Let's talk about SOTM SMS-200 ULTRA

[ducatirider]

Curious what your thoughts on the next upgrade from an sms-200 ultra should be?  The clock sCLK-OCX10 or the regen tx-USBultra?  The clock is 3x the price of the regen plus $500 cables. 

[d_elm]

1 hour ago, ducatirider said:

Curious what your thoughts on the next upgrade from an sms-200 ultra should be?  The clock sCLK-OCX10 or the regen tx-USBultra?  The clock is 3x the price of the regen plus $500 cables. 

I am using a tx-USBhubEX clocked by an sMS-200ultra connected by an Uptone USPCB.  Less money than an tx-USBultra.

Cybershaft OCXO OP13 on order.

[zephyr24069]

On 2/12/2018 at 5:15 PM, d_elm said:

I am using a tx-USBhubEX clocked by an sMS-200ultra connected by an Uptone USPCB.  Less money than an tx-USBultra.

Cybershaft OCXO OP13 on order.

Great news....I think you will really like it; I know I have really enjoyed the various ones I've owned or had in my system on test.

 

Remember to find yourself a proper 50-ohm cable for the connection; you won't be sorry!

[d_elm]

27 minutes ago, zephyr24069 said:

Great news....I think you will really like it; I know I have really enjoyed the various ones I've owned or had in my system on test.

 

Remember to find yourself a proper 50-ohm cable for the connection; you won't be sorry!

I ordered a 12 inch RG400 cable from Pasternack.com.  No money for boutique cables.

[zephyr24069]

47 minutes ago, d_elm said:

I ordered a 12 inch RG400 cable from Pasternack.com.  No money for boutique cables.

1st and most important is a reliable 50ohm spec-compliant cable...that's a major step!

[PeteGardner]

I have had my ultra for 6 weeks and want to know if the network activity led should 'flicker'???

 

My wifi is not the best and I am hoping this is not affecting SQ.

 

Setup is Mac mini 2012 quad core with roon/tidal > cat 6 > netgear switch > cat 6 > ultra with sps500 > curious > iso regen > chord tt > lcd xc

[mfin]

6 minutes ago, PeteGardner said:

I have had my ultra for 6 weeks and want to know if the network activity led should 'flicker'???

 

My wifi is not the best and I am hoping this is not affecting SQ.

 

Setup is Mac mini 2012 quad core with roon/tidal > cat 6 > netgear switch > cat 6 > ultra with sps500 > curious > iso regen > chord tt > lcd xc

 

Yes it should flicker. I sent an email to May asking if they could put an option in a future Eunhasu release to disable the network activity led as it's way more of a distraction that it is useful.

 

You are better off doing a wired connection if you can by the way, and via a switch that you only use to feed the sMS-200ultra. A popular switch would be a Netgear GS108 and do a Swenson shunt, wiring the negative (outside barrel) of the switch's DC connector to the earth pin of a mains plug plugged in next to the switch's SMPS.

 

(I compared about 10 reasonably priced switches and the above one was not my favourite though ...I'll post about this at some point)

[PeteGardner]

Thanks mfin for the clarification. Yes, distracting!

 

I am actually hard wired thru a gs105 and also have the shunt in play so apologies for the misleading info. 

 

The only thing for me now is to upgrade to the sps500 silver Y cable. I'm finding the copper cable veils somewhat. I currently find my AK Kann as a transport thru the tt is more revealing. Perhaps more burn in will help but one reviewer has mentioned the same veiling.

[mfin]

48 minutes ago, PeteGardner said:

Thanks mfin for the clarification. Yes, distracting!

 

I am actually hard wired thru a gs105 and also have the shunt in play so apologies for the misleading info. 

 

The only thing for me now is to upgrade to the sps500 silver Y cable. I'm finding the copper cable veils somewhat. I currently find my AK Kann as a transport thru the tt is more revealing. Perhaps more burn in will help but one reviewer has mentioned the same veiling.

 

How much is the silver one and where do you plan on getting it from?

 

I'm using one of these as my Y-cable at the moment https://www.ghentaudio.com/part/dc15.html ...a note to anyone considering that, go for the 50cm one if your 3 boxes sit side by side, it's possible to use when 30cm but only just and the sMS500 has to sit on the right hand side to do it (because of the side of the unit which the power socket is on).

 

[mfin]

SWITCH RECOMMENDATIONS and COMPARISONS

 

There's a couple of 10/100 hubs that sounded better than the GS108 with the ground shunt to my ears... it's a little bit difficult to ascertain what is what though.

 

So, the short version of the conclusion was that the Zyxel es105a V1 was the best.

 

It is a 10/100 switch as against a gigabit one, and other people have previously mentioned these can sound better.

 

Let's go a little bit longer on the description here now... I believe that both of the following internal photographs are of V1's, but they have different internals. I'll talk about them as blue board vs green board. (There's a very slim chance the Blue could be a V3, but I don't believe it is, we're talking a very slim chance indeed).

 

I have two sat here with the green board, identical inside, but have not seen another blue one.

 

The blue vs green sound slightly different but both were front runners to my ears, and both sounded more natural than a shunted GS108 which sounded sort of airy but slightly fizzy in comparison. I found both of these to be better. The blue boarded one was my favourite of the two, it gave me a slightly more analogue sound than other switches, but the green one did most of that and gave a touch more air.

 

Best of all this is these things sell on eBay used for about £5 so there's nothing really to lose in trying one.

 

 

 

They both take 5V by the way, so you can try powering them from a USB powerbank if you have one, with a £2 USB to 5.5mm DC plug lead. (Of course, not the ultimate way of doing it, and there's more you can do with regulators and such, but that's another discussion).

 

In all cases of trying switches I fed in on port 1 from an Asus 5Ghz network bridge and out from the last port into the sMS-500ultra. The speed being 10/100 makes no practical bottleneck and my dac happily and glitch free played 32-bit/384 PCM for example.

 

I tried other switches including:

 

Netgear FS105 (10/100)

Netgear GS105

Netgear GS108 

Netgear GS308

Cisco SG100D-08

TP-Link TL-SF1008D (10/100)

TP-Link TL-SF1005D  (10/100)

Zyxel ES-108a (10/100)

Zyxel ES-105a V1 (10/100) green board

Zyxel ES-105a V1 (10/100) blue board

Zyxel ES-105a V2 (10/100) 

Linksys LGS105

 

...all were tried shunted and not, and all 5v ones were tried powerbanked vs not.

 

Some were dismissed really quickly as they'd simply not topple the current front runner at the time and many simply did not stand out. I wasn't impressed myself by any of the Netgear ones. I occasionally tried putting the shunted GS108 back in in place of the blue board ES105a V1 but every time I did so it confirmed to me that I did not prefer it.

 

If anyone is wondering over the ES-105a V1 vs the ES-108a V1, the 108 had a green board and sounded similar to the green boarded 105. Here's a photo of that inside too:

 

 

I expect all this comparing sounds ridiculous to some people, but seeing as I had a load of these in my loft in amongst stacks of old computer gear I had already, I thought why not.

 

*At this point I will just restate that I am not 100% sure that blue board one is a V1, there's a slim chance it could have been a V3 but I never saw inside a V3 that I knew was a V3. I don't think it will be a V3 though as a V2 for example has V2 written on the bottom of it, so I'd assume that would be the same for a V3. PLUS, the graphics on the front of the V3 are different in the packaging shots I have seen. So, that's my logic in thinking the blue board is a V1 variant.

 

Finally, I should say that I have also compared the favourite there to an AQVox (the standard one, not the new double the price one) and the AQVox did top it, but it should, it is £400.

 

So, I'm not saying for sure everyone would find the same as me, but there's no doubt that I personally preferred an ES-105 V1 Blue board (and green board) over a shunted Netgear GS105. Powerbanking is worth trying too seeing as it is 5v and they are cheap, but that's another topic.

[PeteGardner]

Thanks for the cable recommendation mfin. I was going to go thru SOtM for their cable but it will be $400-500, so I will give the Ghent cable a go.

I'll also look into the Zyxel.

[mfin]

13 minutes ago, PeteGardner said:

Thanks for the cable recommendation mfin. I was going to go thru SOtM for their cable but it will be $400-500, so I will give the Ghent cable a go.

I'll also look into the Zyxel.

 

No problem, I suggest going for 0.5m and you'll want the 5.5 x 2.1mm option for the sMS-200ultra and tX-USBultra.

 

I have placed a good few orders for various things and all have arrived in the sort of timeframe that they state.

[mfin]

You can grab one of these for £2 off ebay if you have a powerbank lying around that you'd like to try powering the Zyxel from (again, 5.5mm x 2.1mm I think for the Zyxel)

 

[HardrockInMiniMac]

mfin,

 

great write up, thanks

 

2 questions here:

 

Would you cable connect the music server to the Asus bridge if it is possible or do you believe the trick is to receive audio files wireless?

Would you also consider to battery power the Asus or at least change out the PSU for sound improvement?

 

Chris

[HardrockInMiniMac]

mfin,

 

I do also battery power the Netgear GS105 at this point but have not applied a ground shunt.

 

Did you try yourself?

 

 

[mfin]

2 minutes ago, HardrockInMiniMac said:

mfin,

 

great write up, thanks

 

2 questions here:

 

Would you cable connect the music server to the Asus bridge if it is possible or do you believe the trick is to receive audio files wireless?

Would you also consider to battery power the Asus or at least change out the PSU for sound improvement?

 

Chris

 

I'll come back to you on this as I am just establishing the preferable way for everything to be positioned. Remember I will be comparing Tidal and local files, all from a Roon Rock NUC.

 

So, at the moment I have the Router in another room with a Roon Rock NUC attached. In the listening room, the Asus wireless bridge connected to the switch, and the sMS500ultra connected to the switch.

 

I am going to compare this to only having the Router in another room. So, in the listening room, the Asus wireless bridge connected to the switch, the sMS500ultra connected to the switch, and the Roon Rock NUC connected to the switch.

 

...the reason I said I'll come back to you is this, I have a LPSU arriving that will power the Roon Rock NUC and the Router. At the moment if I relocate the Roon Rock NUC next to the hifi then it will be on it's cheap SMPS, so it would be something noisy plugged into the switch. That would be an unfair comparison as at the moment even though the Roon Rock NUC is powered by it's cheap SMPS, it is not directly connected as it is the other side of the wireless connection. ...so, we shall see when the LPSU arrives (at any moment) what seems to win.

 

As far as LPSU on the Asus wireless bridge goes, any moment I will be able to relocate an SBooster I have in order to try exactly that. When that is done, in my listening room the Asus will be on LPSU and so is the AQVox switch (5v Kingrex).

 

So, watch this space a little. Remember I am not claiming anything here, I am just stating what my ears tell me. My comments about switches I should stress include me finding many switches just sound so alike it would be difficult to pick from, it was easy for me to pick out those that stood out and completely repeatable.

[mfin]

8 minutes ago, HardrockInMiniMac said:

mfin,

 

I do also battery power the Netgear GS105 at this point but have not applied a ground shunt.

 

Did you try yourself?

 

 

 

I didn't have a 12v battery source to try on any of the Netgears. I did have a sneaky feeling their sound might be defined by their SMPS more than some of the others though, and the ones listed all had similar qualities. All had the same SMPS on inspection. If I'd had a battery or alternative like a LPSU I certainly would have tried it all.

 

The FS105 was also the worst sounding of the 10/100 ones for me (again, maybe same SMPS defining things, I don't know). 

 

[HardrockInMiniMac]

Mfin, thanks for the background on this.

 

It seems I am doing pretty much the same in parallel. The MacMini is now back in the HIFI room and builds a Thunderbolt to Ethernet bridge with the Ultra with the Thunderbolt/Gigabit adapter going into the Asus or into PowerLAN for testing (will be totally gone in a few weeks). I am testing with an without batteries (12V, 9V output) and with low noise SMPS. 

 

I have had both the Asus and the switch running on battery on parallel. I have taken out the ifi micro iUSB3.0 because I agree with Hans B. that it makes no sense to reclock the signal between the Ultra and the DAC. That takes be back to the USB cable questions and I hate it. Too many variables. 

 

How do connect the Ultra with the DAC?

 

Overall, I still get distortion sometimes and have not figured out what and when is driving this. Sure thing is to rule out PowerLAN asap but for that my electrician will need to drill a few holes and run some cables.

 

Chris

[mfin]

40 minutes ago, HardrockInMiniMac said:

Mfin, thanks for the background on this.

 

It seems I am doing pretty much the same in parallel. The MacMini is now back in the HIFI room and builds a Thunderbolt to Ethernet bridge with the Ultra with the Thunderbolt/Gigabit adapter going into the Asus or into PowerLAN for testing (will be totally gone in a few weeks). I am testing with an without batteries (12V, 9V output) and with low noise SMPS. 

 

I have had both the Asus and the switch running on battery on parallel. I have taken out the ifi micro iUSB3.0 because I agree with Hans B. that it makes no sense to reclock the signal between the Ultra and the DAC. That takes be back to the USB cable questions and I hate it. Too many variables. 

 

How do connect the Ultra with the DAC?

 

Overall, I still get distortion sometimes and have not figured out what and when is driving this. Sure thing is to rule out PowerLAN asap but for that my electrician will need to drill a few holes and run some cables.

 

Chris

 

sMS-200ultra --> Curious USB 200mm --> tXUSBultra --> Phasure Lush USB 0.7m --> Dac

 

Yes, get rid of powerline stuff. I have plugged one in before in the same room but nowhere near the hifi and could actually hear the interference through the speaker when not playing music. So god knows what else it messes with.

 

The last cable is the one that has the effect. I have a Curious USB 0.8m here too, which I have tried a lot of swapping back and forth with the Lush, both have pros and cons. Curious is airy but a touch thin, very open sounding. Lush is more natural, not thin, more weighted but not as open sounding (curious is right out there on a limb though to my ears, could be fantastic in a warm system that someone wants to be less warm and more sharp).

 

I will probably sell both at some point and commit to something more expensive than either. Probably Sablon Reserva Elite USB as I have heard that in someone else's high end system comparing to the Curious and the Lush. It seemed to have best qualities of both and more, but it is expensive.

 

EDIT: Note that I am probably thinking it is best to keep my Roon Rock NUC away from the hifi, not connected to the switch, it's hardly been designed as a quiet device for audio purposes so could be noisy (even when LPSU-ed). So I am expecting it to live where it does now, in the other room and plugged into the router. ....that said, I am going to try relocating it and will listen, it's the only way really. I am guessing it will sound a touch different but be a matter of preference. We shall see.

[PeteGardner]

Hi mfin.Would you kindly recommend my best options to improve my system. I’m quite new to the computer based audio world, being an old school (54 yrs old) 2 channel analog stalwart. I have approx $2000aus available to add to/change my system

system is 2012 Mac mini quad core with flac files on HDD with Roon core via Ethernet / tidal and jitterbug > 1m blue jeans ethernet cable  > net gear 105 > 1m blue jeans cable > SOtM sms200 ultra powered by SOtM sps500 > curious > iso REGEN powered by SOtM sps500 > uspcb > chord tt soon to become a Mytek Brooklyn DAC/amp > audeze lcd-xc with after market C3 upocc cable.

 

the Sablon USB cable certainly sounds like it should be on the list

 

 

[mfin]

32 minutes ago, PeteGardner said:

Hi mfin.Would you kindly recommend my best options to improve my system. I’m quite new to the computer based audio world, being an old school (54 yrs old) 2 channel analog stalwart. I have approx $2000aus available to add to/change my system

system is 2012 Mac mini quad core with flac files on HDD with Roon core via Ethernet / tidal and jitterbug > 1m blue jeans ethernet cable  > net gear 105 > 1m blue jeans cable > SOtM sms200 ultra powered by SOtM sps500 > curious > iso REGEN powered by SOtM sps500 > uspcb > chord tt soon to become a Mytek Brooklyn DAC/amp > audeze lcd-xc with after market C3 upocc cable.

 

the Sablon USB cable certainly sounds like it should be on the list

 

 

 

I'm afraid I am so unfamiliar with your system it's difficult to suggest stuff. I'm no authority on these topics, I just know what's worked well in my own system and what hasn't but your system and mine have very little in common...

 

A few thoughts and guesses (but skip past because I think you might be best not tinkering for now)...

 

You could play with the Uspcb and Curious either side of the regen. You might want to experiment there. Can you swap their positions over for example? See what effects it has. It's the cable after the regen that will make the most difference. I'm not sure I'd spend too much before establishing what differences you might get. (that Sablon costs loads!)

Have you tried a LPSU on the Mac mini?

 

I'd try a swenson shunt on that Netgear 105 for next to no cost, but even better chase down a Zyxel es105a V1 for next to nothing again.

 

The blue jeans cables ...you could try something else? Supra Cat 8 (smooth sounding) or Meicord Opal which are better and don't cost too much (until you look and might be shocked).

 

...but, all those thoughts aside, because you said your Mytek Dac and Amp will arrive soon, I 100% would wait, let that lot arrive and let it all settle for a good while, get used to it and THEN start to address what you want to improve when you can put your finger on what it is you want to hear improved and in what way.

 

Oh, get a LPSU on that Mytek Brooklyn Dac+ as it makes a big difference. Sbooster works well. (I know, I've got this combination, in a week or so I will have a more expensive Fidelizer Nikola LPSU to compare, and I know my system inside out so that will be interesting. It is double the cost of the Sbooster though ...send me a message in a couple of weeks and I'll let you know initial thoughts on this ....our systems will have a bit more in common then).

 

Remember, I can only say what I've experienced, but I do like to compare a lot of stuff when I can as you can probably tell. Sometimes I will also go overkill on some items, to try future proof myself as I know other items will be changed to better ones over time. Equally though, I will stick with cheap stuff when it makes no difference, or go for used bargains too. Price is not a factor for me, if I need to spend, I will, if something makes no difference or is bettered by something cheap I will stick with that.

[jjh1585]

Hi @mfin

 

Thanks for the write up.

 

I just opened my V3. It is a blue board but quite different than yours. Here are some photos.

 

[mfin]

13 minutes ago, jjh1585 said:

Hi @mfin

 

Thanks for the write up.

 

I just opened my V3. It is a blue board but quite different than yours. Here are some photos.

 

 

Ah, that's confirmed it for me then, the V1 came with a blue board and green board. The chip on each of of the V1s is the same supplier, an RTL8305SC on the blue and an RTL8306G on the green (obviously that's only one component change but they are from the same series so I always thought they were two switches of similar age).

 

The blue V1 by the way vs the green V1 is a matter of taste as mentioned before. Blue I found slightly more musical, green had a touch more air. I am NOT saying people are going to find what I found, with these being preferable to the common choice of a shunted GS108 but it is certainly what I decided. I thought I'd contribute this though because it is such a cheap thing to try. You can buy 3 or 4 of them for the price of a GS108, so it's worth trying if you don't want to fork out on an AQVox, which is better but it should be!

 

By the way, does your V3 have "es105a V3" written on it on the underside? The V2 definitely has V2 written there, and the V1 has just "es105a" as you'd expect as nobody needs to call a version 1 a version 1.

 

For notes, here is an es105a V2 opened up:

 

[jjh1585]

I had my unit mounted with Velcro. I am not able to see the sticker on the bottom.

 

 

[mfin]

9 minutes ago, jjh1585 said:

I had my unit mounted with Velcro. I am not able to see the sticker on the bottom.

 

 

 

Ah right, I didn't try the V3 by the way. I had read of someone liking the V1 and V2 but not the V3 so I didn't bother.