New, Very Interesting CD Transport

Interesting thread. I own an Esoteric DV60, which I use solely as a transport. The DV60 is a universal player, which means it can read SACD's, DVD A's etc., I do not think it is any less capable as a transport than a unit designed purely for CD's. I have done a few comparisons between it and these type of transports, and the Esoteric has always come out on top. Not to say that perhaps a lesser SACD unit that does all things would be in the same category, but I think generalizations, like those made above, are not always correct.

Can you cancel oversampling in your Shanling EC3 transport?

It is important to any Chord DAC that has its own oversampling processing algorithm.

It is non-oversampling for CD Playback. When using it as a WiFi streamer I know you can stream high res out of it via it's DNLA network connections. But, I don't have any of that setup yet. It's just outputting Redbook CD into my Hugo TT2.

By the way you can send upsampled content to the Chord DAC, I do so via HQ Player/Roon/Qobuz. But that works best when you send content upsampled to at least 705.6hz to bypass the Chord's internal upsampling.

Can you cancel oversampling in your Shanling EC3 transport?

Well, I found a setting in the menu that suggests that it can upsample CDs. But it definitely has a "Bypass" setting that shows 16/44.1 output.

It’s kind of confusing figuring out the menu as some things pertain to other sources i.e. Bluetooth and USB Drive/Stick and I don’t know if they apply to CDs too.

But I have mine set at Bypass and the Chord Hugo TT2 is showing 16/44.1 is being received.

UPDATE: I just set it to 192hz and it is upsampling the CD as the TT2 "light" changed from Red for 44.1 to Blue for 192.

So, to definitively answer your initial question... Yes, it has upsampling BUT you can bypass it and output 44.1 Redbook from CDs.

CORRECTION - I've been calling the transport the "EC3" but it's actually called the ET3 not EC3.

In fact, I think Shanling makes a full CD Player with the EC3 name.

Sorry for the error.

Bits are bits and they should all sound the same - until they don't. Then we are left with a big "Hmmm." Just as people tell you that the quality of your streamer is at least as important as the quality of your DAC, (or at least should be on a commensurate price level), I think we can surmise that the quality of a device reading the data from a CD, and then passing that information to a DAC can be important as well. The Philips drive used in the Shanling seems to be a good one. 

I have a "decent" Denon CD player I picked up two years ago as a hedge against CD players "going away" and I'm happy with it, but I'd be interested in giving a dedicated transport a try. The words "audiophile" and "fool" shouldn't be close in definition. I can't believe so many people could be fooled.