Praise for SoTM Support

[5-pot-fan]

SMS-200 and Squeezelite

I want to compliment SoTM support on the work they have put in on my system, to get my DAC (Furutech ADL-GT40a) working properly with Squeezelite.

This cannot be the most popular DAC in use, nor one of the most expensive, yet they have spent over 4 hours checking and testing their software (v.4.56) directly on my system and it now works with Squeezelite without stuttering.

My problems were apparently 2-fold: Squeezelite began stuttering after upgrading to v4.5 and onwards (as others will testify), and also I could not make any changes to config settings to try to counter this. I had never tried to make any changes previously because up to v4.22 it just worked with the defaults.

It seems to me that SoTM had resolved the stuttering by the time they released v4.56 because once they cured my config-updating issue Squeezelite went straight back to working properly. I think my specific issue was with SoTM's settings for my DAC - it just was not  writing to it properly. Now, you might think that if this was their issue they should have resolved it anyway, but my take is that they worked hard for just one user, without my harassing them, and within 3 weeks of first notification. In my 40+ years of dealing with suppliers in the IT and tech world this is unprecedented and should be applauded.

I bought the sms-200 in part because of previous good feedback about SoTM support, and I am glad that I did, and so I can recommend them to any other potential buyers.

The bonus is that v4.56 sounds better to me than v4.22! YMMV of course....

Lastly, I am in no way associated with SoTM or any dealer.

[5-pot-fan]

Replying to lasker98:

Once the DAC/sms-200 issue was resolved, the support tech (May??) changed the DAC settings as follows-  Sample format=24_3(from my DAC parameters); DSD mode =DOP; max sample rate = 192000 (from my DAC parameters); buffer time = 320; internal buffer = 16348; period count =32

I let the music play for 5 minutes which it did without stuttering, and then I let the poor techie go home - (gone 6pm on a Friday for them). The music has been playing all day without a hitch.

Over the next few days I will also test MPD, although this had been playing OK, and then fiddle with the Squeezelite settings a bit. If I find any issues I will report back to SoTM, but at present do not expect any that I do not cause myself!

Hope this helps, but I am happy to offer any other info if requested.

[5-pot-fan]

Re HQPlayer

I have also tried to get HQPlayer to work, but do not understand how it should work (I do not have a Roon subscription). I have installed HQPlayer Desktop on a separate server - do I need an additional control point of some kind in order to tell the other 2 parts how to work together?

HQPlayer would be interesting to play with so I can learn something about upsampling etc, so if anyone has some setup advice I would be happy to try it out.

Until then LMS and MPD will keep me happy for a few weeks.

 

[5-pot-fan]

My suspicion is that the old defaults (as in 4.22) may not work well in Squeezelite now. Those defaults did also work for me, until I upgraded to 4.5x, after which things stuttered and I was unable to write any different settings to the sms-200.

Do remember to look at the DAC information you get in the config window - this will give you pointers for some of the settings (eg sample format), but buffer size etc may need guessing at first.

Over the weekend I will do some messing around, and will post back any useful findings.

[5-pot-fan]

May can be contacted at

[email protected]

Remember their time difference, and it is likely to take 2 to 5 working days for you to get an initial reply - at least that's what happened for me.

[5-pot-fan]

Hi

50 minutes ago, lasker98 said:

I tried upgrading from 4.22 to 4.56 again after reading 5-pot-fan had success with Squeezelite. Unfortunately no success for me. Used a newly burned sd card, no problems downloading and burning the card. Same issues with stuttering as all prior attempts, no matter what config settings I used. Also the activity light flashes pretty much non-stop, even when not playing any music. Switched back to my sd card with 4.22 and everything just works normally again.

 

Clearly there's still big issues with this update, at least for Squeezelite.

Just a couple of queries, though probably these have already been checked:

Is your DAC a fairly popular one, which other users have similar problem using with Squeezelite?

SoTM recommends that IPv6 be turned off for Squeezelite. I did not find this obvious but the flag in System Settings shows "Disable" when it is disabled (according to SoTM).

BTW, my activity light flashes all the time even in v4.22!

 

 

[5-pot-fan]

LED flashing...

I noticed today that the network LED on my sms-200 flashes a lot (perhaps on 70%/off 30%) when I have the Eunhasu main screen showing, BUT when I open any of the config pages this activity dies down to less than 1 flash per second. This goes for the Roon config, Squeezelite config, MPD config, system settings system config and library config pages.  Shairport, NAA, Librespot, Minimserver and Bubbleupnp server are uninstalled.

The Eunhasu main screen can be seen behind the config screens, so it has not been shunted away, so I suspect that the led flashing may be due to where the program is currently focused - maybe waiting for screen input?

This observation holds for whether a file is playing or not, and irrespective of the type/size of file (though mine vary between 150kbps and 4096kbps - no DSD or real hi-res).

I have also tried uploading a little 150k .png file in place of the default background - no difference there either.

Can anyone else confirm my observations?