SOtM smS-200 unveiled at Munich Hi-End

[MGX-UK]

Any one know if this is important? Version 943 of Roon Bridge is also available for Windows, Windows (64 Bit), Roon OS, Linux.

[swcng2001]

Hello everyone,

 

I have an sMS200ultra and the txUSBultra attached to an Ayon Stealth DAC. My music server is an old Mac mini with an SSD external drive running JRiver MC 29. My network connection for digital music consists of a Netgear router and ethernet over powerline.

I chose to use MPD/DLNA on the SOtM and configured JRiver to use media network.

The issue I have concerns gapless playback. It works fine with FLAC PCM encoded files however I have not been able to get it to work with DSF files. I asked May (SOtM) for some suggestions and her reply was to try setting the buffer and other values to solve this. I have tried so many different combinations and have not been successful.

There were instances when setting "Buffer before play" to anything other than 0% would cause a track to be repeated rather than playing the next. Too large a buffer size setting can cause the gap to lengthen in time and similarly for Buffer time.

My current setting is attached.

Does anyone else use the MPD/DLNA feature specifically with JRiver? Some help with settings will be much appreciated.

Thanks.

SOtM_MPD-DLNA.pdf

[stefano_mbp]

46 minutes ago, swcng2001 said:

Ayon Stealth DAC

Why did you set DSD DoP on SOtM configuration? according to specs your dac should be native DSD capable

[swcng2001]

Thanks Stefano.

Unfortunately, the Stealth only does native DSD on its BNC inputs and not through USB.

 

[stefano_mbp]

7 hours ago, swcng2001 said:

The issue I have concerns gapless playback. It works fine with FLAC PCM encoded files however I have not been able to get it to work with DSF files

Just tried with JRiver26 and SOtM sMS200 Neo as DLNA renderer and it works fine with dsf files, gapless is ok.

I doubt it can be a sMS200 issue on your side, have you asked on the JRiver support forum?

[stefano_mbp]

7 hours ago, swcng2001 said:

txUSBultra

… can you try to remove the tx-usb-ultra from the chain, just to try to narrow the issue?

[ClothEars]

2 hours ago, swcng2001 said:

Thanks Stefano.

Unfortunately, the Stealth only does native DSD on its BNC inputs and not through USB.

 

Are you sure about that?  Normally only USB & HDMI will carry DSD native signals.

The Ayon Stealth site states:   "USB input (24/192 asynchronous and DSD)"

It appears it will also carry DSD if 3 x BNC connections are used (I got that from the specs), though I have no idea how you set that up.

 

I also have no problem with gapless DSD using the SMS-200 in MPD mode.

[swcng2001]

@clothears, definitely. I actually asked Ayon themselves and was informed that’s how their DAC works.

 

Stefano, I have posted my query on the JRiver forum and did not get any useful suggestion. From May’s reply, she believes it’s a config problem. I’m stumped as to what the configuration should be. You say you have it running without any problem on MC26. Can you please share your config parameters on the sMS200 and those in JRiver? Thanks again. I don’t believe it’s the txUSBultra but will give a try this evening. 

[stefano_mbp]

14 minutes ago, swcng2001 said:

Can you please share your config parameters on the sMS200 and those in JRiver

Here they are

[swcng2001]

@clothears, you also mentioned gapless works for you. Are you using JRiver? I used to have my Mac running JRiver connected directly via USB to the Ayon. It definitely had no problem with gapless. So it’s not any issue with the Ayon. 
 

Before anyone asks, I know there is a setting in JRiver to Disable SetNext support. I’ve tried it and it made no difference. 

[ClothEars]

34 minutes ago, swcng2001 said:

@clothears, you also mentioned gapless works for you. Are you using JRiver? I used to have my Mac running JRiver connected directly via USB to the Ayon. It definitely had no problem with gapless. So it’s not any issue with the Ayon. 
 

Before anyone asks, I know there is a setting in JRiver to Disable SetNext support. I’ve tried it and it made no difference. 

I don't use JRiver anymore because it needs an attached PC/Laptop to use it.  When I ran that configuration I had no problems with DSD.

Instead I have an external HDD in a caddy connected via USB to the SMS-200 for the library and run "Soundirok" as the MPD controller on an iPad.  It definitely sounds better to my ears in that configuration.

[stefano_mbp]

@swcng2001…. try eventually to uncheck Bitstream DSD in your selected

DLNA Server Configuration/Advanced

[swcng2001]

Stefano,

 

Thanks for all the effort you've put in to help. I compared your settings with mine and there are differences. You don't use DoP on your system. Also, your JRiver settings are a little different. I tried using as many of the settings in your setup including setting Audio/Mode/Original (which basically means JRiver will not resample). Nothing I did made any difference to Gapless playback of DSD files. I did not try Advanced/Bitstream DSD as that simply changes DSD files to PCM for transmission which kind of defeats the purpose. At almost every step I've even stopped and restarted JRiver and reset the SOtM. Nothing helped.

 

I'm really at a loss on how to proceed.

[stefano_mbp]

@swcng2001… just switched the dac on eunhasu.

Now it is a M2Tech Young DSD MKII , it is DSD/DoP only like yours.

In DLNA Servers/Advanced check

- DLNA

- DLNAExtra

and leave unchecked Bitstream DSD

Gapless works as expected 

[Cebolla]

3 hours ago, swcng2001 said:

Stefano,

 

Thanks for all the effort you've put in to help. I compared your settings with mine and there are differences. You don't use DoP on your system. Also, your JRiver settings are a little different. I tried using as many of the settings in your setup including setting Audio/Mode/Original (which basically means JRiver will not resample). Nothing I did made any difference to Gapless playback of DSD files. I did not try Advanced/Bitstream DSD as that simply changes DSD files to PCM for transmission which kind of defeats the purpose. At almost every step I've even stopped and restarted JRiver and reset the SOtM. Nothing helped.

 

Sorry for butting in (as nobody else has pointed this out), but it appears you've mistaken what Jriver's Advanced/Bistream DSD setting does - it actually gets the DSD files to be transmitted (over the network via UPnP/DLNA) as DoP, ie, it does not simply change them to PCM.

 

So, Stefano's settings did indicate that DoP was being used on his system - the difference being that JRiver was set to provide DoP from the DSD files, rather than the sMS-200 (your case). It may be worth seeing if JRiver providing the DoP instead of the sMS-200 (so Audio mode set to original & checking the Advanced/Biststream DSD setting in JRiver, plus unchecking sMs-200 MPD's DoP setting)  sorts out your lack of gapless playback of DSD files problem.   

[stefano_mbp]

24 minutes ago, Cebolla said:

plus unchecking sMs-200 MPD's DoP setting

It’s not possible, if you set DSD for a DoP only capable dac you’ll end with just noise or no sound at all

[Cebolla]

That is true, if JRiver is not producing the DoP - but JRiver is producing DoP for the UPnP/DLNA renderer from the DSD files if its Advanced/Biststream DSD setting is checked (did you not read my post fully?).

 

It's more for completeness to disable the sMS_200 MPD's handling of DSD (as a reminder that JRiver is handling the DSD files), as MPD will see JRiver's sent DoP files as ordinary PCM, so keeping its DSD setting to DoP won't matter anyway.

[swcng2001]

Hello Stefano,

 

Thanks for all your experiments. I tried your setting of unchecking the Bitstream DSD setting and using Audio/Mode/Original in JRiver and the gapless problem went away. But this means I cannot resample any track. This is not ideal. 
 

@Cebolla, I tried turning off DSD on the SOtM and turned on Bitstream DSD on JRiver, playback was stuck on one track only and there was a gap between the two replays!

 

 

[swcng2001]

@Cebolla, interesting thoughts. Firstly, sorry if what I wrote was confusing. Yes, JRiver will wrap DSD into a PCM stream according to the DoP standard. Secondly, I’m not aware that the SMS-200 will convert a dsd stream to DoP. It is my understanding that everything that is handed to it is passed through. 
In my series of experiments, I tried your suggestion of Original format, bitstream DSD checked ON, but I couldn’t work out how to uncheck the DoP setting in MPD in the sMS200 so I tried both with DoP and turning off DSD which made matters worse and system will just repeat the file being played !

And, as Stefano mentioned, trying to send a pure DSD stream to a DAC that can only handle DoP will only end up with noise or some unknown state like in my case with the track being repeated (though this is unexpected and could be due to the buffer settings in MPD).

My current setting is to use Audio/Mode/Original; Bitstream DSD turned off; DoP turned on for the sMS200. Gapless dsd files are played correctly, but not being able to resample/upsample files is not ideal.

Thanks.

 

Stephen 

[stefano_mbp]

8 minutes ago, swcng2001 said:

Gapless dsd files are played correctly

That’s a good news!

8 minutes ago, swcng2001 said:

but not being able to resample/upsample files is not ideal

Unfortunately my JRiver version (26) doesn’t allow to resample to DSD using a DLNA receiver, the functionality was released since v.27 

Sorry I cannot help anymore …

[swcng2001]

Stefano, nevertheless, thanks for your help.

[swcng2001]

Stefano, @Cebolla,

 

I have another DAC (Musician Aquarius) which is a loaner and also only does DoP on the USB input and DSD only over their I2S inputs. I tried the same settings on JRiver and SOtM. The results were the same. If I use Mode/Original and turn off Streaming DSD, it plays DSD gapless. With Bitstreaming ssd on, same gapless problem occurs.

 

Is it an issue with JRiver acting as a DLNA server or the SOtM's implementation of MPD/DLNA? As I mentioned, I like to use JRiver to upsample files. When Mode is set to Original, this is not allowed. Any other mode will not work or causes the gapless problem to appear.

 

Think I should just use Roon and forget about DLNA. I know it works.

 

Question, can HQPlayer on the SOtM be used to upsample before handing the data over to MPD/DLNA in real time?

[Cebolla]

4 hours ago, swcng2001 said:

Secondly, I’m not aware that the SMS-200 will convert a dsd stream to DoP. It is my understanding that everything that is handed to it is passed through.

 

Not sure why you'd think that, given that you are appear to be well aware of SMS-200's DoP setting for its built-in MPD audio file player, ie, when its MPD's DSD file support is set to DoP, SMS-200 outputs DoP when its MPD is playing DSD files.

 

 

 

4 hours ago, swcng2001 said:

but I couldn’t work out how to uncheck the DoP setting in MPD in the sMS200 so I tried both with DoP and turning off DSD

 

Sorry for any confusion - by unchecking DoP, I meant disable DSD support in sMS-200's MPD (as JRiver's transcoder for its UPnP/DLNA media server would now be handling the DSD files & producing DoP from them, so no need for sMS-200's MPD to support DSD files). Of course this is now moot given that you are now confusingly (for me - see my next paragraph) getting sMS-200's MPD to play DSD files properly with gapless playback support (with sMS-200 producing the DoP).

 

 

 

4 hours ago, swcng2001 said:

My current setting is to use Audio/Mode/Original; Bitstream DSD turned off; DoP turned on for the sMS200. Gapless dsd files are played correctly, but not being able to resample/upsample files is not ideal.

 

Now I'm confused! The only reason for my suggestion was that I thought that you had already tried this and gapless playback wasn't working, ie, this post to Stefano:

On 5/25/2022 at 12:24 PM, swcng2001 said:

Thanks for all the effort you've put in to help. I compared your settings with mine and there are differences. You don't use DoP on your system. Also, your JRiver settings are a little different. I tried using as many of the settings in your setup including setting Audio/Mode/Original (which basically means JRiver will not resample). Nothing I did made any difference to Gapless playback of DSD files. I did not try Advanced/Bitstream DSD as that simply changes DSD files to PCM for transmission which kind of defeats the purpose. At almost every step I've even stopped and restarted JRiver and reset the SOtM. Nothing helped.

 

So it now appears that the opposite of what I originally thought is true - the sMS-200 supports gapless playback when it is playing the DSD files, but not when it is playing JRiver's DoP versions of them (as WAV files). Anyway, glad it's now working!

[stefano_mbp]

45 minutes ago, swcng2001 said:

Is it an issue with JRiver acting as a DLNA server

I would say it’s a JRiver issue as Sotm sms200 works with other players without any issue

46 minutes ago, swcng2001 said:

HQPlayer on the SOtM be used to upsample before handing the data over to MPD/DLNA in real time?

… using HQPlayer Embedded, that’s what I use ..,. no issues at all

[Cebolla]

1 hour ago, swcng2001 said:

Is it an issue with JRiver acting as a DLNA server or the SOtM's implementation of MPD/DLNA? As I mentioned, I like to use JRiver to upsample files. When Mode is set to Original, this is not allowed. Any other mode will not work or causes the gapless problem to appear.

 

You are not just using JRiver's UPnP/DLNA media server(s), you are also using its built-in UPnP/DLNA controller. It's the UPnP/DLNA controller that is involved in the standard UPnP gapless playback support mechanism (along with the controlled UPnP/DLNA renderer, eg, the sMS-200 in MPD/DLNA mode). The UPnP gapless playback support mechanism has actually nothing to do with the UPnP/DLNA media server.

 

Given that JRiver pioneered the standard UPnP gapless playback support mechanism, I doubt that the actual gapless support problem is on their side. Perhaps, the sMS-200 in MPD/DLNA mode has a problem supporting gapless playback when playing the high sample rate WAV files provided by JRiver's UPnP/DLNA media servers when upsampling (or producing DoP). Or, may be your old Mac mini just isn't powerful enough for JRiver's upsampling and DoP functions. ie, the relevant WAV files aren't being provided in time for streaming and therefore gapless playback isn't working properly at the other end of the network.