SOtM SMS-200

[thumb5]

...
Perhaps for a $100 (or so) extra, SotM could give users a knob on the front so people could dial anywhere between 'thin and bright' and 'richer, deeper mids and better bass'?    

Said knob probably wouldn't even need to be connected to anything...but would still change the sound

[Confused]

A nice little seasonal gift from SOtM:

http://www.sotm-audio.com/sotmwp/english...available/

I shall give this a try at the weekend.....

[Confused]

A nice little seasonal gift from SOtM:

http://www.sotm-audio.com/sotmwp/english...available/

I shall give this a try at the weekend.....

Maybe not such a nice seasonal gift from SOtM.  There are a couple of posts on CA with people reporting stuttering issues and similar with the above update.  So I will probably skip trying this one until the bugs have been sorted.....

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forum...d/?page=51

[octaviars]

When version 4.22 came out the first time there was problems with that also. My SD card got corrupted by it and I got a new 16GB class 10 card, loaded it with a updated version of 4.22 and after that it has worked ok.

Updates via the network seems to be a bit hazardous with SOtM so I think I will download the new version and burn it to the SD card as that is a much faster way of doing it (but for now I will stay calm and wait to see how SOtM handles it).

@Confused it seems that SOtM removed the download link for some hours and now it is back again and some people on Roon forum reports that 0.4.5 works ok now. I have two cards and always keep the old working one and burns the newest to a spare card so it is easy to revert back if it does not work ok.

This is what shall be fun.

-Especially with the new custom Linux kernel, the sound improvement of the mid-low range is noticeably made.
 
-Improve sound quality by upgrading Linux system and custom kernel

[Confused]

OK - It's stupid question time......

SOtM provides a procedure for burning an image to a SD card, per the link below.

http://docs.sotm-audio.com/doku.php?id=e...card_image

If I am honest, I do not fully understand this. I have a PC which includes a SD card reader. Why can't I simply download 0.4.4 or 0.4.5 and then load this directly onto a new SD card?

The SOtM instructions have this "Run imageUSB" method. How does this work exactly? Do you run this and connect a SD writer to a USB port? I don't get it. A Devialet firmware update suddenly looks relatively straight forward!

[thumb5]

I expect the SD card is a complete bootable Linux system. This typically includes several different partitions: one for a boot loader, one for the Linux kernel and device tree, and one for the root file system. But not all of those partitions are formatted so that they can be read or written directly by the file system software in a desktop computer. Therefore you usually need to use a tool capable of a sector-by-sector SD card image directly to the card, without going through a file system - that's what the imageUSB tool is doing, I expect. The Linux/macOS "dd" command does the same thing.

ETA: yes, it looks like the imageUSB tool is expecting you to have a USB-connected SD card reader/writer. But depending on how it detects the device it may or may not work with a built-in SD card slot. I'd try it and see, but please double check before you say "go", to make sure it's going to write the image to the correct device.

ETA: if imageUSB doesn't work with a built-in SD card reader/write, you might want to try this, which I've used successfully to do this kind of thing: https://www.balena.io/etcher.

[octaviars]

If I am honest, I do not fully understand this. I have a PC which includes a SD card reader. Why can't I simply download 0.4.4 or 0.4.5 and then load this directly onto a new SD card?

The SOtM instructions have this "Run imageUSB" method. How does this work exactly? Do you run this and connect a SD writer to a USB port? I don't get it. A Devialet firmware update suddenly looks relatively straight forward!

@Confused  it is not that hard, and many products with SD card needs the "image" of the software to be burnt/flashed to the SD card hence the program that does this.

If you have a SD card reader in your computer you place the card there and USB image will see it and you choose the firmware and writes it to the SD card.

I have a instruction how to prepare the card before you use USBimage.

   

   

   

   

   

[octaviars]

   

[octaviars]

After this is done open USBimage, choose the SD card and choose the firmware to write to it and after a couple of minutes the SD card is ready (SOtM recomends to use a 16Gb class 10 card today, the original that came with my sMS-200 Ultra was only 8Gb but that got corrupted so I changed to a 16Gb after talking to May at SOtM).

A advice regarding the sMS-200, power it down with the button on the front, wait a few seconds then turn of the power supply to it, wait for a couple of minutes before removing the SD card. Never remove the SD card when the sMS-200 is on as this can cause damage to it.

[Confused]

@thumb5 @octaviars - many thanks for the advice, very much appreciated. This morning I thought I would try burning my first image, but it did not really go to plan. First, I noticed that my sMS-200 was running 0.4.17, so I was a few updates behind anyway. I must check more often, but why don't SOtM provide any kind of notification? Anyway, I updated to 0.4.4 by the normal method, no issues. I had an 8GB SD card, I formatted this per @octaviars instructions, no issues. I downloaded 0.4.5, again no issues. Then I hit the first problem, for some reason my PC would not run USBimage. So I tried the Balana option as recommended by @thumb5. This seemed to work perfectly, but it gave an error message, the 0.4.5 file is 7.7gb, which was fractionally too large for the available space on the 8GB SD Card. So, I need a 16GB card. Checking on the required SD card specs so I could buy a new one, I then realised that I was using an SD card, and the sMS-200 required a micro SD card and I do not have any spare micro SD cards. Doh! I have ordered a 16Gb class 10 micro SD card as recommended and my first image burn will need to wait until it arrives.

Mindful that many people on CA are having issues with the 0.4.5 update, I wonder if the micro 8GB SD card capacity is causing the problem?