SMSL DP5 Music Streamer and DAC Review

[gvl]

Don't get why people wouldn't use JRiver instead.

Lacks Tidal/Qobuz integration and access to online metadata?

 

[Chromatischism]

4G on other devices is no problem with a 4G router. In some situations it’s the cheapest option.

But he says he has all his music on his phone's SD card. I don't understand how he's using his phone as a media server to access the music on other systems. Doesn't seem like the best solution.

 

[Chromatischism]

Maybe you should re-read what you wrote. It is like saying, my car has no problems other than sometimes failing to start and not able to cruise on a motorway.

Just being transparent. It's not nearly as bad as your analogy, and if you used it I think you'd agree.

Your analogy would make more sense if music failed to play, or the stream stopped during playback. If you read my post you would notice that I said there are no issues with it working.

 

[sarumbear]

lack of smooth starting of songs (sometimes it seems to start playing before buffering)....

Your analogy would make more sense if music failed to play....

My analogy was "my car has no problems other than sometimes failing to start". You are experiencing stuttered playback also sometimes. It is the perfect analogy to my mind but let's agree to disagree. In my mind any glitch in playback means the software is faulty and I do not consider it. For you it is not.

 

[Chromatischism]

My analogy was "my car has no problems other than sometimes failing to start". You are experiencing stuttered playback also sometimes. It is the perfect analogy to my mind but let's agree to disagree. In my mind any glitch in playback means the software is faulty and I do not consider it. For you it is not.

But it never fails to start, so it's not a good analogy.

My post made it sound worse than it really is just to be overly fair in making the point that it's not perfect.

 

[sarumbear]

Maybe you need to clarify what you meant by "lack of smooth starting of songs (sometimes it seems to start playing before buffering)...."?

 

[F1308]

Amazon Music HD took a longer time to be available In Canada than elsewhere, I fact I didn't know we had access but I just checked and it looks like it is now. But with a mention "Quebec resident don't have access to the 3 month free trial... "Unfortunately that rules them out for me right now. I just use Tidal. Yes they can be criticized, it just works for me, don't feel a need to change, or to expand to multiple streaming service. I hear you about the home integration, I just for some reason didn't get used to talk to my machines, I'm still typing in a browser instead of asking Siri, but it's just me.

No, it is not just you. I promise.

 

[PeteL]

I think you have layers of commercial with shrinking pies. Amazon, Google, Apple at the top, Sonos, Denon, Sony, Klipsch and some others in the next level down, having agreements with the other firms, and selling premium priced products that do not really compete in the same space, and will not integrate as well as the first tier. Then you have open source stuff like this at the bottom. It will be priced in the middle, it will be the least convenient, and the sound quality will vary, with the greatest upside by far, besting Denon, Sonos, if they do a good job.

The whole streaming and downloading thing with ownership, licensing, bitrates, and audibility is interesting.

I would not purchase a dowload or license to stream anything I can access by buying a modestly priced subscription.

I chose Amazon because I got sucked in by some inexpensive devices early on, already had Prime, and it seems like the best value in terms of library per dollar. They also got a great emotional connection by adding the 'computer' wake word, so I can feel like Commander Riker in Star Trek.

The Amazon hardware, software, and service are an incredible value. There are tremendous economies of scale here competing with Google and Apple to be in every house. The whole house voice controlled system cost less than each of many pieces of gear I have.

This is a huge market, but how does a company like SMSL get a real piece of it? What they are doing, going for the serious customer in that smallest and most esoteric segment makes sense.

With Amazon, you can get the full Ultra HD (192/24) through your own speakers with a computer, but there you lose integration with the whole house voice and phone app controlled system. Aux out from an echo device or an echo link are usually better alternatives.

It is really hard to get it right without doing seperates. I love the idea though. It is just so hard to get the software integrated to be useful and competitive. The Echo Link is OK, but it should support the full bitrate on the dugital output. Oh well, we will probably get there.

One product I would love to see is an L30 / Modi sized box or a Modius sized box with a digital input, EQ, maybe a selector so I can swap speaker and headphone settings, and a digital output. Ideally set the EQ with a wifi phone app that looks similar to Wavelet... or add those features to either the DAC or streamer. The DAC makes more sense to me though because Amazon etc. may be hard to beat on streamers.

For your points about market segmentation, well yes. Let's not kid ourselves, the "audiophile" targeted market has always and will always be niche. The thing is, the Chinese managed to cut the price in half or more, it doesn't make it not niche, but it does allow to cross over to mainstreem, just a tiny bit. But what I found interesting, is that in this particular line, Network streaming, the prowess of their manufacturing efficiency now become much less of a factor, since almost everything is made in China anyway, What I see here is that they can just compete (and arguably lose) With compagnies that has their R&D made in the western world like Sonos and Bluesound. People that dream of 300$ TOTL Chinese streamers should tame their expectations.

 

[RichB]

No, Roon endpoint is as well. This is why in my book it is a requirement this day and age.

As a Roon owner, I agree.

I am not sure but perhaps Roon endpoint integration may be need to provide volume control using the DAC implementation.
I use RPI 2'3 and DietPi for some enpoints but volume control from Roon is digital so you lose S/N. This may not be a problem but it is better to have Roon control the streaming device volume.

The OKTO Stereo has a RPI option but, thus far, I have been able to determine if it support device volume control.

- Rich

 

[RichB]

I wish there is a better alternative but I'm not aware of any current DAC / Wi-Fi streamer that performs this well and has perfect software at the moment, not even at £2,800.

I don't use Roon because I stream all my music from my NAS, and Wi-Fi streaming is a must due to layout of my living room prohibits me from running a cable from my router. And I am not keen to build a fan-less PC just for music (seems redundant when I can stream from my NAS).

I am not aware of too many options out there at the moment that can do all that, unless you pay a premium for Lumin or Auralic.

Roon can stream from your NAS. Roon can run on some Synology NAS's. There is a trial.
An Raspberry Pi 3B with DietPi can stream wireless. I do this now without any issues. To be fair, I have Unify mesh network that covers my entire house using POE, so YMMV.

- Rich

 

[RichB]

Lacks Tidal/Qobuz integration and access to online metadata?

I have JRiver and like it but Roon endpoints are far easier to create. I have a QOBUZ subscription with Roon and love it.
Cost matters, but I bit the bullet and am happy I did so.

- Rich

 

[fordiebianco]

Tried Raspberry Pi with Volumio. A complete bug fest.

I have three running in various rooms with Hifiberry DACs behind chip amps. No probs whatsoever: both app and web control works flawlessly with airplay and Spotify. Give it another go.

 

[dmac6419]

Lacks Tidal/Qobuz integration and access to online metadata?

But it plays anything thrown at it,videos too,i can stream my music anywhere in the world,also i fill in my own metadata with tag and rename,I don't need Roon for metadata,I have Tidal desktop for Tidal,Amazon HD desktop for Amazon etc,not saying I don't like Roon,wanted to throw money at em,but it used too much resourses on a very very very powerful computer

 

[Glasvegas]

I have three running in various rooms with Hifiberry DACs behind chip amps. No probs whatsoever: both app and web control works flawlessly with airplay and Spotify. Give it another go.

Have you tried it with Tidal? I did for 6 months last year and gave up.

Have a look at the MyVolumio forum. Just search for Tidal + terrible. It's so bad they decided to rewrite the entire interface. I think they've just released a beta version. I'll give it another go when they release a stable version.

 

[fordiebianco]

Have you tried it with Tidal? I did for 6 months last year and gave up.

Have a look at the MyVolumio forum. Just search for Tidal + terrible. It's so bad they decided to rewrite the entire interface. I think they've just released a beta version. I'll give it another go when they release a stable version.

Ah, no. I already have more subscriptions than is healthy. Will stay away from Tidal then.

 

[gvl]

But it plays anything thrown at it,videos too,i can stream my music anywhere in the world,also i fill in my own metadata with tag and rename,I don't need Roon for metadata,I have Tidal desktop for Tidal,Amazon HD desktop for Amazon etc,not saying I don't like Roon,wanted to throw money at em,but it used too much resourses on a very very very powerful computer

No doubt JRiver MC is a nice package, I use it myself. I have no beef with Roon, just too cheap to buy it.

 

[Sukie]

Have you tried it with Tidal? I did for 6 months last year and gave up.

Have a look at the MyVolumio forum. Just search for Tidal + terrible. It's so bad they decided to rewrite the entire interface. I think they've just released a beta version. I'll give it another go when they release a stable version.

Tidal and Volumio have not been good bed fellows. Loads of identified problems, as you say. You can however use Volumio (or others) as a UPnP renderer and stream via a UPnP app (e.g. Bubble UPnP).

I'm running two RPis and one of them (running Moode rather than Volumio and streaming Qobuz rather than Tidal) is set up to work this way. The other is running Volumio as I need the MyVolumio inteface to access the RPi via a PC (again, Qobuz rather than Tidal).

Having said all of this, your CCA set up is undoubtedly a good solution (not wanting to reopen gapless-gate!)

 

[gvl]

I'm running Daphile on ECS Liva mini PC I got for $30 used. Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify, CIFS/FTP to your music collection, BruteFIR convolution filters, Smartphone app to control playback and library access. Works fine.

 

[Glasvegas]

Tidal and Volumio have not been good bed fellows. Loads of identified problems, as you say. You can however use Volumio (or others) as a UPnP renderer and stream via a UPnP app (e.g. Bubble UPnP).

I'm running two RPis and one of them (running Moode rather than Volumio and streaming Qobuz rather than Tidal) is set up to work this way. The other is running Volumio as I need the MyVolumio inteface to access the RPi via a PC (again, Qobuz rather than Tidal).

Having said all of this, your CCA set up is undoubtedly a good solution (not wanting to reopen gapless-gate!)

I've tried Moode with RPi. It's very good, but still can't match using the native Tidal app casting to CCA. For example, you can't edit Tidal playlists, unless its changed since I tried it.

I can hear the splashing as folks get themselves in a lather about gapless!

 

[dmac6419]

I'm running Daphile on ECS Liva mini PC I got for $30 used. Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify, CIFS/FTP to your music collection, BruteFIR convolution filters, Smartphone app to control playback and library access. Works fine.

I have a ACEPC AK1 at the bedside with JRiver Tidal,Amazon,etc on it,haven't gotten around to installing Daphile or Volumio on it yet.