SOtM smS-200 unveiled at Munich Hi-End

[Confused]

2 hours ago, GoldenOne said:

Anyone here able to start HQPlayer NAA on their SMS200 Ultra (Neo)?
I can get roon working fine, but clicking "Start HQPlayer NAA" just leads to an infinite loading circle, and if I refresh the page its as if I never clicked it at all. Cannot for the life of me get this working

Yes, I regularly use HQPlayer with my sMS-200 Ultra Neo, so I can at least confirm that it should work.  Some snips of my settings below, which may or may not help you trouble shoot.

 

(the VB-Audio Virtual cable is not needed for Roon / HQPlayer, you can ignore this)

 

[GoldenOne]

Managed to get it working!
Flashed SD, did a "Kernel Check" and then reinstalled NAA and its fixed.

Unfortunately, it seems the sms200 cannot handle 768khz audio from NAA? I get the same popping/clicking issue that appears on the pi3b+ (but not pi4), suggesting the USB connection is running out of bandwidth.

Anyone else have this issue? Running 384khz seems to be fine

[stefano_mbp]

@GoldenOne you can send a mail to May from SOtM [email protected] to check this, she’s very responsive 

[Ron Ippolito]

This is quite a collection of questions, answers, and ideas.  Thanks to all the contributors to date.

 

I am new to the SMS-200:  I just got one a little over a week ago.  My goal is to experiment and determine whether I can get rid of my USB cable between my iMac and Chord Qutest DAC.

 

I use JRiver Media Center to play lossless music from an SSD.  I can also stream lossless files from a JRiver cloud server, or stream from various apps like Radio Paradise, YouTube, etc.  Outside of JRiver, I can stream from Amazon Music, YouTube, internet radio, etc.  When I have a USB cable connecting my DAC with my iMac, I can select the Qutest in the Sound Settings, and everything can play, regardless of the origin of the audio. It is simple, but perhaps not optimal.

 

My SMS-200 questions are as follows...

• Is there anything similar to a 'USB emulator' that would stream audio from any app that was targeted for the USB path on my iMac, and shoot it over to the SMS-200?  I know there is hardware that emulates a USB cable with ethernet transmitter/receiver, but it would require an app (or at least a driver) on the SMS-200 to do something with it.
  • Do any of the existing SMS-200 apps export this capability?
• I have not been successful yet in being able to stream everything from JRiver.  It is hit or miss whether the selected playlist or url will play.  I get a DLNA error message in JRiver stating that 'there was a problem controlling the selected DLNA device.
  • Has anyone else encountered this problem with JRiver?  
  • How did you overcome the condition?

Thank you, in advance, for any assistance...

Ron

[stefano_mbp]

Hello Ron, I’m using a SOtM sms200 and enjoying it a lot, I think it is a wonderful machine ...

.... your questions

5 hours ago, Ron Ippolito said:

Is there anything similar to a 'USB emulator

I don’t know anything like that but you could enable Shairport service in your sms200, this allow you to use AirPlay from your Mac in order to stream your preferred services from Mac native apps to sms200

5 hours ago, Ron Ippolito said:

I have not been successful yet in being able to stream everything from JRiver

Edit: enable MPD/DLNA in your sms200

You need to configure Media Network in JRiver

go to Tools/Options then click on Media Network. You need to set up a DLNA server, Audiophile 24-bit DAC is one of the suggested servers

To start set Audio/mode as Original

Now go to Media Network/Advanced and select DLNA server, DLNA renderer, DLNA controller

click on OK at the bottom of the window 

After a while your sms200 should appear in the left banner of JR window

Right click on it and go to Associate with DLNA server, select Audiophile 24-bit DAC

That’s it.

In order to play an album to sms200 right click on an album, click on Send To and select your sms200

It should work ....

 

Edit: Be aware that you can run one service at a time on sms200, therefore you need to enable MPD/DLNA or Shairport depending on where are you going to stream from (Mac/Airplay or JRiver)

 

[Ron Ippolito]

Stefano_mbp,

 

Thank you for the tips. Regarding using audio format as 'original', are there audio formats that the SMS-200 cannot consume?

 

It sounds like you use JRIVER.  Are you able to use Cloudplay or the various streaming apps and stream lossless audio successfully?  

 

Thank you...

Ron 

 

 

[stefano_mbp]

@Ron Ippolito sms200 plays almost everything, but I’m not sure about dsd multichannel as I don’t own any of this type. I play flac, alac, wave, dsd, mp3 and aac without any problem.

And yes, I use JRiver (too ...). But I never used Cloudplay or other apps, I use it to stream just local files

[Ron Ippolito]

stefano_mbp,

 

Cloudplay allows you to stream lossless files from their cloud server.  Other JRiver users can upload their playlists, and JRiver will pull the lossless files from the users.  If you download the playlist to your computer, you can access specific files in the playlist, and stream them individually, in any order, etc.  Streaming royalties are paid to the artists.

 

Anyway, would it be possible for you to try a couple of those playlists and let me know if you were successful?

 

Thank you for considering my request...

Ron

[stefano_mbp]

@Ron Ippolitocertainly, I will do it with pleasure
give me some indication to do it

[Ron Ippolito]

Sure...

• In the left column of the JRiver app, you'll see an item called 'Cloudplay'.  When you select it, a tab will open in the main section to the right. 
• To the left of the tab, there will be a 'home' icon. 
  • When you select that icon, you should see a list of hundreds of user names. 
  • Those users are people that have uploaded one or more of their playlists of lossless audio.
• When you select a user, you will see their playlists.  
  • When you select one of the playlists, you will see all of the songs in it.  It will show the name of the song, the artist, and the album the song is from
• On the right side of the row with the playlist name, you will see two icons
  • Play - when you select this, the first song in the playlist will begin streaming through your system
  • Download - when you select this, Cloudplay will download the playlist to your computer
    • After this happens, you can select any individual song, and it will stream from the cloud through your system
    • You can make your own playlist of the individual songs.  

When it works, it's fantastic.  My problem is that it does not work for all playlists.  I am trying to diagnose why it does not always work.

 

Good luck, and please let me know how it works for you.

Ron

[stefano_mbp]

@Ron Ippolito ... sure ... later I’ll give it a try and let you know

[Ron Ippolito]

Stefano_mbp,

 

I took your advice and enabled Shairport.  When I did this, now, in Sound preferences, there is an output device for sms-200, of device type Airplay.  I had to turn the volume on the mac quite a bit (it's a variable output for some reason, not line level), but after that, YouTube and Amazon Music both played through the sms-200.

 

I will continue to investigate why cloud streaming is inconsistent via JRiver, but thanks, again, for the Shairport tip.

Ron

[stefano_mbp]

@Ron Ippolito .... congratulations 👍

I gave a very quick try to Cloudplay, I could play from the genres at the top of the window but nothing from the users playlists, I need to investigate a little bit more ....

[bmoregnr]

ok i've screwed myself.  I tried to replace a 1T drive with a 2T drive, making everything exactly the same.  I use MPD and Soundirok, and so now I have two of every song in soundirok and clearing cache or updating MPD database not working. Any thoughts/help?  It's probably something simple but I always struggle with this stuff.  thanks  Shit now I have three of every song!

[bmoregnr]

I suspect it is something in the fact that on my mac the Shared folders EUNHASU and Samba Shares on eunhasu show three folders in USB.  But I can't access or delete them for whatever reason

 

 

[ClothEars]

I've had this problem before and solved it with the procedure listed on this page from another website.

https://www.stereo.net.au/forums/topic/116324-laptop-replacement-sotm-sms-200-impressions/page/9/

 

I've also referred to it here.

 

Hope that helps.

[bmoregnr]

you always da man @ClothEars  I think I'm getting somewhere in that I was not removing my ssd before which was directly attached for what that's worth.  So I think slightly different language now but shut down, removed SSD, started up, then in Settings I then unchecked "automatic usb disk mount", hit "sync disks" then "sync and save disks" now I when I look at I see nothing in USB

 

 

 

Do you think at this point I just shut down, mount ssd and turn back on?

[ClothEars]

7 hours ago, bmoregnr said:

you always da man @ClothEars  I think I'm getting somewhere in that I was not removing my ssd before which was directly attached for what that's worth.  So I think slightly different language now but shut down, removed SSD, started up, then in Settings I then unchecked "automatic usb disk mount", hit "sync disks" then "sync and save disks" now I when I look at I see nothing in USB

 

 

 

Do you think at this point I just shut down, mount ssd and turn back on?

Are there any subfolders under the /music/USB folder?

If not then yes, shut it down, connect the drive, then startup.

[bmoregnr]

Ok sorry I didn't write it up last night, but I did have success.  It was not quite as smooth in that MPD wouldn't start up and I seemed to lose connection to the network folders with some odd messages, so I recycled through and this time with SSD disconnected unchecked both "Automatic USB disk mount" and "Share folder (samba)" in Library Config then Sync & Save; that gave me the cleared USB folder; then restart with SSD attached, and check both those two "Automatic USB disk mount" and "Share folder (samba)"and Sync & Save then I got just the one folder like below; MPD started up this time and Soundirok kind of did its thing refreshing/updating and now just one song shows as expected.  

 

Thanks again for the help @ClothEars  Funny thing is I found that stereo.net post pretty early on but removing the SSD didn't click with me at the time, i was trying to delete the folders on the desktop but didn't have access and so the delete was failing; so your method sure seems like the ticket knock wood.

  

[Ron Ippolito]

I am trying to debug a streaming problem with JRiver Media Center (mac version 26) and my sms-200. 

 

The problem is that some playlists stream all songs correctly, while others do not.  This problem occurs whether I attempt to stream directly from JRiver's cloud server, or if I download that playlist and attempt to stream from my mac.

 

I have found that the failures all seem to occur when the metadata in the song's tag does not contain a bitrate.  When I hover over those songs, there is no file type (flac, aif, wav, etc), no bitrate, and no sampling rate.  On the songs that play correctly, all that information is available.  Related, but a little separate, is the fact that when I have a url from an internet radio station, the ones that advertise a given rate (eg, mp3 at 320bps) all work, but the ones that don't advertise a fixed bitrate don't work.

 

Does anyone know what could cause this, and more importantly, what's the workaround?  Is there a setting in the sms-200 that will overcome this?

 

Thank you, in advance, for any help you can provide...

Ron

[audiobomber]

I bought this wi-fi dongle for my sMS-200. It appears to meet the spec in the SOtM FAQ, i.e. "RTL8812AU chipset".

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07QQ4WW4M/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

I followed these instructions: http://docs.sotm-audio.com/doku.php?id=en:how_to_use_wifi_in_eunhasu

 

I tried setup with both a static ISP and dynamic ISP; my router does not show the device, and the Eunhasu page does not see my internet connection. When I enter the SSID and password manually, the "wireless IP" field says "connetion error" (I did not misspell, that is what it says). I've rebooted several times, same result. Any idea what I should try next?

[Ron Ippolito]

audiobomber,

 

When I attempted to use a wireless adapter with my sms-200, initially, it would not connect.  I have no idea whether this will help you, but I hope it does.

 

I finally got my wireless adapter to work by changing my wireless network from a hidden SSID to a broadcast SSID.  Believe it or not, after I made that change, the wireless connection was good to go.

 

Good luck,

Ron

[Ron Ippolito]

On 8/22/2020 at 8:25 PM, Ron Ippolito said:

I am trying to debug a streaming problem with JRiver Media Center (mac version 26) and my sms-200. 

 

The problem is that some playlists stream all songs correctly, while others do not.  This problem occurs whether I attempt to stream directly from JRiver's cloud server, or if I download that playlist and attempt to stream from my mac.

 

I have found that the failures all seem to occur when the metadata in the song's tag does not contain a bitrate.  When I hover over those songs, there is no file type (flac, aif, wav, etc), no bitrate, and no sampling rate.  On the songs that play correctly, all that information is available.  Related, but a little separate, is the fact that when I have a url from an internet radio station, the ones that advertise a given rate (eg, mp3 at 320bps) all work, but the ones that don't advertise a fixed bitrate don't work.

 

Does anyone know what could cause this, and more importantly, what's the workaround?  Is there a setting in the sms-200 that will overcome this?

 

Thank you, in advance, for any help you can provide...

Ron

After a lot of dead ends and experimentation, we were finally able to get this to work...

 

It turns out that any file that does not contain the file type in the header can return an error condition from the renderer.  A bug in JRiver caused the playlists to sometimes return incomplete headers, which led to the error condition.

 

The people at JRiver identified a workaround that will fill in all the required fields, so they all play successfully.

Ron

[audiobomber]

25 minutes ago, Ron Ippolito said:

audiobomber,

 

When I attempted to use a wireless adapter with my sms-200, initially, it would not connect.  I have no idea whether this will help you, but I hope it does.

 

I finally got my wireless adapter to work by changing my wireless network from a hidden SSID to a broadcast SSID.  Believe it or not, after I made that change, the wireless connection was good to go.

 

Good luck,

Ron

Thanks for the info Ron, but not the issue in this case, my SSID is being broadcast.

[GoldenOne]

Anyone here actually know how to get DNLA working properly?

I can get roon and HQPlayer NAA working flawlessly. But I am completely unable to get it so that I can cast over DNLA to the sms200 ultra.

Starting mpd/dnla works, and apps like UAPP SEE the dnla server, but it does not show up in the "casting" options in qobuz/tidal etc.
This is regardless of if my details are typed in within settings, and if openhome is enabled or disabled.

Anyone know how to get this working properly?