Here I didn't think I'd have much to say when my insistence on IR remote meant I'd be using a COS D1 for D/A conversion and analog volume so the EM7 as just an SD transport, albeit with well-stocked can juice. Whilst I know that digital transports (can) differ sonically, that delta tends to be rather more modest. Alas, I had to eat those 'more modest' words. For reasons I frankly fail to fathom, the Shanling sounded immodestly fuller, more substantial and in the treble rather more burnished and resolved. Having changed naught else, I couldn't believe my good fortune. I hadn't gone after the EM7 to improve my sound. I'd only meant to replace another transport of lately erratic behaviour like we replace a jittery lightbulb—a commodity transaction with a primary view on restoring functionality. That I'd gone with a different brand was just to change things up. Was this due to the linear power supply and/or higher-spec oscillators? No idea. Satisfaction needs no understanding just like falling in love needs no parental approval. The experience is validation enough. 

But there was more: the claimed 7wpc/32Ω of Immanis or Susvara power allied to high gain selected in the menu. Where FiiO's R7 has five gain modes, the Shanling's audio menu only has low, medium and high. With 'cold' recordings captured at a median of -30dB, HifiMan's OG Susvara and Raal's Magna could max out high gain. With 'hot' recordings close to digital 0, I might sit at 85/100. Maxing out had no impact on sound quality. Nothing distorted or strained. It took me weeks to notice that to the left of the output-mode icon showing a headphone symbol in headfi mode lives a 2nd button with a headphone on it. That's right adjacent to the gain icon which I already had at 'high'. Hit that 2nd headphone icon to bold it and it activates 'turbo' mode which automatically scales back the volume setting just in case. Now I had gain galore even with OG Susvara just as the 7-watt spec had suggested should be available all along.

With that handled, let's finish up with what was likely down to discrete headphone gain/drive and less negative feedback than FiiO's opamp-based THX modules in my R7; plus a linear power supply. Whilst NFB can generate shiny distortion specs and low output Ω, it can also render dry atmospherics and a somewhat clipped gait like a Lippizaner show horse with braided mane and tail. That's great for control and dry-cleaned crispness, less so for flow, suppleness and textural generosity. Decays and tone colours too can take a hit. It's on that score and its interactive values that the Shanling showed my resident FiiO R7 a clean set of heels. Despite its half width making this a compact component, sonically it's full width.

That doesn't make it warm per se, just farther along the teleportation beam whence image outlines flesh out not just in flat colour panes but depth relief. As John Darko likes to remind me, my default word for that is 'juicy'. It's a familiar of 'wet' but I find it more communicative. Already in the hand, a juicy fruit has different give than a hard unripe one. Once we eat it, not only is it a very different sensation but the flavour profile has more layers to be more intense. In short, compared to a FiiO R7, the Shanling has riper tone textures and greater timbre differentiation. Whilst its Android 10-based OS is rather more basic than FiiO's subsequent R7 iteration, its sonics are more mature and bigger. Seeing how my primary reason for this purchase was the touch-screen digital transport aspect, getting a serious headphone amp too was a welcome extra.

Alas, a real downer just then was my display's retarded scroll function. In alphabetized folder view, one wants to quickly scroll from A to Z when there are thousands of albums. My EM7 disagreed. Whilst scrolling, it instantly reverted to the home screen. No matter where or how I swiped the screen, it behaved in the same verklemmte fashion. The only reliable way whereby I could select music farther down the alphabet was using the 'search' function and manually typing in artist or album name. Where my FiiO R7 scrolls up/down like greased lightning just as does any equivalent smartphone, this Shanling refused to. With a 1TB music library, that was a royal pain and rather soured the general appeal. Overwriting my firmware made zero difference. Baaad dog?

Postscript. Old dog, new trick. I eventually learnt that if we hit the 'general menu' then 'navigation mode' and there select not 'gesture' but 'floating box', the scroll function activates to work like a dream. If you run into my issue, don't ask what a floating box is. Just pick it and all will be well with your local library's rapid navigation. Good dog! True, a proper manual would have shortened my learning curve but I got there in the end. Having been pleased with the sound and looks already, finally my intended functionality was fully working as well. In fact, by shifting the remote-volume burden onto a Lifesaver Audio Gradient Box whose 120Hz/4th-order hi/lo-pass signal split supplies the monitors and sub with mirror-imaged phase-coherent feeds, I now was exploiting the EM7's D/A conversion in fixed line-out mode for both its local microSD library; and CD coming off a compact smsl transport reclocked at 50Ω/10MHz by a LHY. Ode to joy and all that classical Jazz…