SOtM smS-200 unveiled at Munich Hi-End

[Oepsie]

Regarding PSU, I've tried out several LPS options (although none of the options mentioned in this thread 😆). Most of them gave a somewhat relaxed presentation with lots of details but with loss of dynamics opposed to my current favorite: A no-name LPS with a fan (that can be stoped with a paper clips 🙃). This gives the right level of attack and rhythm to the music and makes the sms-200 less soft.

 

Realizing that this was not my final solution, I've finally settled on a Paul Hynes SR4 LPS (after reading much about it). I'm very curious whether it will give the balance between attack and musicality to fit my system. So fingers crossed - its a bit delayed due to the corona pandemic.

[Oepsie]

Update went fine here, first try. Took 7 hours though. Had to check several times along the way but eventually it was done..

[Oepsie]

Same success here. Dd image on macbook. Burn onto 16 gb sandisk class 10. Have done it several times with success.

 

Have also tried making a backup image from older installation to burn onto a friends sd card. Also worked like a charm ☺️

[Oepsie]

3 minutes ago, creativepart said:

I'm using a Sandisk Ultra Class 10 A1 32GB mSD card. And I did download for a second time the disk image. Watching the lights on my SMS200 Ultra It looks like it starts to boot up and then reboots again. About every 20 seconds I see it flash that one very bright light that you see when you first turn on the device, then a lot of small activity blinks followed by the BRIGHT light.

 

I may give it another try - or I may bail out on this. I spent most of the weekend trying to get this to work. I'm happy that v5.1 works well.

 

The thing is - I don't want to be in a situation where I can no longer upgrade the firmware/software of this device. That can't be good long term.

Have you tried copying the 5.1 image from the old sd card onto the new card and doing an update through eunhasu interface? That would be my next move if you haven’t tried that. And by copy I mean creating an image from the old sd card and burn in onto the new.. ☺️

[Oepsie]

Having spent 14 days with the new update, in my system, the cpu latency tuning is not all good 🤕 I hear better sense of room and micro details on instuments, especially acoustic guitar or classic music but bas looses at bit of impact and music has less drive.. most noticible with rock musik with the black keys or the raconteurs as examples. Tried several times back and forth..

 

Any thoughts?

[Oepsie]

Nice ☺️ Upgrade took 250 sec and kernel update about 6-7 mins. No time to listen yet 🤕

[Oepsie]

I sometimes experience the same as Mahler above. The sms-200 restarts instead of shutting down. I use roon, and when the issue happens, it helps turning off the roon service and then turn off the sms-200 again..

 

The issue has been there from the beginning (since +3 years), I’m now on latest firmware.

[Oepsie]

Tonight I had a couple of friends over to double check my findings with another microSD card for the sms-200. Based on coincidences, I've been running my setup with a sandisk card so far. So wanted to try out for myself the aforementioned Verbatim Pro card (64 gb version) to see what all the fuss is about; to see if I could hear any differences 😬

 

An initial disclaimer about my experiments: I've played around with the cpu latency and the cpu throttling and I prefer the latency parameter turned off and no throttling; to my ears, these parameters 'thins' out the midrange and make the sound a bit brighter than the standard non-throttled settings. The effects are there with both SD cards but more noticeable with the sandisk card as (maybe because it is brighter to begin with, see below?).

 

To my concern, I'm actually able to hear a difference between the sandisk and verbatim cards.. In direct comparison, the sandisk sounds a bit more open and bright, with a greater focus on instrument decay and a more balanced presentation. Switching to the verbatim card, the midrange becomes more 'full' with more details but the overall balance is a bit darker and instrument decay is not even across the frequency range.

 

So my conclusion is that the sandisk card matches my system better, giving a more natural, homogenic character across the frequency range.

 

The verbatim card gives a bit more boom to the base as well but generally has a very nice, detailed midrange. With some music, the sandisk becomes a bit bright and gives a slight metallic character. Opposite, with the verbatim card certain music looses a bit of energy, especially with rock music (the black keys, radiohead, audioslave, rage against the machine), noticeable in drums and electric guitars which sound a bit more muffled.

 

Having owned the sms-200 with a Paul Hynes sr4t LPS for 3-4 years, a lot of changes has been made to my system with the sandisk card, so home court advantage is definitely there as the system has been tuned with cables and other components around the sandisk card signature.. 😁

 

A final remark is that my system in general is tuned towards a warmer character, making compromises in order to make rock music listenable. Maybe that is the reason why I find the verbatim a bit too dark in my system..?