Even though I'm not married I have a little internal WAF built into my brain. It allows me to judge the acceptability of certain pieces of equipment without the added trouble and expense of finding a woman, marrying her and moving into a house. Every component I evaluate must go through this filtering process. The WAF cares about asthetics and design factors. She isn't terribly concerned about the technical matters nor the sonic attributes of the noisemaking machines. She mainly likes something or she doesn't. Since both myself and my internal WAF live in a cozy little nowhere town in Southeastern Wisconsin where there exists no such thing as an audio dealer for many miles, the WAF has grown in power and influence. She feeds heavily off the mostly visual medium of the World Wide Web. When the WAF set eyes upon the CD player in question, the Shanling CD-T100, her sensors went into overdrive.
So I had no choice. I felt obligated to buy this piece of gear to make the little missus happy. Much to my surprise I found a model on eBay for a good chunk of change less than the normal asking price. It was a store demo model from a joint called Decibel Audio in Chicago. I know nothing about this store other than the fact they make really cool black t-shirts. Of course, you only get one if you spend $1400+ on a CD player via eBay. Since the Shanling was such a fetching beauty with her generous amounts of brushed metal, gold plated tip toe feet, chrome tube scaffoldings and glowing blue acrylic disc lid, I felt this was a worthwhile deal.
Finding information about the player was somewhat fuzzy. There weren't really too many reviews on it. The only one I found was after the fact. But like I said, the WAF was in command. I also figured that since my current many-year old CD player was the cheapest single disc model available at Best Buy, getting some high-dollar fancy audiophile unit couldn't possibly be a bad idea, right? In fact at the time I assumed that since all they did was decode bits, all CD players probably sound the same! It's digital fer crying out loud - a fuzzy 1100100100101011 is a 1100100100101011 all the same, right? This line of reasoning suited me just fine.
I liked the fact that it had tubes, and furthermore that you could switch between solid state and tube output. Choices are good! Options are good! I could finally get to listen to those
tubes people are always crowing about! It also had that fancy
upsampling thing going for it...whoooah! Neato cool, right? Makes a sow's ear into a silk purse don't ya know? It's true, just read them articles!
So anyway, I finally got my box from Decibel and when I opened it up the WAF was in her glory! It looked even better in person! And look, you get a pair of white gloves and a chamois cloth decorated with a little Chinese deer to wipe down your precious. Cute! That's the kind of thing they call "positive out-of-box experience" I think. Novelty? Perhaps, but I wasn't complaining. The power cable is one of those thick things with the gnarly Techflex(tm) on it and the big swaths of shrink tubing on the connectors...ooh! ahh! This is certainly a MAN'S power cord! *Grrr*
Well, the power cord was SO manly that it was hanging rather heavily upon the IEC jack. Oh it worked all right, but it's still rather a flimsy connection. So now I've finally got this way-cool major upgraded CD player, right? So I stick in a CD, accidentally slam the lid down on top of it, and start playing. Yep, that's the song allright... Mostly I didn't notice anything special about the sound at all. Nothing bad about it, but also nothing that made me think "Wow this high end stuff is completely kick ass!" I vainly pressed the "Input" button on the remote thinking this would switch from SS to Tube output, but it doesn't work that way. There's two separate RCA outputs that are both on at the same time. I hauled out an old RCA switch box and rigged it for A\B operation. I heard absolutely NO difference AT ALL between the SS and tube outputs. NONE! "What a gyp!" I thought, "They told me tubes were supposed to be syrupy and warm and stuff, but this sounds the same!" But oh well, there were plenty of other stuff to upgrade anyway, right?
I even hooked up my old Sony to the switch box and monitored both players over headphones. The Sony seemed to have a louder signal and perhaps a more harsh treble, but there honestly wasn't a meaningful difference that I could perceive.
Then I tried the super cool upsampling button. This resulted in an AMAZING difference! An amazing difference in the amount of blue light emitted from the front of the CD player, that is! Sonically I could not tell what I was supposed to be hearing. I had a friend come over and A\B it while I listened and I failed to identify which was which. So what had I done? Spent 1400 bucks on something that sounded mostly the same as that $90 Sony piece of shit!? You're a lunatic! "NO!" said the WAF, quickly rising from her brief slumber, "Did you LOOK at that gorgeous piece of art!?" Then I was at peace once more.
Since I am just starting out on this audiophile journey it's entirely possible that my other components are not revealing what the Shanling is capable of pumping through those excellently sturdy and generously-spaced, gold-plated RCA output jacks. Certainly it had done no harm to the music by any means. However, there are a few complaints I have. One is that there is some kind of relay that clicks in when you power on the player and the first song gets a second or two cut off at the very beginning. The workaround is to hit play, wait for the click and then hit the track number button again. It's mildly annoying, but I've grown used to it. It only does this when it first spins the disc anyway. The power cable is also questionable. I think this is probably from abuse since it is a demo model and has been in who knows how many people's systems before I got it. Also, I believe there is a grounding issue at work. For example when I was running my turntable and still had the Shanling powered up there was a faint ground loop hum that disappeared after turning it off. I thought it may have been my jury-rigged active crossover setup. I made custom XLR to RCA cables with pins 1 and 3 shorted. The subwoofer amp also had balanced XLR inputs and I thought that maybe there was an issue with that. However, numerous troubleshooting tactics all seemed to point back at the Shanling. In fact, just last night I tried out a new amp and this thing buzzed like crazy until I lifted the ground on it. I think my model might need an expert to check it out. Until then my cheater plugs do the trick. Very strange.
Another problem is that sometimes the CD slips around inside the clamping mechanism. Usually on discs that have a lot of screen printing on the label. I was spooked by this at first - I thought the thing was good `n busted, but it was just how the CD was sitting in there. Sometimes it takes a few gentle set-downs of the lid before it grips. Kinda funky. Perhaps a small ring of very thin rubber on the underside of the top rotating guide might help. No, not the sound folks, just the holding part! Hell, if I wanted to improve the
sound I'd color in the sides of the CD with a Sharpie you silly geese!
The remote control for the player is completely wonderful. I love it! Fits nicely in the hand, isn't too heavy and I'm still using the same set of batteries ever since I got it. (Batteries are INCLUDED!
) It has a digitally-controlled volume which comes in really handy. If you wanted you could run this player direct into your power amp. That is assuming there's enough CD line output voltage to get the volume you want. I run mine into my NAD simply because I also need to hook up the phono and cassette inputs.
So what does the Shanling sound like you ask? It sounds like whatever CD you play on it. It plays the songs, does its job just fine. I recently dropped $90 for two Western Electric 396A tubes to replace the existing ones. I haven't A\Bed them yet though. Haven't had time. The tube scaffoldings make it hard for a guy with big unruly meathooks to jimmy the tubes out of there. Unfortunately only the top ring comes unscrewed. The rest of the post doesn't seem to come loose.
Overall it is a fine piece of equipment which I would recommend highly with a few of those minor caveats I mentioned. Along with my turntable it has set a precedent for what I want my overall system to look like. I can't say that I have much of a mind to replace it, or even to wish for something different. Now I see they've got a thicker SACD version as well as two drop dead gorgeous monoblocks. Some hefty coin for those babies, though. Coin I don't have just now. Oh well. I think with improved speakers, setup, room treatment etc. the sound quality of the Shanling will hopefully live up to the asthetic appeal.
