SOtM smS-200 unveiled at Munich Hi-End

[PnL]

SOtM should reorganize the work on the release of new firmware versions - it seems that the software is being tested before release is not enough.

Reinstalling and returning back takes a lot of time (we are not damn listeners, but happy testers?), but I can’t try 4.59 now - the yellow arrow is on me again, and there is no update inside. Here I see only 4.58. Someone wants me to skip this version

[SYM]

I see that 4.59 is available on the update page. Was so thrilled with the sq of 4.57 - then 4.58 is unstable again. If 4.58 is an indication of how 4.59 sound - I am sticking with 4.57.  Even having a few sd cards on hand - its a waste of time switching back and forth. 

 

Agree with @PnL that testing is not very thorough with the 4.5x releases. Hope sotm can get their act together fast. Lately I noticed that the sotm online update server keeps going into maintenance mode. I think they knew something is not right with their releases and quickly pulled the plug for allowing update. 

[Tommd64]

The VO 4.59 made the music comback again! Untill now stable connection. My buffer duration is 0.45 and my resync 0.2

[Confused]

I reported last week how much I liked the improvement in sound quality with V04.57 and the 100BASE-T option.  However, after reading @afrancois's post about the orange / green switch lights I checked my switch and noticed the same issue.  With 100BASE-T selected, I had a bright green light, not orange.  This is with a TP Link TL SG108 switch.  I sent an email to May regarding the issue and she advised that I should try the V04.58 firmware, which included a bug fix.  Interestingly, she advised that the 100BASE-T option is actually working on V04.57.  After this, I finally got some time to listen to my system yesterday.  I thought I would try some comparisons beteen 100BASE-T and 1000BASE-T running V04.57.  I did think that it sounded maybe a fraction smoother with 100BASE-T, but I would say it was easily within the margins that I could be kidding myself.  Running 1000BASE-T, I still really liked the sound with V04.57, very detailed yet at the same time smoother and less harsh than before.

 

Later, I burned an image of the new V04.58.  This did not go well!  With 100BASE-T selected I could not get it to work at all with HQPlayer, nothing would play, HQPlayer would crash, Roon (feeding HQPlayer) would lock up, very frustrating.  I did manage to get Roon / HQPlayer running with V04.58 and 1000BASE-T, I switched back to 100BASE-T, it would not work, I tried back with 1000BASE-T, and this would not work either!  Very frustrating.  

 

It's Saturday morning here now, and after yesterday's woes my plan was to simply switch back to V04.57, which dispite the green light bug worked fine for me and sounded good.  Now I see that we have V0.4.59 available, I shall give this a try this morning.

[Tommd64]

Thanks for your post confused! I cannot switsch to 100t or 1000t but it seems because my Sotm sNH-10G switch it doesn.t allowed so the only possibility is 1000t.

[PnL]

I tried 4.59 - the problem in Roon is repeated exactly as at 4.58, with the difference that at 4.58 it did not reach the sound at all, and at 4.59 five seconds after the start of the file, the sound is starts and broken after a moment and then an error message pops up again, here it is: "An audio file is loading slowly. This may indicate a performance or hardware problem." At the same time, the network is constantly used, 4.58 more, 4.59 less.

Will go to 4.57 again...

[Confused]

As an update, I tried everthing I could think of to get Roon / HQPlayer working with V04.59, but nothing seams to work.  As I mentioned earlier, I did get it working briefly with 1000BASE-T selected yesterday, but today even this does not work, HQPlayer crashes or Roon locks up.  Curiously, I could get V04.59 to work with Shairport, both with 100BASE-T and 1000BASE-T.  Thankfully I had kept a separate SD card with V04.57 on it.  Switching this back in, Roon / HQPlayer works without any issues, it is playing perfectly now.  This is with 100BASE-T selected, and yes, my Ethernet switch is back with it's 1000BASE-T bright green light active.   

 

It is curious that @afrancois and myself get a green light with V04.57 and 100BASE-T, whereas @octaviars gets an orange light with exactly the same configuration.  Just to check, I have also tried Shairport and Roon (Roon direct, no HQPlayer) both with V04.57 and 100BASE-T, both cases work fine, no stuttering or "an audio file is loading slowly" message, and in both cases my switch is displaying the green light.  For the record, with V04.49 100BASE-T and Shairport, which did work, the light was orange.  I'd love to know what is really going on here.

 

Anyway, V04.57 is sounding great again, 100BASE-T bug or not, I'm happy to stick with this until the issues get sorted.

[Tommd64]

Troubles in borrowed time PnL. They are working as hard as they can. Some friends of mine installed it already without problems..But wenn it works it never sound that great until now..SoTM advises btw fixed volume in Roon....

[octaviars]

37 minutes ago, Confused said:

It is curious that @afrancois and myself get a green light with V04.57 and 100BASE-T, whereas @octaviars gets an orange light with exactly the same configuration.  

 

I dont know if I wrote I get an orange light but my switch a GS108 have two LED for indication of speed and that indicates 100BASE-T. 

 

On my SOtM sMS-200ultra Neo I have one solid green LED and one blinking orange LED below the LAN port.

 

I run Roon and 4.59 right now and zero problem. 

Cant say I have had any problems with any of the 4.5X and not much difference in sound either between them.

[Jean Plum]

I dropped £2k on SOtM kit a year ago ?

Would I do so today ? Nope. Marketing disaster.

[ronfint]

8 minutes ago, Jean Plum said:

I dropped £2k on SOtM kit a year ago ?

Would I do so today ?

I also have a lot of SOtM equipment. I’m very happy with it, and yes, I'd buy it again. I think that the sound that I’m getting from 4.57 is exceptional; so why should it bother me if a firmware update isn’t playing well on my system?

 

I don’t think that we should be expecting a company that both responds rapidly to requests and is completely perfect. One can stay with the firmware that they have and is working while watching updates converge. I’m happy that SOtM is listening to its customers.

 

 

[PnL]

SOtM SMS-200 is an excellent device and with 4.57 it can be used without any problems. But why publish firmware that does not work?

[Confused]

36 minutes ago, PnL said:

SOtM SMS-200 is an excellent device and with 4.57 it can be used without any problems. But why publish firmware that does not work?

 

 

To be frank, I guess it allows SOtM to provide more rapid, and cheaper, development.  Essentially they are using their customers as Beta testers.  This is a lot faster and cheaper than performing extensive in house testing, especially considering the vast range of associated kit and options that the end users have available.  There is some evidence of this when you consider that 4.58 was never offered as an Eunhasu update, only something on the SOtM documents page, to be downloaded and burned as an image, something most users would not bother to do.  (although 4.59 is available in Eunhasu, I have to admit)

 

One trick for those frustrated by this, simply ignore any new updates for at least a month.  After a month, anything buggy should have been removed or replaced anyway, the versions that survive a month should be ok.

[PnL]

How to distinguish a good version from a bad one? Everything is simple - there is a definition all over the world - a beta or a nightly build - they are downloaded by those who would like to try the newest features and, perhaps, participate in their opinion in the development and do not download those who don't have time for endless reinstallations, there are stable versions for them. And everyone is happy. Is not it so?

[89reksal]

I upgraded from 4.57 to 4.59 via Eunhasu today. I use only Squeezelite/LMS. No  issues with the actual upgrade process.

 

As previously discussed all versions since 4.22 have required what seems to be, at least in my opinion, excessively large Buffer time, Period count and Internal Buffer values. With 4.57, which is the first version since 4.22 that would even play glitch free for me, I had to use 160/16/32768 for the smallest values with stable playback.

 

Today with 4.59, I'm down to 40/4/4096 with no issues at all. With previous versions I wasn't able to get close to values this low. My system only plays up to 24-96 files which is what I've been playing so far today to test. I believe it was impossible to get a true evaluation of the sound quality with those excessively high values required previously. In my prior testing with 4.22 I found anything above 40/4 would start to degrade soundwise (darker, not as well defined type sound) and that's what I've found to be the case after using 4.57 a few days. I was actually planning on switching back to 4.22 when I saw the upgraded was available through Eunhasu today. I haven't been able to do much listening for changes in audio since the rest of the family is still sleeping, but from what I've heard so far with 40/4/4096 with 4.59, it sounds very nice.

 

Nothing in the change logs since 4.57 indicated anything that would seem to affect Squeezelite, but apparently something has changed enough to allow more normal values to get error free playback. This seems like real progress to me.

 

Odd that there now seems to be issues with Roon Ready and Squeezelite is working fine, at least in my system, whereas before it was always Roon Ready working while Squeezelite had issues.

[Confused]

4 minutes ago, PnL said:

How to distinguish a good version from a bad one? Everything is simple - there is a definition all over the world - a beta or a nightly build - they are downloaded by those who would like to try the newest features and, perhaps, participate in their opinion in the development and do not download those who don't have time for endless reinstallations, there are stable versions for them. And everyone is happy. Is not it so?

Yes, I can only agree.  I think part of the target market for SOtM kit would be happy to try beta versions, but they should be designed as beta.  The firmware updates from Eunhasu should be properly tested.

[marc b]

I agree that you should not always use the latest software on this device. I was still on the 4.22 because any newer version did not work in my configuration because (as far as I understand) the new Kernel version with Fedora release 27 was unable to recognise WiFi dongles that worked before. I even bought a new WiFi dongle to try and make it work, but to no avail. So yes: they brought out a new software verion that did not work in all cases, and I happened to be one of them. Several new software versions came and they still did not work over here in my place in the Netherlands. But they keep giving it effort to finally make it work if you reported your problem , apperently. So there are disandvantages in working that way. But, as said by Confused, we can work around it by always keeping a SD card with an older version that did work on your system. 

 

That is inconvenient, yes. I always have to unplug my SOtM gear and place it near my router so I can connect it by ethernet cable and then do the update or place an old sd card back in. Only then I can make the settings for WiFi and I can place it back in my system again to reinstall the Qobuz plugin and some other settings. I also always lose my favorites in Squeezelite, so up front I also have to enter them in Qobuz itself. A pain in the a##, but I apreciate the sound enough to take the effort every time

 

 

[PnL]

Having a second SD card is a good idea, I liked that too.

 

There are suspicions that different kernel settings are required for different groups of players. If so, then you need to release the firmware separately for such groups of players, so that everyone can get the maximum SQ?
Or perhaps there are hardware differences between SMS-200?

[Solstice380]

@ronfint How are the Eunhasu response and blinking light issues with the latest releases?  Tried NAA.  Unfortunately, 4.5.7 isn’t available on the download page, only 4.22 and 4.58.  Interesting.

[marc b]

In the mean time I have four SD cards, labeled with the SW version that's on it   

 

I can fully understand if people are not willing to do all kind of work to make their SOtM better. Labeling new releases that haven't been fully tested as Beta versions would be very helpfull to decide up on. 

 

Apart from that: Does anyone else think their Eunhasu is very slow in reacting to commands. In my SMS-200-Ultra it takes ages when I, for example, want to go to the System Config in the System Setup.

 

 

 

[Jean Plum]

They need to get the Human League in to advise them.

[octaviars]

3 minutes ago, marc b said:

Apart from that: Does anyone else think their Eunhasu is very slow in reacting to commands. In my SMS-200-Ultra it takes ages when I, for example, want to go to the System Config in the System Setup.

 

I find 4.59 to be faster in Eunhasu than others but also it seems to be from different from time to time when entering. Going from main page to setings took around 15 seconds today (using Firefox on PC).

 

Having owned other brands of streamers before I got SOtM none have had perfectly working software so I am not particulary surprised that SOtM dont get it right everytime but the 4.5X releases seems to be much more unstable (not with Roon as I have had no problem in my setup).

 

 

 

 

 

 

[kelvinwsy]

Loaded 4.58 and find that on my Netgear switch I need to connect my server and SM200 Ultra Neo to the 3 ports marked 10M and all connects  to Hqplayer NAA mode. Connecting direct to my ASUS AC65u 1000 mbs ports dont connect to my HQPlayer Server 😅🤨 

NOW my 6700k server plays ALL filters up to DSD512 even in 48k family with Polysinc xrt -2s

ASDM7+512

Glorious SQ

Thank SOTM for getting it right finally

Will try 4.59 next on another microsd card

[5-pot-fan]

36 minutes ago, kelvinwsy said:

Loaded 4.58 and find that on my Netgear switch I need to connect my server and SM200 Ultra Neo to the 3 ports marked 10M and all connects  to Hqplayer NAA mode. Connecting direct to my ASUS AC65u 1000 mbs ports dont connect to my HQPlayer Server 😅🤨 

NOW my 6700k server plays ALL filters up to DSD512 even in 48k family with Polysinc xrt -2s

ASDM7+512

Glorious SQ

Thank SOTM for getting it right finally

Will try 4.59 next on another microsd card

If 4.59 works for you as well as 4.58 does, dare we think that Squeezelite, Roon, MPD and HQPlayer are all working well?? If this is the case, then I hope the long journey from 4.22 (and earlier), with the improving SQ, will have been worth it for more users than just me.

And if this is so, then perhaps SOtM will be able to add 4.59 alongside 4.22 and identify them both as 'stable', and start to mark future releases as 'beta' for those of us content to try them out and report our findings in a managed way.

[Tommd64]

2 hours ago, marc b said:

I agree that you should not always use the latest software on this device. I was still on the 4.22 because any newer version did not work in my configuration because (as far as I understand) the new Kernel version with Fedora release 27 was unable to recognise WiFi dongles that worked before. I even bought a new WiFi dongle to try and make it work, but to no avail. So yes: they brought out a new software verion that did not work in all cases, and I happened to be one of them. Several new software versions came and they still did not work over here in my place in the Netherlands. But they keep giving it effort to finally make it work if you reported your problem , apperently. So there are disandvantages in working that way. But, as said by Confused, we can work around it by always keeping a SD card with an older version that did work on your system. 

 

That is inconvenient, yes. I always have to unplug my SOtM gear and place it near my router so I can connect it by ethernet cable and then do the update or place an old sd card back in. Only then I can make the settings for WiFi and I can place it back in my system again to reinstall the Qobuz plugin and some other settings. I also always lose my favorites in Squeezelite, so up front I also have to enter them in Qobuz itself. A pain in the a##, but I apreciate the sound enough to take the effort every time

 

 

Well done M ive got the same problems in the Netherlands although the dealer en distributer is sublime and the sound is faboulous..Perhaps the Kernel is the recent issue; i will try another NUC to experiment with this issue..