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Shanling are conscientious of design and build quality and the CD-T80 gives a clear outward appearance of refinement. Inside design and layout are good with attention to component quality for the analogue power supplies, DAC de-coupling & output coupling. Sonically the player fairs very well and David Allcock’s review in Hi-Fi News summed the player up well when he said; "vocals draw the listener into the music, showing a level of naturalness and fluidity which is still missing from many CD players at twice the price."

It is only after time with the CD-T80 that its limitations start to bite. With busy and dynamically challenging recording the CD-T80’s sound start to buckle under with the music becoming compressed and edgy. The mid registers are stamped with a rosy characteristic which errs on the side of graininess and "spoils" the sound. High frequencies have limited extension and have a tendency to soften.

Under the Skin

As with all things digital jitter is a persistent problem. Not helped in the CD-T80 by the OEM clock which uses the on-chop oscillator of the SAA7327 digital servo. Phase noise is high since the clock uses an internal gate of the SAA7327 with an external crystal (16.9344MHz) for the master clock. The poor phase noise of this clock is degraded further by noise injection from the digital servo and shared power supplies.

The component quality (electrolytic, op-amps) of the CD-T80 is good, but several areas have been overlooked or left possibly due to cost restraints. Select areas of the analogue stage power supply bypassing and local de-coupling use Nichicon Fine Gold capacitors, although blends of different capacitors have been seen from model to model. The operational amplifiers for I/V conversion and analogue filter are the classic Burr Brown OPA2604, a good op-amp even today but it can be seriously improved upon with the latest high flyers from Analog Device and National Semi-conductor.

The final "buffer" stage is valve based, with a mix of 3 capacitors per channel used for output coupling). Here, cooking grade electrolytic and used in series to form a non-polar capacitor which is then bypassed by a Polypropylene film type.

 A New Lease of Life

The modifications we undertook to the Shanling resulted in modification that were far from subtle and really brought home what this player was capable of achieving. We divided the

The level-1 modification starts by addressing jitter by replacing the OEM clock with Superclock 4. The sub-picosecond jitter delivered by Superclock 4 is a real ear opener in the CDT-80. The sound-stage becomes more accurately focused, expansive with superb depth and width. Lack of bass was never a problem with the OEM CD-T80 but now bass gains a whole new level of control and extension reaching right into the lower registers with improved delineation. The midrange and upper frequencies lose any etched or graininess heard in the stock CDT-80, and the player is now able to convey a very detailed, open and extended quality which blends effortlessly and coherently with the bass.

After enjoying new found sound from the new clock the next stage of modifications for Level- 1 were completed. The analogue stage power supply bypass capacitors to the DAC & upsampling stage are upgraded to Rubycon ZA capacitors. The ZA series provide ultra-low impedance and have excellent noise filtering for digital circuits. For the PCM1738 DAC & CS8420 24-bit/192 KHz up-sampling processor stage, we upgrade the local digital & analogue electrolytic de-coupling + reference filter capacitors to Sanyo OS-CON SP & Rubycon ZA types. The extremely low ESR/ESL and low noise available from the these capacitors provide the DAC with the best possible de-coupling. The current to voltage converter stage op-amps are upgraded to the LME49720; the 49720 provides a remarkable improvement for this post DAC stage. The 49720 has vanishingly low distortion, very low noise, excellent PSRR and high speed; a perfect choice. De-coupling for the I/V and analogue filter stage are upgraded to Sanyo OS-CON SP. At the buffer output stage the cooking grade de-coupling electrolytic for the JAN Philips JA-5670 valves are upgraded to Panasonic FC type.

Our experience with the level-1 modified CD-T80 is certainly memorable, so we were intrigued to hear how much more could be squeezed out of this player will the inclusive of the Bybee Quantum purifiers. The Bybee purifiers are a device which reduces the noise floor, which is dominated by frequency dependant noise, referred to as1/f noise. The key point is that 1/f noise behaves like the musical spectrum. Its envelope mimics that of the musical signal. Our level-2 upgrade installs Bybee purifiers in the AC & DC supply lines to markedly reduce noise. The most obvious improvements heard are in bass and dynamics, a drastic reduction in graininess, greater insight into the recordings. In addition, the level-2 modification upgrades the analogue filter op-amp to the excellent AD825 on Brown Dog adapters. With the AD825 Detail becomes optimal at both low and high levels, dynamics are powerful and controlled, the music gains a warmer, more natural sound.

The Modified CD-T80 Stands Tall

With final result of any modification is a case of, “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”, or in this case listening. With the level-1 modification the CDT-80 finds real magic, it’s highly musical, capable of extracting a wealth of detail from CD without any over emphasis or spotlighting. The player is coherently gifted and keeps the music controlled with dynamic drive that invokes you to listen. The level-2 upgrade is not merely extra icing on the cake; the improvements from level-2 add several hundred pounds of market placement value to the CDT-80 allowing it to compete with far more costlier players.