functionality.

I see no mention of SACD, and

"strictly a digital transport"

"Optional internal upsampling to hi-res PCM or DSD comes courtesy of a CT7302CL chip." A bit more info about that would be helpful. 

as well as over-clocking, filters if any ... the other ingredients of the salad.

So reading the specs on this thing it appears to be a streamer with a disc drive as it supports:

Playback from USB Drive

-        2.4G/5G Wi-Fi with DLNA/Airplay support

-        Bluetooth 5.0 input  with LDAC, AAC and SBC support

So a CD transport but more it looks like a solid value Shanling has been building disc spinners for quite a few years now.