Doc Octopus
New Head-Fier
Hi, I want to tell you about my first week with the Shanling SCD1.3 player: I was looking for a CD and SACD player to be used mainly with optical discs and with almost no interest in streaming (I have another device for that). Searching on the internet I found the SCD1.3 which is the cheapest device for playing SACDs (at the same price there is also the Denon DCD-1700, a model from a certainly better known brand but which mounts the terrible DACs of Texas Instruments). This is the reason for the choice.
The impressions, however, are a mixture of satisfaction and disappointment: the satisfaction is given by the excellent audio quality of CD, SACD and Roon via airplay, the recognition of CDs is quite fast while that of SACDs a little less, the remote control does not have problems giving commands to the reader.
The disappointments are many, but minor, as they concern streaming playback, the touchscreen and the smartphone app:
- streaming playback: no gapless playback; every now and then the screen does not display the correct song covers; I encountered delays and poor compatibility with "mconnect" and "bubbleupnp" with which I had problems playing songs from the audio server to the player.
- the touchscreen is too sensitive, filling in passwords for the wifi network is a lottery, the scrolling of characters is too fast and never stops where you want it
- the smartphone app: terrible, it doesn't always connect to the player and when it does, the only settings that can be changed are the CD/SACD switch and the DAC filter settings, as well as the controls for playing the CD.
One strange thing (at least, I think it is) is that the DAC filters can also be selected during SACD playback: is this normal?
However, I find it absurd that when playing CDs and SACDs, information about the media being played is not displayed, such as album title, artist and song titles, especially when there is a nice LCD display perfect for that task.
I think I've said it all, excellent disc player, but insufficient in the streaming component.
The impressions, however, are a mixture of satisfaction and disappointment: the satisfaction is given by the excellent audio quality of CD, SACD and Roon via airplay, the recognition of CDs is quite fast while that of SACDs a little less, the remote control does not have problems giving commands to the reader.
The disappointments are many, but minor, as they concern streaming playback, the touchscreen and the smartphone app:
- streaming playback: no gapless playback; every now and then the screen does not display the correct song covers; I encountered delays and poor compatibility with "mconnect" and "bubbleupnp" with which I had problems playing songs from the audio server to the player.
- the touchscreen is too sensitive, filling in passwords for the wifi network is a lottery, the scrolling of characters is too fast and never stops where you want it
- the smartphone app: terrible, it doesn't always connect to the player and when it does, the only settings that can be changed are the CD/SACD switch and the DAC filter settings, as well as the controls for playing the CD.
One strange thing (at least, I think it is) is that the DAC filters can also be selected during SACD playback: is this normal?
However, I find it absurd that when playing CDs and SACDs, information about the media being played is not displayed, such as album title, artist and song titles, especially when there is a nice LCD display perfect for that task.
I think I've said it all, excellent disc player, but insufficient in the streaming component.
