Here’s an update: I looked at the various alternatives and from what people have said in various reviews and to keep the budget under control, I’ve added the Shanling ET3 to the system. There was a really good deal offered by their online store so I took the plunge. Took a while to get here (about 3 weeks, but hey, I’m patient) and it’s now going through its paces in my system. Right away, I’m hearing a significant improvement over my previous player (the above-mentioned Cambridge Audio CXU), and I’m hoping that with further hours of break-in time things will improve even further.
It’s connected to my Sonnet Morpheus DAC via AES/EBU (from Audio-Art Cable) because that’s the DAC’s only available input--the rest are all spoken for by various components. Of course, right out of the box, things did not sound particularly good, but over the next few hours that initial thinness and harshness moderated quite a bit though there’s still, perhaps, a way to go before it finds its voice--I’ve only put about 8 hours on it so far. We’ll see.
This transport imparts a sound that is plenty detailed but definitely fuller and more unified than the Audiolab CDT6000 that I used to own. I’m hearing the music as a whole event, not parsed into individual instruments, but the little details are definitely all there. There is also a sense of spaciousness in the presentation, definitely wider and deeper than my other player(s).
The ET3 offers an option to upconvert from 44.1 kHz to 192 kHz or to several DSD densities (the Morpheus doesn’t do DSD, so that wasn’t an option for me) but I didn’t think the upconversion to 192kHz added anything compelling to the sound. It may be slightly sharper, but it’s also brighter and perhaps a bit more shrill.
One or two things that I’m less happy with: the transport has trouble reading some discs, possibly because its error correction (if any--not sure here) is less robust than some other players. This may be because the designers didn’t want to add any more processing than absolutely necessary, though this is just a theory. I tried one disc in my collection that plays fine in every other player I’ve tried, but the ET3 simply refused to read. Another of my favorite discs exhibited clicks and dropout on certain tracks, a problem I haven’t experienced before. Everything else I’ve tried seemed to work just fine.
This transport can also play from USB sources, and I did try that out. Getting the feature set up turned out to be quite an adventure, though. There’s an app you can add to your phone (Eddict Music Player) from which you can access and control the information on the flash drive, but you have to follow Shanling’s detailed instructions carefully go get it to work. Not for the tech-averse, this process. In the end, I still preferred the sound of the actual CD to that of the USB drive.
So far I’m pretty happy with this transport despite the problems I’ve detailed above.. Definitely intend to live with it for a good while. Then we’ll see whether stepping up the upgrade ladder becomes a temptation. (Believe me, I did give a LOT of thought to investing in the Jay’s Audio machine but just couldn’t justify the price, at least, not yet).
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