SACD is back, baby! This beefy new audiophile CD player is deliciously '90s, and has built-in tube amplification as a bonus

3 hours ago 10

Shanling's SDC3.3 CD player shown from the front and back, on a wooden surface

(Image credit: Shanling)

The Shanling SCD3.3 is an SACD player with 24-bit R2R DAC and dual tubes
Upsampling chip and MQA CD compatibility
$3,990 (about £3,000 / AU$6,055)

Shanling is bringing a high-spec SCD3.3 reference Super Audio CD player to the US in December 2025 with a price tag of $3,990 (about £3,000 / AU$6,055).

The SCD3.3 is a reference-grade player with its own 24-bit DAC and built in tube amplification, and Roger Fortier from its US distributor Forte Distribution says its hybrid analog/digital design delivers "sonics that stand out from the standard SACD player."

The player features a top-loading drive based around Shanling's HD850 laser. It also supports additional external sources including flash drives and hard disks for Hi-Res Audio up to PCM 768kHz and DSD512.

Shanling SCD3.3 SACD player on a wooden desk

Shanling SCD3.3: key features

The SCD3.3 is housed in a 9.5mm-thick, 10kg aluminum chassis with a transparent opening that enables you to see the light from its tube array, which uses a pair of 12AT7 tubes to deliver warmth and power. The device is controllable via its built-in five-inch touchscreen, and there's also a controller app for iOS and Android.

The DAC is the second generation of Shanling's R2R DAC, offering native DSD transport among other features. The player has has RCA and XLR outputs, line-out and a pre-amplifier mode, and plays CDs, SACDs and hybrid CD/SADC discs (but not multichannel ones) and is MQA-CD compatible.

The SCD3.3 is also a Bluetooth 5.0 receiver, with support for LDAC, aptX HD, aptX and the usual SBC and AAC codecs.

With two transformers providing up to 66W of power Shanling says the SDC3.3 is "exceptionally stable", its two independent sets of oscillators delivering high precision and dramatically reducing jitter.

The US page for the SCD3.3 currently details a different model, but you can browse the full specifications of the SCD3.3 on the Shanling website here.

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Contributor

Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than twenty books. Her latest, a love letter to music titled Small Town Joy, is on sale now. She is the singer in spectacularly obscure Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind.

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