Sweetest CDP I have ever seen!

[DarkAngel]

OMG!
Look at this new CDP just released by Music Hall called the Shanling CDT100, what a work of art! Plus it has headphone output, need a volunteer to oder one and report on this.

Shanling CDT100

Galen Carol Audio has these for $1999, if these sound 1/2 as good as they look my search for CDP has ended.

Reviewed at Audiogon:

Review

This is too much to resist for tube rollers like Hirsh and Nick, how many CDPs allow you to tweak with your NOS tubes

 

[dhwilkin]

Man, talk about setting a bad example for the newbies!

Search function

 

[KR...]

LOL!

Maybe he missed all the threads for it?

 

[DarkAngel]

Zanth has one......
but never reported much to us. Need info on whether it has a killer headphone amp section, and also how unit performed after break-in. Those night pictures are unbelievably sexy:

Nite Pix

 

[Zanth]

Darkangel...I am sorry I never offered a review. I will I promise. Within the week I will have pics of the outside, the inside, my tweaks, the sound and a comparison against arcam cary and sony.


As for the sound, it is actually better than it looks, especially after the WE NOS I used in quad.

The headphone jack is powered by the two right tubes and sounds amazing! I still would recommend a dedicated headphone amp for maximum enjoyment, but this is not some shotty after-thought jack. This is a great slice of sound coming from this little beauty.

More to come I promise

 

[KR...]

cool, I am looking forward to your full review.

Other cool looking CD players:

 

[Nick Dangerous]

Yep... the Shanling is a beauty. Rumor is that it looks better than it sounds, but until I hear it for myself I won't make that call.

For cheaper tube rolling thrills, the Ah! Njoe Tjoeb 4000 is a good place to start. Tubed CD players are the easiest way to add tube goodness to an existing system.

Philosophically speaking, I'm not convinced that putting tubes in the source is a good idea. I'd rather tweak tubey-ness at the amp level.

 

[Nick Dangerous]

http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/gen...es/186697.html

http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/dig...ges/38073.html

http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/dig...ges/48481.html

Hmmmm... wildly different opinions out there, although everyone seems to agree that the headphone jack sucks.

 

[kelly]

The tubes that are in CD players are in the "amplifier" part.

Why would you be pro tube in one component and anti in another?

For me, every output stage has distortion. We can argue about amounts of measurable distortion, but I'd rather pick the distortion that sounds the least bothersome. Sometimes that's a tubed output stage.

Weirdness. Nick bashing tubes. It's still backwards day. I know it is and you guys are all playing a prank on me.

 

[jude]

I have always preferred simpler, more understated lines.

Am I the only one who thinks this....

....looks better than any of the ones pictured above?

In person, this particular CD player (Arcam) looks even better in black.

Or how about this?

I like the way these look (though these aren't CD players):

Again, I'm definitely more partial to the elegance that can be achieved with simpler lines.

I heard the Shanling tubed CD player in the Music Hall / Creek room at HE2002 last month, and the entire setup it was in sounded pretty good. It's hard to say, of course, how the CD player itself performed in that rig relative to others, as I didn't get to throw in, for example, the Creek CD-53 against it in the same rig. But at least the system the Shanling tubed unit was in sounded pretty good.

 

[andrzejpw]

oh. . . all of these are so pretty. . .

 

[Nick Dangerous]

Not weird at all.

A tubed source matched to a tubed preamp matched to a tube amplifier = too much tube! Things get a little syrupy by that point, making it nearly impossible to detect the changes tube rolling make. Plus, if you swap sources to a non-tubed unit, you gotta rebalance the overall tube sound. This is a pain.

I do my tubing at the amp stage. I'd do it at the preamp stage too if I could afford a decent one. Until then, I'll stick with a passive preamp.

 

[KR...]

 

[kelly]

Nick
If you believe you only like tubed components because they add colouration and thickness to a recording then I see where you're coming from.

If, on the other hand, you hear and complain about the kind of distortions that occur in solid state outputs, then you'd think the same cumulative effect would be happening there, too.

I've heard some tube equipment sound more neutral and transparent than some solid state equipment. In such a case, I'd rather pair it with another one than with a solid state just for the sake of having fewer tubes in the chain.

As far as tube rolling, yes, I agree that it will make that aspect more complex. But it seems to me that someone with your tweaking background would look more forward to a sound that can be tweaked to one that can't.

Regardless, I personally am fairly committed to putting my money where my mouth is this time. I'll certainly be sharing my opinions of how this particular tubed output CD player sounds when Modwright is done with it.

 

[Nick Dangerous]

You're getting one of the Shanling players?