Shanling ET3 - Dedicated Digital CD Transport, With USB Drive and Wi-Fi Support

[Kiats]

Interesting that you have issues with Airplay with the ET3. It has a very solid connection for me. And appears in the list of Airplay devices available to me even when I am downstairs in the living room or kitchen (the ET3 is upstairs in the study). In fact, it often connects automatically when I switch on one of my music streaming apps on my iPhone. And certainly no dropping when pausing.

 

[Private]

Interesting that you have issues with Airplay with the ET3. It has a very solid connection for me. And appears in the list of Airplay devices available to me even when I am downstairs in the living room or kitchen (the ET3 is upstairs in the study). In fact, it often connects automatically when I switch on one of my music streaming apps on my iPhone. And certainly no dropping when pausing.

That’s why I thought I missed something, the connection is absolutely abysmal.

Do you still have to use eddict app to get on a network?

I think I’ll try to reset that tomorrow and see what happens.

 

[Kiats]

That’s why I thought I missed something, the connection is absolutely abysmal.

Do you still have to use eddict app to get on a network?

I think I’ll try to reset that tomorrow and see what happens.

Nope. Just straight Airplay from my iPhone.

 

[theORBscureDDJ]

No need to access the Eddict app/software... in my case, I simply select the Streaming input on the ET3 and that appears as an Airplay endpoint on my iPhone...

 

[Private]

No need to access the Eddict app/software... in my case, I simply select the Streaming input on the ET3 and that appears as an Airplay endpoint on my iPhone...

Yeah, it's not hard for the devices to see it, it just doesn't stay connected after a pause and the connection is super shaky and glitchy.

 

[hk5007]

I have been listening to my ET3 for more than a week now through two DACs, Yamaha CD-S3000 and SMSL SU-10 via coaxial and HDMI cable respectively. Built and sound quality of the ET3 are indeed very good. Sound quality are in this order: CD, USB followed by Streaming through Tidal. What impresses me is its naturalness especially when playing through Tidal with excellent separation of voices and instruments. Soundstage isn’t particularly wide nor deep at least during the present stage of burning-in.

With the ET3, I have the opportunity to compare a few digital version of old analogue recording through Tidal with some old LPs that I happen to have. Good as it is, however it is still nowhere as good as playing through the venerable turntable. Put it simply, through the turntable, analogue recordings are livelier, more dynamic, impactful and musical.

Until now, some of the issues mentioned above by others are to me very minor, but I do encounter a problem of a different type. Twice my unit after switching on just ‘freezes’. It just indicates ‘Reading’ while all functions are inaccessible. You can’t switch sources either. If you put a CD, it can read and display the time only. Beyond that you can’t access all functions manually, through Eddict Player or through the remote. Totally switching off and then on again doesn’t help either. What I did was immediately after switching on, and while the ET3 is booting up, I quickly pressed the source button repeatedly until bluetooth shows up. I then send some music to ET3. After that, everything seems to return to normal. Perhaps some other users may also encounter this problem before and would like to share their views on this matter or maybe my unit has some inherent hardware/software defect. Or my unit might be busy trying to search for the router which it somehow couldn’t find or connect.


P/S I think I have found the cause of the problem. After switching off the unit, I remove the usb stick. When I start playing the ET3 again, somehow it searches repeatedly for the usb stick and could not find it.

 

[Shanling]

I have been listening to my ET3 for more than a week now through two DACs, Yamaha CD-S3000 and SMSL SU-10 via coaxial and HDMI cable respectively. Built and sound quality of the ET3 are indeed very good. Sound quality are in this order: CD, USB followed by Streaming through Tidal. What impresses me is its naturalness especially when playing through Tidal with excellent separation of voices and instruments. Soundstage isn’t particularly wide nor deep at least during the present stage of burning-in.

With the ET3, I have the opportunity to compare a few digital version of old analogue recording through Tidal with some old LPs that I happen to have. Good as it is, however it is still nowhere as good as playing through the venerable turntable. Put it simply, through the turntable, analogue recordings are livelier, more dynamic, impactful and musical.

Until now, some of the issues mentioned above by others are to me very minor, but I do encounter a problem of a different type. Twice my unit after switching on just ‘freezes’. It just indicates ‘Reading’ while all functions are inaccessible. You can’t switch sources either. If you put a CD, it can read and display the time only. Beyond that you can’t access all functions manually, through Eddict Player or through the remote. Totally switching off and then on again doesn’t help either. What I did was immediately after switching on, and while the ET3 is booting up, I quickly pressed the source button repeatedly until bluetooth shows up. I then send some music to ET3. After that, everything seems to return to normal. Perhaps some other users may also encounter this problem before and would like to share their views on this matter or maybe my unit has some inherent hardware/software defect. Or my unit might be busy trying to search for the router which it somehow couldn’t find or connect.

Interesting case. Please can you tell us if you are running the latest firmware V1.7?
https://en.shanling.com/article-ET3v17.html

 

[hk5007]

I got it from Shanling. It's V1.6. I did not notice V1.7.

 

[zolkis]

Sound quality are in this order: CD, USB followed by Streaming through Tidal. What impresses me is its naturalness especially when playing through Tidal with excellent separation of voices and instruments. Soundstage isn’t particularly wide nor deep at least during the present stage of burning-in.

With the ET3, I have the opportunity to compare a few digital version of old analogue recording through Tidal with some old LPs that I happen to have. Good as it is, however it is still nowhere as good as playing through the venerable turntable. Put it simply, through the turntable, analogue recordings are livelier, more dynamic, impactful and musical.

In which order, worst to best? Do I understand right, you find CD the worst, USB next and streaming the best (except turntable)?

 

[DrDen]

In which order, worst to best? Do I understand right, you find CD the worst, USB next and streaming the best (except turntable)?

I suppose “followed by streaming” means it’s the last (worst).

 

[DrDen]

Shanling, please fix this annoying bug with sound interruption after an hour of playing CD. After all, this otherwise great device is primarily the CD transport. If anyone else have ever played CD from start to the end?
Listening to opera I usually don’t skip the tracks. Sorry.

You can make a perfect Christmas gift for all of us.

 

[hk5007]

In which order, worst to best? Do I understand right, you find CD the worst, USB next and streaming the best (except turntable)?

CD is the best. Streaming, the worst. The worst is still quite good although not as good as CD.

 

[zolkis]

CD is the best. Streaming, the worst. The worst is still quite good although not as good as CD.

Thanks, I guess the positive remark on streaming confused me.
That matches with my experiences, too, when comparing good CD playback with good streaming.
So the ET3 remains a considerably good CD transport, especially for the price.
I wonder if anyone managed to compare how close they come to some of the best CD transports today, like Cyrus CDt-XR, Jay CDT3, ProJect RS2T, Teac VRDS etc.

 

[theORBscureDDJ]

@Shanling the custom I2S cable made to sit between my ET3 and Gustard R26 arrived from China today... good news is that the Gustard now recognises DSD output from the ET3

However, the annoying clicking at idle and in the silence between CD tracks (only with all DSD settings) is still there - any further thoughts please?

 

[plikestechno]

DSD click and pop are a thing with many hardware items and softwares that upsample to DSD. You can google it.

However, it would be nice for Shanling, maybe in a future update... To have the machine stay in DSD mode when it is selected for upsampling between tracks or albums because it seems to go back to PCM at rest and every time theres a switch between PCM and DSD your DAC is going to make a click or pop, even a slight one.

Part of this goes back to the lack of gapless that people have mentioned.