UHF No 70 (Net).indd - Ultra High Fidelity Magazine

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Listening Room Shanling SCD-T200 It can hardly help looking familiar. It is a near lookalike of the Shanling CD-T100 that turned heads on our issue No. 66 cover. We fi gured you could have bought it for looks alone, though in fact there were other reasons to consider it. The SCD-T200 is of course an SACD player as well as a CD deck. That extra functionality aside, the similarities are striking. The analog gain stage also uses four tubes, though with directoutput jacks allowing you to bypass the tubes if you want them just for show. The headphone jack is still there, and the build quality is still of a level that must give the competition nightmares. An electronic volume control is still included, allowing direct connection to a power amplifi er. This player still comes with an upscale power cord which includes a Schurter IEC connector and a Hubbell hospital-grade AC plug. Oh yes…and the jacks are still marked “made in USA.” We love the irony! There are some styling differences if you look closely. The rings around the tubes are now acrylic rather than resonance-prone sheet metal, and there 36 ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine are only two of them per tube, making them more easily removable for tube swaps. Though the metal fi nish of our player recalled that of the CD player, the distributor tells us more recent production models have an all-stainless fi nish, without those warm copper and brass accents. Shanling has recycled some aging Sony technology, including the transport Sony used in its original C$8000 SACD player. Anything wrong with that? Just one thing: the Shanling is strictly a two-channel machine. Forget surround sound. When you read that, one of two things probably happened: either your turned the page, or you shrugged. For our part, we’re with the shruggers. The SACD standard, like the DVD-A standard for that matter, has made surround sound extraordinarily inaccessible. The It plays SACD. It plays CD too. It could even be the player you’ve been waiting for. digital output will feed you a Red Book data stream, but it will not give you access to the SACD info, which means you can’t have surround sound unless you own a preamplifi er, integrated amplifi er or receiver with at least one six-channel input. Yes, they make such things now, and some of them are even quite good. A lot of audiophiles, however, have been known to express the view that if God had mean us to have 5.1 channels, He would have given us more ears. Forgive us if we choose to avoid getting into theological arguments. By the way, the demo disc included with the Shanling does have several multichannel tracks. Go fi gure. The SCD-T200 has several options besides the ones already mentioned. It can upsample CD sound into SACD territory, for one thing. The older machine also did that, and we disagreed as to the value, if any, added by such juggling. And it has buttons on both the top panel and the remote that allow you to play the CD layer on a hybrid SACD. Unfortunately, on some discs the Shanling went right to the CD layer instead of the higher resolution layer. There are front panel lights showing which layer is being
played, and we wished they weren’t the same color. By the way, you can’t change between CD and SACD on the fl y. The player has to stop, get its bearings, and relaunch the track. This is true of all SACD players. Our machine was brand new, and we gave it about 100 hours of run-in time before installing it in our Alpha system, alongside our reference, the much more expensive Linn Unidisk 1.1 also reviewed in this issue. We then began the session with a set of regular Red Book CDs. The reason: we think most audiophiles will be reluctant to spend the money for this player unless it can do itself credit with the discs that make up the bulk of their collections. So how good a CD player is it? The first selection was Norman Dello Joio’s Fantasy on a Theme of Haydn (Klavier K11138), an unusually wellrecorded CD with impressive brass and percussive effects. The opening tympani salvo didn’t quite push us back in our chairs the way it did on the Linn player, but it had plenty of power all the same. Everything was a bit reduced, with the woodwinds less realistic, and notably with less energy in the lower midrange. On the other hand we heard neither shrillness nor confusion. “This wouldn’t be too different from what our old reference player would have done,” said Gerard. We continued with an old favorite, Now the Green Blade Riseth (Proprius PRCD9093), an exceptional choral recording that can turn nasty in the wrong hands. It didn’t. It began well, with the solo fl ute especially attractive. The female choral voices were smooth and attractive as well, with the single exception of rather prominent (but happily undistorted) “S” sounds. We had some doubts about the bottom end. Certainly it wasn’t thin, as it often is with inadequate CD players, but male voices had somewhat less body. Both the string bass and the organ in the fi nale suffered somewhat as well. Despite that, we were willing to give the Shanling good marks, aware as we were that our Linn player is a tough act to follow. “It’s an honorable result” said Albert. Our third and fi nal CD selection was Soft Lights and Sweet Music from Margie Gibson’s Say It With Music disc. The song opens with an introduction by the piano, which sounded very good, if not quite as subtle and refined as with the Linn. Gibson’s voice still gave us goosebumps as she slid among the notes. She was very much present in the room with us. Most players give her “S” sounds a little too much emphasis, and the Shanling did that too. Still, we were pleased with what we heard. “It’s honorable,” suggested Gerard, smiling, and we all laughed. So far so good. Now for its talents as an SACD player. Sorry, but here comes the Latin again. Check out the complete print issue, which can be ordered on line. Gerard was a little less pleased, findi Adigna facidunt nullamet, se delesti ncidunt prat, veliquis at. Ute digna augue delis nim volore tat. Ure corem velis adiam, sequisl euis augiam, quat non henim vel ullaorem er am nos nonsenis at aliquatuero. Mincidui tem quis dolutpate min veliquate tat nibh essecte dui tin venit iniatue voloree tumsan vendre tisci ex ercilit praesto dolore dit nim euguer sequipit nostin ut ero enibh eugiametue min ver sisit, sit alit irilism odolore feum dunt aut nis alit dunt autat. 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Met pratie dit il dionsequis nulput aliquat acing ex et lore duisi blaor am vullandre dolorting ex exerat, cor init iriureet vel et, suscil dip et nim ilit lam, quis aut vel esed dolor sit nit del il dunt am am zzrillandre ent alisim veniam quis do doloreetue vullute magna feugait ad doloreet, con erit aliqui tem inim dolorti onullam coreros do conse min utat ad te faciliquipit autem alit autem ip ex ea facipit volenit ad magniate exer susto dipsustio eugait utpat, volore consequat. Del iurem vel incing eu feugait, quipsusto et, quisl ilit dunt do eugait aci tem dolore consecte tat, volorem zzriliquam, summodiam, consenit lortion hendio odolupt atetuer si. Nullam diat. Ipit pratet, sed tat vercin hent dolor iriustrud magnit prat. Gue mod tie eu facincil ent ad et wisis at alis alit wis ex eummod esto el eum quiscil dunt ipit, quisi. Ud tetum venis aut aut ad tem eugait iniat nulputatet, consequis ad ea feugueraessi exer ing etum duisit lumsandreet pratiscing esto eu faccccummod magnim zzrit lore eum zzrilla faccumm odigna feugiam, vel er sit autpat. Dui bla faccum do euismodolore magna faciduisl utat wis autpat, quat el ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 37 Listening Room
Page 1 and 2: No. 70 $4.99 ISSN 0847-1851 Canadia
Page 3 and 4: Issue No. 70 Cover story: The ultim
Page 5 and 6: DOG-EARS ARE FOR DOGS! Some audioph
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