Sometimes in life there are things that many people just do not get. The Crave mention of the Shanling SCD-T200A CD Player illustrates one of things. The Shanling SCD-T200A CD Player is squarely aimed at audiophiles. Thus, the characterization of the Crave blog entry referring to the SCD-T200A as falling under the category of

some people deliberately buy certain home entertainment equipment simply because it looks impossibly complicated. That way, they can pretend to be experts even if they have no idea how it works.

This Shanling CD player falls squarely under that category.

is completely off the mark. In general as I see it, the goal of audiophiles is to find audio equipment that meets their “audio quality tastes”, with a mix of aesthetics mixed in. In my experience of looking into audiophile equipment, quite often the goal is as “clean” a signal as possible. This quite often means less, not more, complicated equipment.

When I look at the SCD-T200A, I see an audio component that is trying to illustrate its goal of the emphasis being on the quality of the signal, not complexity. This is not intended as a nasty criticism. As I said earlier, this is the kind of thing that many just do not get. Please bear in mind, this post is coming from a person who has an amp for his headphones. Yes, I have an amp that is designed for headphones.

If you are interested at a glimpse into the world of an audiophile, consider looking around Head-Fi