SOtM smS-200 unveiled at Munich Hi-End

[stefano_mbp]

2 hours ago, Mahler and Bach on Computer said:

I have been using Sotm-SmS200 in conjunction with HQPlayer for several years now.  Recently, HQPlayer5desktop requires computer to be online.  Given the security consideration, I installed VPN service provided by SurfShark.  However I noticed that if SurfShark was installed on a computr, even without being operated, smS200 becomes invisible to HQPlayer.  Anyone ran into the same experience?  How to overcome this hurdle.

 

thank you very much!  

Likely your computer and the SOtM are on different subnets …

[Mahler and Bach on Computer]

11 hours ago, stefano_mbp said:

Likely your computer and the SOtM are on different subnets …

Great thought!  The sms-200 was connected to the system in the bridges mode.  I may have to reestablish the bridge under the VPN mode.  Or may just go back the the regular mode of Ethernet connection.   

[Mahler and Bach on Computer]

Tried reestablish the bridge or used standard network connection between sms-200 and Mac-mini.  In both cases, HQPlayer failed to detect the sms-200 under VPN mode.  But worked when VPN was terminated.  In all scenarios, I have access to https://eunhasu.local to reboot sms-200.  

[Mahler and Bach on Computer]

Recently I found I cannot successfully power off the SotM-sMS 200 from http://euhasu.local anymore.  When I clicked the power off button, the light remained on, and I still can see the device on the network, but it becomes invisible from HQPlayers or any audio device interphase.  Anybody knows what could have happened and how I can resolve the issue.  I need to unplug the power supply to shut it down.  

[stefano_mbp]

@Mahler and Bach on Computer I’ve just tried with mine (sms200 Neo) and it definitely power off … which firmware are you running? and are you still using the original microSD card (8GB) or are you using a at least 16GB microSD?

[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.

[Mahler and Bach on Computer]

On 3/10/2024 at 12:47 AM, stefano_mbp said:

@Mahler and Bach on Computer I’ve just tried with mine (sms200 Neo) and it definitely power off … which firmware are you running? and are you still using the original microSD card (8GB) or are you using a at least 16GB microSD?

Thank you very much for the suggestions.  Appears that the firmware update certainly helps.  Now it is working.  I have few different micro SD cards which I have been doing experiment with their possibility on SQ.  I will check them out one by one.  

[Mahler and Bach on Computer]

14 hours ago, Oepsie said:

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.

I am not so lucky.  Mine is still the original version of sMS-200 and runs great so I don’t have the motivation to upgrade, but the down side of it is that I cannot physically power it off as the sMS 200 Ultra.  I did not have Roon, instead I am running HQPlayer.  I agree with you that I may need to turn off the service I am using, such as HQPlayer, from the eunhasu.local interphase before power-off the unit from eunhasu.local interphase.  

[ClothEars]

12 hours ago, Mahler and Bach on Computer said:

Thank you very much for the suggestions.  Appears that the firmware update certainly helps.  Now it is working.  I have few different micro SD cards which I have been doing experiment with their possibility on SQ.  I will check them out one by one.  

I have done extensive SD Card testing and found the Silicon Power Gaming card to be the best. They present a bigger sound stage and greater depth with excellent detail.  I was actually surprised that they could make such a difference but they do. 

[Stonemanty]

16 hours ago, ClothEars said:

I have done extensive SD Card testing and found the Silicon Power Gaming card to be the best. They present a bigger sound stage and greater depth with excellent detail.  I was actually surprised that they could make such a difference but they do. 

I'm both surprised and not that there's a difference - have you managed to establish what causes the difference; is it capacity or speed perhaps?

 

Thanks

Andy

[Mahler and Bach on Computer]

17 hours ago, ClothEars said:

I have done extensive SD Card testing and found the Silicon Power Gaming card to be the best. They present a bigger sound stage and greater depth with excellent detail.  I was actually surprised that they could make such a difference but they do. 

I have tested about 6 brands with different specifications because certain specifications are not available from certain brands.  The experiments lasted about more than a years so far, and difference among different ones are quite significant in some cases, in regarding the resolution, soundstage, and richness in sound.  Will looking into this one. Thank you for the suggestions.  I found SOME of those UHS-II V60 or V90 do sound better in general but also have their own individual signatures in sound quality.  

[Stonemanty]

4 minutes ago, Mahler and Bach on Computer said:

I have tested about 6 brands with different specifications because certain specifications are not available from certain brands.  The experiments lasted about more than a years so far, and difference among different ones are quite significant in some cases, in regarding the resolution, soundstage, and richness in sound.  Will looking into this one.  

Any obvious correlations you have noticed e.g. capacity better, speed better, brand better?

I'm very interested to try, but there are sooooo many! 

Thanks

Andy

 

[Mahler and Bach on Computer]

54 minutes ago, Stonemanty said:

Any obvious correlations you have noticed e.g. capacity better, speed better, brand better?

I'm very interested to try, but there are sooooo many! 

Thanks

Andy

 

To be honest, I cannot not see any correlation because the numbers of samples tried are very limited and I don’t have a good theoretical background to come out hypothesis for even designing experiments for investigation.

 

I really hate to say this but the two I found very good are Delkin UHS-II v90 and ADATA UHS-II V90.  But they are good in a very different ways.  The former gave a richer and warmer sound, much more musical to my own taste, but later gave a very great details, very wide sound stages.  Lexar UHS-II v60 and Samsun UHS-I v30 are in another camp.  Both of them are adequate and satisfying, but not in the same leagues as the earlier two.  Each have their pro and cons but both of them are good.  Super cheap PNY Elite is not too far behind of the league 2.  SanDisk Ultra v30 sounds harsh.  Of course, all these is based on my own system which is a traditional one with floor stand speakers, and any discussion on sq is very subjective because it is very individual.  I still frequently change them to confirm my findings and also for different mode of listening.  The experiments started about 18 months ago.  But just warn that recently the Delkin UHS-II stopped working after one year.  Still struggling if I should buy another Delkin.  I should say some of these micro SD are relatively expensive but changing them is still way more economical than, say, changing cables, and the difference of those micro SD make at least in par with what cables can bring if not more significant.  

[Stonemanty]

That’s really interesting, thank you

 

I’ll check out the prices and do some experimenting myself 

 

I did a lot of Audio PC customisation years ago, so I know that changes like this do impact the sonic outcome 

 

I’ve been looking for my next ‘tinker’ topic and I think this could be it! 😃

 

regards

Andy 

[Mahler and Bach on Computer]

I have been assuming speed could be critical.  Some of those micro SD card is for 4K video recording. I don’t do gaming so I cannot appreciate how a game SD card can help here.  But I already placed the order to give it a try of SP Game SD.  

[Stonemanty]

You seem to have found higher speed cards sound better, as a general rule? 

 

Considering (my layman’s understanding of..) the CPU speed reduction option in the recent firmware update - we can reduce the MHz, but it means the processors respond quicker from idle I.e. the overall processing speed is increased (I think) 

 

Following that logic, a fast SD card should be able to respond faster to system and signal demands as well 

 

regards

Andy

[ClothEars]

I have tested all the cards in the photo below.  I concur with the observations @Mahler and Bach on Computer has made regarding varying performance from different brands.  For me the Silicon Power Gaming card is the best.  I tried other variations of their cards but they were not as good as the gaming card.  The Verbatim card was the next best followed by the Samsung cards and PNY.  The Sandisk cards were poor performers irrespective of the speed class utilised.  I too found them harsh with a narrow soundstage and thought if I heard an SMS-200 using one of their cards I would not be that impressed.  Also I found speed had nothing to do with subjective performance - faster cards did not outperform their slower brethren.  I'd like to give the Delkin UHS-II v90 and ADATA UHS-II V90 cards a go however they are quite expensive compared to the cards in the photo.  I'd better start saving!!

 

[Joao Lins]

I didn't even know that sMS200ultra would recognize 128GB cards...

 

I must confess that I find all of this a bit strange. In theory all needed software is loaded after the boot up and there would be no (significant) disk I/O after that.

 

See attached two prints I took from my system. It runs HQPlayer NAA 4.5 only. The first one shows the system right after boot up (2 min) and other one some time later (3h 15min) when the system was playing a DSD 512 streaming. You will see that there is no disk swap at all and only a 30 MiB of memory usage difference between them. There is no other disk partition modification too. 

 

So, since there is no significant disk I/O during playback, why should a memory card speed make sonic differences?

 

IMHO there must be a better explanation.

System information_ sMS-200ultra - 3min.pdf System information_ sMS-200ultra - 3h15min.pdf

[Stonemanty]

I just swapped out a ScanDisk Extreme Plus 32gb V30 for the same spec/size 'Integral' version.  Everything set the same in Eunhasu, Amp at the same volume etc  

 

Initial notes I made while listening:  more forward - soundstage less deep, a bit thicker/fuller sounding, bass a bit bloomy, more sibilance 

 

Not better, but definitely Different!  That was good news since it meant there was something to this... 

 

Then I realised that I was on the old Kernel.  Hmmm.   An age later (I think running the CPU at 144MHz makes it even slower?)  I had the new Kernel, beta disabled and everything reset 

 

Listened to the Integral SD - better...   swapped back to the ScanDisk SD - no obvious difference

 

I certainly have not given up on this experiment.  I have a crappy SD 16gb card that was included in a give-away dash cam that I will try later in the week - what I'm interested in is the 'proof of concept' (in my system, to my ears, with my music) and AFAIC, swapping identically spec'd SD's is not a fair test.  If I do hear any significant difference, I'll buy in the SP Game card - but finding one the same in GB is proving difficult (I'll contact SP to see if they brand the same card differently in EU)

 

On the positive side (for now) the new firmware/kernel update has proven its value i.e. less forward - soundstage deeper, a bit less thick/full sounding, bass less bloomy, less sibilance - definitely Better! 😁

 

Regards

Andy

[ClothEars]

4 hours ago, Joao Lins said:

I didn't even know that sMS200ultra would recognize 128GB cards...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, since there is no significant disk I/O during playback, why should a memory card speed make sonic differences?

 

IMHO there must be a better explanation.

System information_ sMS-200ultra - 3min.pdf 137.59 kB · 3 downloads System information_ sMS-200ultra - 3h15min.pdf 144.25 kB · 1 download

The card is burnt from an image file that is just under 8Gb so it doesn't matter what size the card is as long as it is at least 8Gb.  SMS-200 then reads the 8Gb partition.

 

Why the card makes such a difference remains a mystery but to my ears (and quite a few other users) it does.

[creativepart]

31 minutes ago, ClothEars said:

Why the card makes such a difference remains a mystery but to my ears (and quite a few other users) it does.

Confirmation bias?

 

I hate to be a nay sayer, but since the OS is loaded at bootup into memory, how could this be a thing?

 

Also, how could SoTM expect to sell a product that sounds different with every brand, speed and size of SD card? That doesn't make much sense.

 

I will agree that many things that make no sense do effect the sound. I'm just not jumping on this train though.

[Mahler and Bach on Computer]

22 hours ago, ClothEars said:

I have tested all the cards in the photo below.  I concur with the observations @Mahler and Bach on Computer has made regarding varying performance from different brands.  For me the Silicon Power Gaming card is the best.  I tried other variations of their cards but they were not as good as the gaming card.  The Verbatim card was the next best followed by the Samsung cards and PNY.  The Sandisk cards were poor performers irrespective of the speed class utilised.  I too found them harsh with a narrow soundstage and thought if I heard an SMS-200 using one of their cards I would not be that impressed.  Also I found speed had nothing to do with subjective performance - faster cards did not outperform their slower brethren.  I'd like to give the Delkin UHS-II v90 and ADATA UHS-II V90 cards a go however they are quite expensive compared to the cards in the photo.  I'd better start saving!!

 

Glad you shared what you found about SanDisk.  It is a confirmation of what I heard from it compared to others.

[Mahler and Bach on Computer]

Received the SP Game at 128GB suggested by @ClothEars, also revived the Delkin UHS-II 32GB.  The sound stage from SP Game indeed is wide and open.  Compared to Delkin, which also gives me a very good spatial sense, the difference between the two are more around tune, ant least this is my initial impression.  I should wait for some days for burns-in.  

[Stonemanty]

I tried the cheap card but it wouldn’t even boot, so I’m back on my original card for now 

 

I can’t find the same SP card here, but I’ve ordered a similar one 

 

Again, I’m interested in any difference, good or bad 

[flkin]

After receiving my SP card I checked it for speed on my BlackMagic test program. Writes fine but reads very slow. Did a ExFat reformat using a security wipe option to refresh it. After, it performs quickly for 1G tests read/write tests but still has difficult once the sizes go to around 4-5G. I suppose the use case for sMS-200 is small files so probably that’s fine. 
 

I don’t know if burning the Eunhasu file wipes the card but might be an idea to refresh the card using a security wipe first anyway.