New, Very Interesting CD Transport

@cleeds

+1

On point as usual.

Charles

Guys,

Did you listen to ET3 transport yourself?

Ho can you judge any piece of equipment just by retail price?

My experience shows there is not price- sound quality correlation in audio equipment.

Especially if you go to vintage equipment, China audio or use DIY equipment. 

I had a DAC of one famous British company for 5 years. I bought a new Chinese DAC on 1/4 price. And it owerperformed my British DAC by big a margin. 

I am once again thinking to buy a ET3. Any current 411 would be appreciated

Hi @tweak1 

Do you want to use it as CD transport only?

It has a very good sound quality for it price, but a number of drawbacks.

Hi @tweak1

I use ET3 SPDIF and USB outputs.

I2S is tricky. It is not a HDMI standard. Each DAC producer connects I2S to HDMI pins differently.

Some sellers on AliExpress make custom HDMI cables. But in this cas you can’t choose your cable by sound quality and price.

Compared to the Cary 303mk1 with upgraded digital transformer, RCA connector and fuse that I used as transport, ET3 sounds more lean, with mose space between instruments and more accuracy.

I like its ability as a USB external memory player.

I don’t use oversampling feature because I listen to my DAC in NOS mode.

I don’t like in ET3 a number of things:

1. No song number in remote control.

2. Very bad application to use it as a USB memory player.

3. Once per number of CDs playing it jumps. Cary doesn’t do so.

4. ET3 doesn’t play 1 CD out of the 30 that I tried. Cary played all the CDs.

I use NBS Signature 2 SPDIF and Audioquest Carbon USB cable.

NBS sounds better with CD and Hires PCM files. I use Audioquest Carbon mostly with DSD files.

I tried 2 HDMI I2S cables. But they don't work with DSD because of a different pin connection, but with PCM I preferred NBS SPDIF cable sound quality over I2S I have.

It looks like sound quality depends more from cable quality than from interface SPDIF, I2S or USB.