Like Lloyd Walker managed a few weeks back -- daring me with his Velocitor power accelerator while promptly delivering on what, simultaneously, was clearly proud-papa excitement to be mistrusted for proper reviewer distance -- Walter Liederman proved to be right, too. I'm an ex-salesman. Being sold and closed by another while remaining critical throughout the process is an - er, interesting proposition that combines resentment, humor and admiration in equal parts. To wit, the T-200 was audibly superior and not by an insignificant margin. Catch phrases that suggested themselves? Weight, image density, focus and low-level retrieval. For the most overt improvement, imagine each tone a miniature round peach while remembering that certain peaches are really nectarines in disguise - they look very similar but flaunt a smooth skin whereas peaches are fuzzy.


Depending on ripeness, some are firm, some are juicy. The basic taste is the same, but the juicy ones explode in your mouth with greater force. The T-100's outlines were peachy -- slightly fuzzy -- while the T-200 was a nectarine: Polished smooth yet cutting a clearer profile without the minor surface blurring. If tones had taste, the T-100 would have been a firm peach, the T-200 exuding that extra ripeness of juicy sweetness and tart acidity triggering secretion responses in your mouth. Listening to this tangible difference while fishing the river of diction for more descriptive visuals, I felt stuck on the darn peaches. However, I thought of a laser knife that would perform two narrow parallel cuts through two of the sticky orbs. Right through the middle of the fruits and the centers of theirs pits, it'd leave two thin round slices, one for each fruit. The T100's had a large pit whose sliver fell out of the slice. It left a hole with a thin ring of flesh on the circumference and the slightly furry halo of the skin surrounding it. The T200's slice had no pit in the center. It was solid flesh center to edge and with a smooth skin all around.

Calling such a presentation fuller and denser would be accurate but I dare imagine that our peachy detour added a certain important element. Playing Gale Hess' "In Love Alone" [The Waltz King by Cafe Noir, Carpe Diem Records 1994, 31012-2] delineated another one - a firmer hand with off-center images, an effect I had first experienced very potently while rewiring my entire system with HMS Gran Finale/Energia cables. The clarinet and viola accompaniment on the edges of the stage was as robust and solidly manifest as the central vocals; as clearly present as the adjacent Sinti solo guitar and the shrum-shrum rhythm guitar and double bass behind them. Switching back to the T-100 seemed to shrink the stage laterally, albeit not in actual spatial terms. The density or focus simply faded the more it withdrew from stage central.


The performers themselves didn't waver or move further inwards. Rather, they just weren't as strongly drawn to create the illusion of narrower width. Concomitantly, the T200's greater materialization of the stage edges made those elements seem louder, giving the impression of more detail, greater presence and more data.


The Romanian 4-octave concert cymbalom is a relative to the Indian santoor and smaller Turkish quanun. Played with two cotton-covered mallets, in the hands of a master like Ion Miu, it's capable of producing up to 30 notes per second. This creates a shimmering aquatic effect of breathtaking fluidity, each metallic note strung unto the next as rapidly as a gushing rain stick. The Romanian pan flute, first brought to international prominence by virtuoso Gheorge Zamfir, has turned into a veritable concert instrument. At the lips of an Ulrich Herkenhoff or Simion Stanciu 'Syrinx', it can play J.S. Bach or Handel transverse flute concertos that are technically challenging already for a fingered instrument.

On the Marcel Cellier recording Romanian Gems [Pierre Verany 1994, 750004] Simion and Ion join forces with the organist, in the very Swiss canton church of Cully/Vaud that, in 1969, had witnessed the first-ever recording of organ and Romanian ney between Cellier and Zamfir. The T-100's rendition of the cymbalom concentrated on the bright hammered string attacks but failed to include the zither's very sizeable box for the darker timbre of more sonorous cavity resonances which the T-200 resolved. And while Stanciu's panflute tone is innately slimmer and breathier than landsmen Radu Simion's or especially Dorel Manea's, the T-100 put him on an additional 5-day Jenny Craig diet.


In short, the SACD player's capacity for RedBook magic exceeded that of the very good CD-only machine. Due details to follow in the upcoming feature review. For today, my sour premonition is fixated upon the fact that unless I can scare up a suitably impressive transport, my new Zanden DAC has been bested. But back to the subject at hand. The $2,690 modified T-100's sonic prowess was every bit as impressive as its visual or feature-set panache. My only complaint? The even vertically challenged acceptance range of the remote. For commands to be registered, it requires you to hold it at the same level as the player. An overlooked, non-essential but elegant detail? Complete black-out of the display rather than the heavily attenuated but still visible illumination. With these minor nits out of the way, how about the last feature, headphone performance?
For comparison's sake, I drafted my trusty Antique Sound Lab MG Head and Grado RS-1 phones into service and wired the former into the T-100's solid-state outputs. And? The Shanling's got the soul of tone but not the power. On dynamically compressed Pop recordings, with its digital volume control bypassed to full output, the ASL's matched dial was at 10 o'clock, just right with this fare but sans headroom for the T-100. On a nouveau tango MA Recording with optimized dynamic range, the Shanling/Grado combo was clearly underpowered, not able to deliver the requisite output voltages for lift-off. Granted, these wooden Grados are a tough toad - er, load. Sonically, and with simpatico discs of appropriate compression EQ (i.e. recorded to sound as loud as possible) the Shanling pulled head-to-head with the MG Head but exhibited marginally higher noise floor. I didn't have other headphones handy to explore this issue at more length.


Extrapolating in reverse from my recent experience with the equivalently modified Music Hall MMF-CD25 versus its stock shadow, I garner that the stock Shanling is a good while not great player at its $1,995 price. However, once done in and made over as here, it achieves true greatness. Mark my words - overlooking it as just another pretty face then would be a big (and likely very costly) mistake. Disregard its 24/96 upsampling and be prepared for a very smooth, "non-digital" sound that does all the audiophile things you expect. Far more importantly, it allows you to forget about them to get intimate with the music and relish in it, the audiophile judge disbarred from the district. And that, after all the fancy talk about specs and fit'n'finish, glow-in-the-dark romance and flavors of tone, is what it's really all about. With pre-delivered and to-die-for build quality, the Shanling T-100 Level 1 Mod machine becomes a high pedigree beaut all around. Hadn't its bigger brother, the T-200, significantly eclipsed its performance for "just" $800 more, the T-100 would have waltzed away with one of our Blue Moon Awards. That should tell you all you need to know. In closing, consider what might happen should our friends in Asia catch up in the tweak department. In a few more years, domestic makers may well wish our government did impose trade embargoes with China. No longer just a land of cheap labor, China seems poised to eventually turn into an audio super power. This Shanling player's just the beginning. Review of T-200 and matching EL-34 amplifiers to follow.


Modification contact (new/modified or retro install)
underwoodwally@aol.com
Manufacturer's website
US distributor's website