Shanling ET-3 CD Transport Review - Golden Schlong Worthy

I am having the same issue with songs not advancing to the next track when playing from mconnect. Using mconnect with my iFi Zen Streamers the songs advance to the next track with no issues. Hopefully Shanling will address this issue in next firmware update. Otherwise, I am getting good sonic results from the ET3 as a streamer.

 

Wow! I'm addicted to my Akurate DS Katalyst/Mjolnir 3 combo. You have me intrigued since this is about 1/10th the price of any Linn I've seen.

The Shanling has no DAC so what are you using for that?

Been watching Blake's 7 since I missed it (too young!) on BritBox. The storylines are great, the design cues are dreadful! OTOH, I can watch Supreme Commander Servalan scheme all day every day....

 

NewOntech dac7. I am not sure if that’s better than the Katalyst dac in Akurate. It essentially has the same general sound profile and is on par with to slight ahead of Klimax DS/1 (the 2011 variant) - so not bad. If you already have Akurate the only reason to get ET3 is for a second or third or fourth system

Did you know you can use your Akurate Katalyst both as a dac/preamp and a streamer at the same time and the internal volume only affects the dac/preamp output and not the digital output? One other thing I found is you can use Linn’s internal FPGA to upsample the digital stream. I like the upsampled stream just a bit more than the raw stream.

 

This is exactly why the relays click on Schiit DACs, but the upstream source should also introduce a delay for the relay to complete its action before starting to send the actual data streams, or we'll lose a bit of the audio at the start.

Roon implements "Resync delay" to deal with this. If Shanling can implement this in a new firmware, that would be a great win, and it needs to be customizable too.

 

This is unfortunate step by our software team, they say it works with our Eddict player for DLNA, so they are for now kind of ignoring other DLNA apps, which some have issues with our DLNA implementation. I hope they can push a fix for this in the future.

Check in settings, if the "gapless" is turned off, it should work with this disabled.

 

Understood. Thanks for the update. I use mconnect primarily to access Qobuz. It would be great if your app is compatible with Qobuz (is it on your software roadmap at least?)

ET3 as a streamer is killer, btw. One other suggestion would be to include a ground nut so we can eliminate ground plane noise.

 

Appreciate the tip. I ended up turning gapless of on the mconnect app and on on the ET3. Working good now. Zero need to spend more money on a "high end" streamer though I have been tempted when I owned the Bluesound Node 2i. The ET3 is definitely a better sounding streamer transport than the Bluesound node 2i. And frankly, I prefer mconnect to the Bluesound app. And the LDAC Bluetooth connection takes care of things that the Bluesound software delivered like Calm Radio with surprisingly good quality.

 

I have used the LDAC Bluetooth connection between the ET3 and my Samsung phone to play directly from the Qobuz app. Sounded very good. You may want to give it a try.

 

Am I correct that only 1 digital output can be used at any given time? I had both AES and USB connected to the same dac and only USB worked.

I also want to echo that AES is meaningfully better than USB output in terms is being more natural, smoother, fuller and finer micro details. I tried to insert an isolator in the USB chain and that made things a tad more natural but the change was too minor to be worth the hassle.

 

USB port acts differently than other digital outputs, so it takes system priority when it's used.

But otherwise the other digital ports could be used all at the same time, USB one is the only special one.

 

I have done some back and forth between the CDP and DLNA playing back the same CD ripped. To be completely honest the CD and DLNA playbacks are very close. If I have to pick a winner, I would say DLNA presents the notes with just a slightly more natural leading edge and the overall flow of the music is just a slightly better and more analog sounding.

 

Not that I am tempted but interesting to see that compact top-loader is becoming a crowded space. (I do dig those buttons, though)
https://apos.audio/products/smsl-pl200-mqa-cd-player-dac

 

Womp-womp

 

Super Measuring Shit Loaf

 

It looks like Shanling has a new matching DAC/Amp to go with the ET3 transport. I wonder if it’s any good?

https://en.shanling.com/product/440

 

This too has MQA—must be good!

 

I think I met in real life two people who actually own MQA-CDs. At least they will stay MQA, compared to Tidal streaming