SOtM smS-200 unveiled at Munich Hi-End

[tedwoods]

I've been having problems too...

Win 32 doesn't work... I've used a usb card reader to burn the 4.05 version on a 16GB micro sd card and I get frequent drop-outs with NAA...

[roncagg]

I had been running 4.17 which I think was the release prior to 4.22. They don’t give you an image for 4.4 so to fix my 4.5 issues I burned 4.22 onto the same SD and that has worked fine, I may try to go to 4.4 from the GUI today, see what happens. Reason for using SD images rather than GUI when possible is the same as stated before, much faster and not prone to connectivity issues. Instructions say the 4.5 update can take 6 hours! Too long, especially for a battery power supply as I’m running...

[Confused]

24 minutes ago, mikeyb said:

It's been tried on a 16gb card too and still glitching issues on Squeezelite setting.

I was thinking about the update issues that some are having, that is being stuck on 90% for hours.  After all, it will either update or it will not, so I agree that this is not likely to influence the glitching issues.

[89reksal]

8 hours ago, guillaume31 said:

Did everyone follow the upgrade instructions on the SOtM website ? https://www.sotm-audio.com/sotmwp/english/new-eunhasu-fw-ver-0-4-5-is-now-available/

They have very specific recommendations to ensure the upgrade process goes smoothly, which could explain why some of you experienced bugs ?

I tried upgrading again yesterday, using image downloaded onto 16 GB card. I too thought that issues may have been created by not following exact directions from that link (in my case the only thing I didn't originally follow was disconnecting USB, since my only USB connection was to my Schiit Eitr). Nevertheless, I wanted to eliminate the possibility that it was necessary to follow the exact instructions to have a successful upgrade. Bottom line, no difference in end result. Still had almost immediate skipping/stuttering on basic 16-44.1 pcm. Back to 4.22 (without disconnecting USB) and all good again.

Very disappointed to see the same image version still being used today, as well as no kind of official heads up from SOtM that there's issues with the current firmware version upgrade. I think the responsible thing at this stage would be to remove the file for download until the issues are resolved. Unless of course we're simply unofficial beta testers. I'm sure most people have better things to do this time of year than to be spending hours on an upgrade that's clearly faulty.

[tedwoods]

I've reverted back to 4.22... On a more positive note, the sound I got with 4.5, was the most analog-like and sibilance free I have ever heard! I think that when they finally resolve the issues of the update, we're in for a real treat.

And to celebrate the festive spirit of the season, here's a pic (not of the sms but close enough...):

 

[sierra_alpha]

Just a quick one - I am completely new to this forum but thought I would share my expeience

 

Updated my SoTM sms200 Ultra a couple of days ago to the latest 0.4.5 update. It took the best part of 7 (!) hours but it completed fine.

 

When I started to use it I also experienced glitches and was about to roll back to the previous version but this version seemed to have substantially improved the SQ so I persisted with it. Finally realised that if I went into the Roon Ready config in the Eunhasu interface and changed the buffer duration to .5 seconds, then the glitching has completely gone and I now get rock-solid playback performance. Obviously, your mileage may vary.

 

I would echo what someone else has said. The SQ of this update seems much improved - I'm not an audiophile to the same extent as others on this forum, but I would say there is much better "air", sound stage definition and PRAT is substantially improved. I would have willingly paid a few $1000's for this kind of improvement but it has come through free of charge....superb value for money.. !!

[Solstice380]

I’ve had issues since 4.22 with pops (maybe dropouts?) that sound like small clicks every few seconds and they are randomly throughout the soundstage.  This was using HQP NAA to the dCS Debussy.  I had to go back to 0.4.0 and I will try the 4.5 today.  I’ve re-d/l’d the images and burned new cards with the same issues.  Thankfully, I kept images on extra cards since I got the thing.  After I originally got the 200 it magically corrupted its own card..., came back with 4.22 and had the problems.

[octaviars]

18 minutes ago, Solstice380 said:

After I originally got the 200 it magically corrupted its own card..., came back with 4.22 and had the problems.

 

My 200 also did that with the original 8Gb card when I loaded it with 4.22 and I had to buy a new one.

 

SOtM clearly have issues with their testing of the software before they go public with it as 4.22 also had trouble at first.

 

I really like SOtM and the new 4.5 did make a small jump in sound quality to my ears but the way they handles the firmware issues could be improved.

[DaddyCool]

After updating my SMS-200 with the new firmware version 4.5 I also had the problem with the stuttering in playback using Squeezelite. After the following manual setting this problem is completely gone. My SMS-200 now plays better then ever. Not a single hesitation.
In Squeezelite config there is a section "Audio device config". Setting mode is standard set to Default. After you change that to Custom you can set the Sample Mode to an other value. For my Chord 2Qute I set this value to 32_LE (was 24). The correct setting is to be found in the link to Dac Information at the bottom of page Squeezelite info.
I hope this info is helpful. Happy listening.

[mikeyb]

37 minutes ago, DaddyCool said:

After updating my SMS-200 with the new firmware version 4.5 I also had the problem with the stuttering in playback using Squeezelite. After the following manual setting this problem is completely gone. My SMS-200 now plays better then ever. Not a single hesitation.
In Squeezelite config there is a section "Audio device config". Setting mode is standard set to Default. After you change that to Custom you can set the Sample Mode to an other value. For my Chord 2Qute I set this value to 32_LE (was 24). The correct setting is to be found in the link to Dac Information at the bottom of page Squeezelite info.
I hope this info is helpful. Happy listening.

Thanks, I'll try that tomorrow ?

[Tannoymike]

Finally got the firmware 4.5 to actually finish installing took just under 3hrs to complete, haven't tried it yet just hope I don't get the stuttering issues like many have had. I'm using MPD, has anyone got any recommended settings with this that work without any problems.

[aslg]

1 hour ago, Tannoymike said:

Finally got the firmware 4.5 to actually finish installing took just under 3hrs to complete, haven't tried it yet just hope I don't get the stuttering issues like many have had. I'm using MPD, has anyone got any recommended settings with this that work without any problems.

 

Maybe the problem is limited to Squeezelite. Can you check if Squeezelite stutters for you? 

[mikeyb]

1 hour ago, Tannoymike said:

Finally got the firmware 4.5 to actually finish installing took just under 3hrs to complete, haven't tried it yet just hope I don't get the stuttering issues like many have had. I'm using MPD, has anyone got any recommended settings with this that work without any problems.

 

 

MPD worked fine for me even when I was getting stuttering with Squeezelite. I'm pretty sure the issue is with Squeezelite itself. 

 

I've not tried the custom setting suggested above, I'm going to try it out now and see if I can fix it.

[audiobomber]

My sms-200 is up and running well with FW4.5 on MPD, after a prolonged battle and three failed attempts. Since everything is working now, would there any advantage to upgrading the SD card to 16GB? 

[Tannoymike]

Just finished listening with the firmware 4.5 installed using MPD and default settings plus no gain and no mixer and library update unticked these are my normal settings. Sound appears very good with a larger more open soundstage than before, and perhaps a slightly harder sound in the treble area (not evident on all recordings). Stuttering only occasionally occurs at the very beginning of a track particularly when hitting the next track on JRiver that I use, it doesn't occur every time  and I did get that with the firmware 4.2 as well. I think overall I would say to others if you use MPD that I would persevere with the 4.5 upgrade as it seems to be worthwhile but beware is does take a long time to install directly from the browser.

[mikeyb]

4.5 definitely won't work for me using Squeezelite I even tried the 'custom' settings as mentioned earlier in the thread but still stutters.

 

 

[89reksal]

5 hours ago, mikeyb said:

4.5 definitely won't work for me using Squeezelite I even tried the 'custom' settings as mentioned earlier in the thread but still stutters.

Yes, no matter what settings I use, I still get stuttering/skipping with Squeezelite and 4.5. I believe something's changed with the buffer settings and it's causing these issues. By lowering the "Internal buffer" setting, I can get glitch free playback for a longer time before it starts stuttering again. The lowest I've tried is 2048 and that gave almost 5 minutes before stuttering again. In my case, the stuttering will start off with less stuttering, then rapidly (less than a minute) become almost constant.

I mentioned in an earlier post that on 4.22 I leave "Internal buffer" blank which I guess causes some default value to be used. On 4.4 and 4.5 if left blank, it automatically gets some value entered (4096 on mine) when Squeezelite is restarted.

There's a thread on ROON  https://community.roonlabs.com/t/new-firmware-sotm-eunhasu-0-4-5/55757/27 where it looks like they're getting Roon working by adjusting buffer settings.

Hopefully SOtM will address this at some point.

 

[Tannoymike]

Update on my earlier note re Firmware 4.5 and MPD. This firmware using the standard settings as installed has settled down now and the stuttering initially happening at the start of some tracks doesn't occur now and everything works as it should. Finally got there after some false starts mainly due to the very slow download speeds great.

[aslg]

1 hour ago, Tannoymike said:

Update on my earlier note re Firmware 4.5 and MPD. This firmware using the standard settings as installed has settled down now and the stuttering initially happening at the start of some tracks doesn't occur now and everything works as it should. Finally got there after some false starts mainly due to the very slow download speeds great.

 

Are you saying that it stopped stuttering after while without you changing a thing?

[tedwoods]

5 hours ago, lasker98 said:

Yes, no matter what settings I use, I still get stuttering/skipping with Squeezelite and 4.5. I believe something's changed with the buffer settings and it's causing these issues. By lowering the "Internal buffer" setting, I can get glitch free playback for a longer time before it starts stuttering again. The lowest I've tried is 2048 and that gave almost 5 minutes before stuttering again. In my case, the stuttering will start off with less stuttering, then rapidly (less than a minute) become almost constant.

I mentioned in an earlier post that on 4.22 I leave "Internal buffer" blank which I guess causes some default value to be used. On 4.4 and 4.5 if left blank, it automatically gets some value entered (4096 on mine) when Squeezelite is restarted.

There's a thread on ROON  https://community.roonlabs.com/t/new-firmware-sotm-eunhasu-0-4-5/55757/27 where it looks like they're getting Roon working by adjusting buffer settings.

Hopefully SOtM will address this at some point.

 

Yep, changing the buffer to 0.2 in Roon did it or me too...

[ronfint]

I can’t say if this will or will not help anyone else, but I have found that improving the quality of my micro sd card has definitely helped the stability of playback on my sms200 ultra. I was using a 16GB San Disk Ultra micro sd card, and I started having dropouts. This had happened before with this particular card, and swapping it for the card supplied originally by SOtM (formatted then with f/w v.4.23 beta) solved the dropout problems. 

 

Two days after I reformatted the San Disk Ultra with v.4.5, I again started having dropouts. In the mean time, I had ordered a ‘better’ micro sd card, a Panasonic RP-SMPE16DA1 from

Arrow Electronics (who offer free next day air shipping in the U.S.). This card arrived just in time, and had several advantages. First of all the process of restoring f/w to a micro sd card had been hit or miss with me, often I had to pass through several rejected tries before succeeding. With this 16 GB Panasonic “SLC-Lite” card, the restoring process (with v. 4.5) was extremely quick; it seemed to take less than 30 seconds, and playback since has been without a hiccup. I can’t/ won’t speak to other sound quality differences, since I hear none, but not having dropouts is a major sound quality improvement in my book.    Whether or not my good luck with this micro sd card will continue is not yet clear to me, but I am fairly certain that my problems with dropouts were caused by a defective or at least deficient San Disk card.

 

[Solstice380]

@ronfint  I’ve had one similar experience.  I had pops with 4.4 on a SOTM-supplied card.  I burned 4.4 to a new 16GB PNY Class 10 card and the frequency of the pops decreased but weren’t gone.  I burned 4.22 to another of the PNY cards and haven’t had any issues.  I’m using Signalyst NAA, which is not what most people here are having issues with.  I’ve used this version of NAA with their Linux image on a NUC without issue.  I’ll try the newest 4.5.

[EnjoyTheMusicNow]

I highly recommend doing the upgrade via an external PC/memory card. The update took me 18 minutes. I turned off the SMS-200ultra neo, unplugged the USB and master clock cable, did the update via download to a PC and micro to USB card (18 mins). I plugged the card back in and went to the IP address. 4.5 shown as the version. I powered down once more, plugged the cables back in and started the unit once again (just to be safe). Roon play perfectly without adjusting any settings.

 

The instructions link for this process is buried in the instructions:

http://docs.sotm-audio.com/doku.php?id=en:eunhasu:burn_sdcard_image

 

EDIT: to be safe I did not use the original 8GB SOtM card. I purchased a 16GB class 10 card. 

[Solstice380]

4 hours ago, Solstice380 said:

@ronfint  I’ve had one similar experience.  I had pops with 4.4 on a SOTM-supplied card.  I burned 4.4 to a new 16GB PNY Class 10 card and the frequency of the pops decreased but weren’t gone.  I burned 4.22 to another of the PNY cards and haven’t had any issues.  I’m using Signalyst NAA, which is not what most people here are having issues with.  I’ve used this version of NAA with their Linux image on a NUC without issue.  I’ll try the newest 4.5.

 

Sligh technicality correction - problems started for me at 4.22 and went back to as-delivered 4.0.  Story is correct about different results with different cards and same version.

[mikeyb]

4.5 is fine using MPD and Roon, however the stuttering issue is with Squeezelite.

 

No one yet has come up with a solution.

 

Changing the default settings within Squeezelite option on the SoTm setup page to custom and setting the output figure DOES NOT fix it.