The Shanling ET3 CD transport

Costing just $899, Shanling's top-loading ET3 CD transport appears to have been designed by people who recognize the multitude of big and small fails (or lost opportunities) of previous CD transports. In use, the ET3 felt like a distillation of what I've always wanted in a transport: strong, solid, compact, cool-looking, and feels good to use. Everyone knows I like pro-audio cool with no froufrou. This Shanling deck looked so damn smart and felt so good to touch that it kept my mind repeating, "Yep! That's how a CD transport should be built!"

- BY HERB REICHERT

The ET3 uses Philips's notoriously musical SAA7824 CD drive and a Sanyo HD850 laser pickup. It can play "Red Book" CDs and their R/RW variations, plus MQA CDs. It cannot read SACD discs.

The ET3 has multiple inputs and outputs and features I never imagined seeing on a CD transport. For example, it has a USB port so you can connect an output socket, and it can output I2S via an HDMI cable. Marketing suits call components like this "high-end digital transports" or "digital transport hubs" because in addition to pulling data off pitted discs, the ET3 supports WiFi streaming, AirPlay, and Bluetooth, and it inputs and outputs audio via a pair of USB-A interfaces, one for connecting an external SSD and one that's a wide-band, asynchronous digital music output. In addition to all these choices, the ET3 offers TosLink, AES3, and S/PDIF (RCA) digital outputs. There is no streaming input, so if you utilize a streaming service, you'll need to use a computer or a streamer.

According to the ET3's Quick Start Guide, the USB input can even act as a server for NAS drives up to 2TB; FAT32-formatted drives are preferred. Via the USB input, you can play DSD files up to DSD512 and PCM files up to 768kHz. All the usual formats are supported.

On top of all that, there is a Bluetooth 5.0 input with support for LDAC, AAC, and SBC audio codecs. The WiFi/Bluetooth antenna connects to the back panel in the usual way.

Unlike any CD transport I've ever seen or heard of, there is also a CT7302CL upsampling chip that converts "all outputs" to DSD or high-rez PCM. Using the front-panel menu, I bypassed upsampling (called SRC) on my first day with the ET3. According to Shanling, this upsampling mechanism includes builtin DSP for "error correction and noise reduction," ensuring "accurate playback even from less-than-perfect discs."