Anybody else using the S.M.S.L M200?

[Telin]

Did some more listening using the album Retrospect from Epica.
It's a record of their live show with a full orchestra and choir.

Immediately it was clear that this stack produces a much wider soundstage. I also was nicely surprised by the increased separation and placement of different instruments. Really felt like the instruments were nicely spread out and can listen to nuances of one without being overflown by another. The choir parts were placed just right to combine the whole thing to an impressive listening experience.

Now I just want to make this stack mobile so I can carry it with me when I want to listen to music in another room. Can't go back to the ARC now, I'm spoiled

 

[StarTreker]

Good review, and I feel the same way when it comes to soundstage and separation.

Since the stack requires electricity from the wall to run, I don't know exactly how you intend on making the stack portable. They make portable units for a reason, for folks who like to be mobile all the time. The stack was made for in the home though so ya.

 

[Sonic Defender]

I'm going to miss the M200. Great little DAC, but with the Gustard X16 in the house I would of course opt to use it rather than the SMSL. Who knows, maybe I'll keep it for another system. I always value, and in fact prefer to use Bluetooth over USB so the M200 is very well appointed.

 

[Dannemand]

I'm going to miss the M200. Great little DAC, but with the Gustard X16 in the house I would of course opt to use it rather than the SMSL. Who knows, maybe I'll keep it for another system. I always value, and in fact prefer to use Bluetooth over USB so the M200 is very well appointed.

I expect you will really like the Gustard, although you may miss the M200's display if you control it with a remote. At least that was my finding comparing the M200 to Gustard A18: M200 is an amazing value, and very convenient for living room use. But there was zero doubt the A18 outclassed it sound wise. It cost twice as much, so only fair.

After agonizing for a month, trying to convince myself the M200 was good enough (and again, far more convenient thanks to its display) it was my wife who who cut through, saying we can't live with it after having heard the Gustard. She plays more music than me and has better hearing too. So I returned the M200 and kept the A18 -- and love it despite its impractical display.

But I'll say prospective buyers of a < $300 DAC can't go wrong with SMSL M200!

 

[Sonic Defender]

I expect you will really like the Gustard, although you may miss the M200's display if you control it with a remote. At least that was my finding comparing the M200 to Gustard A18: M200 is an amazing value, and very convenient for living room use. But there was zero doubt the A18 outclassed it sound wise. It cost twice as much, so only fair.

After agonizing for a month, trying to convince myself the M200 was good enough (and again, far more convenient thanks to its display) it was my who who cut through, saying we can't live with it after having heard the Gustard. So I returned the M200 and kept the A18 -- and love it despite the inconvenience.

But I'll say prospective buyers of a < $300 DAC can't go wrong with SMSL M200!

Agree, the M200 is a fabulous value. Of that there is no doubt. I set my DAC up once and leave it alone so the display isn't an issue for me. As long as I can use it to set things up I'm good.

 

[Dannemand]

Agree, the M200 is a fabulous value. Of that there is no doubt. I set my DAC up once and leave it alone so the display isn't an issue for me. As long as I can use it to set things up I'm good.

(Boy you were fast there! I updated my post to fix a few typos and omissions. But I think you got the gist of it.)

Yes, you should have no problems using the Gustard if you don't rely on the display.

Gustard don't support BT UAT like SMSL, but I don't know any BT devices who have UAT yet anyway. My wife uses BT a lot too. It sounds great, although there is a clear difference if you compare well recorded tracks when played bit perfect through USB.

I plan to set up a RPi streamer to feed the DAC through USB and remote control it from our phones. That should be the best of both worlds and eliminate the transcoding and bandwidth bottleneck of BT. So far I have been using a backup phone as streamer, running UAPP UPnP renderer to accomplish the same thing. But it's only a temporary solution.

Anyways, congrats on hopefully getting your X16 soon. You have been patient for sure!

 

[StarTreker]

Oh my gosh, I can't believe what I am hearing, Sonic Defender abandoned the S.M.S.L stack! Well, its official, you jumped ship, wears the loyalty I tell ya? Kidding LMAO! Well, I hope your happy with your Gustard melting the mustard. But I'll stick with my stack, for my plan of audio attack hehe.

 

[StarTreker]

Dannemand, some people claim that LDAC bluetooth is every bit as good sounding as a straight USB connection on the DAC. I personally haven't experienced it, but I am just going off of what I've heard. Of course not everything that utilize LDAC yet, its still a fairly new technology. But if you have a system that can push LDAC with bluetooth support, supposedly, it can make a lot of people happy. Who knows...

 

[Dannemand]

Dannemand, some people claim that LDAC bluetooth is every bit as good sounding as a straight USB connection on the DAC. I personally haven't experienced it, but I am just going off of what I've heard. Of course not everything that utilize LDAC yet, its still a fairly new technology. But if you have a system that can push LDAC with bluetooth support, supposedly, it can make a lot of people happy. Who knows...

No doubt LDAC is far better than the old SBC, or even AAC or AptX.

The thing is LDAC comes in different qualities (bit rates). If you go with the highest rate (Quality setting) the devices need to be quite close, and it's difficult to maintain a stable connection. If you go with Adaptive setting, bandwidth will obviously vary. The other issue is you have to select a fixed sample rate and bit-depth. If you select 32/96 (the highest) you will perform unnecessary (and undesirable) upsampling of 16/44 material. If you select 16/44 (the lowest) you will of course hurt HiRes tracks. At least our LG phones aren't able to dynamically choose a setting that matches the source track. And even when they match, the stream will still be transcoded and compressed.

My wife and I did a bunch of blind listening tests, both between the SMSL and the Gustard DACs, but also between BT (LDAC of course) and USB on both units. You can hear the difference for sure, but it depends on the material: Well recorded classical and acoustic tracks with minimal processing reveal the difference quite clearly. Studio processed pop tracks not so much. So Katy Perry while house cleaning is perfectly fine on BT. But Bruckner or Carl Nielsen are not

 

[Sonic Defender]

Oh my gosh, I can't believe what I am hearing, Sonic Defender abandoned the S.M.S.L stack! Well, its official, you jumped ship, wears the loyalty I tell ya? Kidding LMAO! Well, I hope your happy with your Gustard melting the mustard. But I'll stick with my stack, for my plan of audio attack hehe.

I only left, as silly as it sounds, because I wanted a silver DAC to match my integrated. The M200 is quite lovely. I already have the X16, but havn't heard it in my main system although I used it today with a pretty nice little Teac speaker amp driving some small Jamo 601 speakers. I just streamed Bluetooth (LDAC) from my phone and it sounded fine. Frankly I would seriously doubt if I could tell the M200 from the X16 in level matched, blind listening tests. They are both audibly transparent. Speakers/headphones and amplifiers in any audio chain are going to introduce spurious artifacts that are far more likely to reach audibility as compared with any decent DAC of which the M200 is certainly included.

 

[Sonic Defender]

Here is a picture. I am helping renovate so the speaker stands are two paint cans! For some reason the forum software always inserts two copies of a picture and I can't delete just one.

 

[StarTreker]

Thank you Dannemand for explaining your experience with LDAC. I know that even Zeos likes LDAC. And it sounds like unless you want to listen to higher sampling rates, higher then 96KHZ, there is really no need for USB. Now you also touched on important facts such as the distance having to be reduced for those higher sampling rates. Also consider, your processor has to be good enough to push that sampling rate as well, so that is indeed important. Another fact you mentioned was if you listen to a song that was recorded in 44KHZ, LDAC will have to upscale.

You know what that is a lot like? Thats like taking a 1080P image, and upscaling it to 4K, and it never looks as good as 4K lol. And if you try to take a 720P image and upscaling it to 4K, sure ya it fills the screen, but.............It looks like schiitt. LOL - Thanks again for your insites!

Sonic Defender: Your Teac bookshelf speakers look beautiful! They look really well constructed, and I just love that wood look. And even if they are sitting on paint cans, they look good doing it with the towels beneath them hehe. Renovation ha? Boy oh boy is that a costly venture to get into during a pandemic. But of course I say that, and here I am saving up to buy a new computer, so like I can talk lol.

I assume your Teac speakers sound delicious. Looks like a 6" driver for your bass and mids, and maybe a 3" tweeter?

 

[Sonic Defender]

Actually the speakers are Jamo, the little integrated is a Teac. I am helping my parents renovate so they are paying all the bills (phew).

 

[Dannemand]

Thank you Dannemand for explaining your experience with LDAC. I know that even Zeos likes LDAC. And it sounds like unless you want to listen to higher sampling rates, higher then 96KHZ, there is really no need for USB. Now you also touched on important facts such as the distance having to be reduced for those higher sampling rates. Also consider, your processor has to be good enough to push that sampling rate as well, so that is indeed important. Another fact you mentioned was if you listen to a song that was recorded in 44KHZ, LDAC will have to upscale.

You know what that is a lot like? Thats like taking a 1080P image, and upscaling it to 4K, and it never looks as good as 4K lol. And if you try to take a 720P image and upscaling it to 4K, sure ya it fills the screen, but.............It looks like schiitt. LOL - Thanks again for your insites!

You are absolutely right about the image analogy. I owned and ran a prepress company for many years earlier in my life (scanning, image processing, typesetting etc) and it's always a challenge to make a lower res image look good. No amount of anti-aliasing and sharpening can make it look as good as a full-res original.

Any resampling introduces artifacts, it's just unavoidable. But upsampling can be done well, and is a core part of the reconstruction and noise shaping in Delta-Sigma DACs such as ESS and AKM. Some audiophiles prefer to upsample on a computer instead of letting the DAC do it, switching the DAC into No-Oversampling mode (NOS) and using software like HQPlayer to convert PCM to DSD512 (22.5 or 24.5 MHz). But to do it well requires massive CPU processing and hefty cooling of the computer, and 50Mbps bandwidth to transmit. Contrast this with on-the-fly upsampling performed by a smartphone and transmitted through LDAC at 300-900 kbps bandwidth.

But again, it all depends on the material, the source, and of course the rest of the system whether it will make an audible difference. DACs like these (M200, Gustard X16/A18) can absolutely reveal the difference as long it isn't lost downstream.

 

[Dannemand]

Frankly I would seriously doubt if I could tell the M200 from the X16 in level matched, blind listening tests. They are both audibly transparent. Speakers/headphones and amplifiers in any audio chain are going to introduce spurious artifacts that are far more likely to reach audibility as compared with any decent DAC of which the M200 is certainly included.

I don't want to start a heated debate here, but I can almost guarantee that you WILL be able to hear the difference, given the right setup and material.

My wife and I did a ton of blind tests after receiving these DACs (M200 and A18) back in November. Blindfolded and level matched, needless to say. Also matched to use the same AKM filter, as the two DACs have different defaults. Each track was played four times in random order between the two DACS. My wife has better hearing than me and picked the Gustard 100% of the time on well recorded classical and acoustic tracks, 75% of the time on more typical studio processed tracks. And it wasn't difficult either: Most of the time she had little patience with the four replays because she knew the difference immediately after the first switch. She described the Gustard's imaging as more 3-dimensional and simply more engaging and like "being there".

My hearing is deteriorating due to Meniere's disease, and I am over-sensitive to spurious harmonics, particularly in the 3-8Khz range. While both DACs sound great, the M200 was a bit "screechy" and fatiguing (again to me, because of that over-sensitivity, probably not to others). The Gustard is completely effortless. Despite that, I still have to severely limit my listening, both in volume and length of time. Unfortunately no sound equipment can overcome that

I should add that the Sound Color modes on M200 make an audible difference as well: At first I switched from the default SC1 (thinner/brighter) to SC3 (fuller/warmer) because it seemed to have more oomph through power amp and speakers. But I soon discovered it made my fatiguing a bit worse. We ended up using SC1 or SC2 for most of the listening tests.

Nobody should read this to mean that SMSL M200 is less than a great DAC. It is a fantastic DAC for the money! All I am saying is that the difference to Gustard A18 is definitely audible with the right equipment and material. And I would assume between M200 and X16 as well.

I personally do NOT believe that all equipment with good measurements sound the same. But even if going by ASR measurements only, there are significant differences between those of M200 and A18, and even more so of the X16 (which measured better than A18, although we don't have measurements of the 2nd Edition A18). Check those FFT, Linearity and Multitone tests.

Again, I certainly didn't mean to start a debate -- in YOUR thread of all places. I merely came here because I now have some experience with M200. And once again I think it is a great DAC with great features, particularly considering its price!

And with that, I'll back off