SMSL PL100 Review (CD Player)

[Limopard]

Nice work as usual. The player seems to be unbeatable in terms of "bang for the buck". Now I have to overcome my reservations regarding slot-in-drives.

 

[Droid_chinchilla]

Excellent and very thorough review, thanks! What follows is a gratuitous description of what yours truly does, FWIW:

IMO get a USB DVD drive and rip those things to FLAC, then archive the physical discs as an emergency backup. If you have an old-fashioned PeeCee with a suitable open drive bay, a SATA DVD drive from an off-lease business computer is an even cheaper solution. I have quite a few those things in stock in case the one in my ancient HP tower dies.

This is an option, and this is what i did. I hooked an external DVD LG player to my pc and then went out into a DAC-HP amplifier. The downside is that you have to use the PC to play it. And i really love the process of playing physical media. And I fear that USB transmission to be bit perfect, I must not upsample the stream, so I choose 44.1 khz when i play CDs on my DAC, and revert to 384 khz when I play Tidal on the same DAC. Maybe it is wrong what I do, but having a 100EUR perfect transport kind of solves the issue...

I have FLACs on my PC, but I almost never listen to them, it is either TIDAL, CD or vinyl. It is something that comes from when I was a teenager...

 

[DavidM1]

Thanks for the review. I like the small size a lot. It goes perfectly as a transport with a good dac, a couple of V3 monos and a WiiM mini that’s tucked out of sight. Large boxes no longer do it for me.

 

[welwynnick]

Let's continue with the good old 3DC measurement that Stereophile was often using as a proof of low noise DAC. It is from an undithered 997Hz sine at -90.31dBFS. With 16bits, the signal should appear (on a scope) as the 3DC levels of the smallest symmetrical sign magnitude digital signal:

View attachment 471514

Wow, this is a beautiful trace, perfectly symmetrical and undisrupted by noise at this low level. This is ver nice. Theoretically we should get a square at this lowest level of the PCM 16bits format, and we don't because of the limited bandwidth. The ringing tells us that the reconstruction is asymmetrical, and yes it is:

Many thanks for some great testing. Can I ask a couple of favours?

You emphasised that you tested an undithered sine, just as John Atkinson always does.
I assume there's a reason it's always undithered, but I wonder what it is?
Do you have a way to test a dithered -90dB 1kHz sine?
I'm very curious to see what that would like.

Second, could you test a 18kHz or 19 kHz sine at -90dB as well?

I'd be very grateful indeed, Nick

 

[Bruce Morgen]

This is an option, and this is what i did. I hooked an external DVD LG player to my pc and then went out into a DAC-HP amplifier. The downside is that you have to use the PC to play it. And i really love the process of playing physical media. And I fear that USB transmission to be bit perfect, I must not upsample the stream, so I choose 44.1 khz when i play CDs on my DAC, and revert to 384 khz when I play Tidal on the same DAC. Maybe it is wrong what I do, but having a 100EUR perfect transport kind of solves the issue...

I have FLACs on my PC, but I almost never listen to them, it is either TIDAL, CD or vinyl. It is something that comes from when I was a teenager...

I'm fully adapted to playing FLACs on my PeeCee through an external DAC connected to my system. Even though my love of great sound began back in the LP and R-to-R tape days, I don't miss physical media at all -- go figure....

 

[MaxwellsEq]

I assume there's a reason it's always undithered, but I wonder what it is?

If you look at the first reviews @NTTY did, he used dithered signals. But he moved to signal frequencies without dither, because otherwise the imposed dither masks the true noise floor of the device.

 

[Berwhale]

Awesome and timely review! I've been considering purchasing the PL100 for my desktop setup as a transport. I have a couple of crates of CDs from 90's and 00's i'd like to listen to again. Also, I recently received a small monetary gift from my employer for 10 years service, so some of that just got spent on a black PL100 from AliExpress (£109.79 delivered).

 

[Mart68]

Nice work as usual. The player seems to be unbeatable in terms of "bang for the buck". Now I have to overcome my reservations regarding slot-in-drives.

I had a slot loader for a while, had to get rid of it. I didn't think slot loading would be a deal-breaker but it turned out to be.

Added to which the ugly graphics and the poor ergonomics of this SMSL player aren't something I would live with long term.

What are those weird circles on the fascia supposed to accomplish? They look awful. Design for the sake of it.

 

[totti1965]

Hello everyone,

This is a review and measurements of the SMSL PL100 CD player and transport:

View attachment 471498


SMLS PL100 - Presentation

Does it really need to be presented?
This one has been discussed, commented, praised, criticised, in many places, including here on ASR. So, let me skip a little this presentation to the elements of importance to me, before we go to measurements (to reveal all about it):

• It reads only the CD Audio, and I like it, of course.
• It's gapless provided you don't FFW or REW, skipping a track is ok.
• The drive is fast, thanks SMSL! It also takes only 4sec to read the TOC of my 40 tracks test CD, cool.
• It did not scratched nor left traces on the CD I made it swallow.
• It has remote, but phones out is on the back, at least it has it.
• Buttons are difficult to read and undifferentiated, that was a burden at the beginning but I got used to them.
• It comes without power supply, but you certainly already have what's required (5V/2A). I used a phones charger or an external battery for my tests.
• The build quality is more than decent, full aluminium. Buttons have a luxury touch.

On the back, we have everything required when it comes to read the CD Audio:

View attachment 471502

Only the phones out could have been on the front. Well...

I paid the SMSL a third of the recently reviewed Yamaha CD-S303. So we are talking about a very reasonably priced CD Player. We'll see if it gives us more than a third of the Yamaha

I am listening to this little beast as I write this review (Beyer DT770Pro 32ohms), and I am nothing else but pleased.
I like the fact I can power it on external battery, less convenient than having an internal one, but more than being stuck with a socket wall and also I can easily replace the external battery and/or reuse it.


SMSL PL100 - Measurements (RCA out)

All measurements performed with an E1DA Cosmos ADCiso (grade 0), and the Cosmos Scaler (100kohms from unbalanced input) for analog outputs, and a Motu UltraLite Mk5 for digital.

I am now consistent with my specific measurements for CD Players, as I described them in the post “More than we hear”, and as I reported them for the Onkyo C-733 review. Over time, this will help comparing the devices I reviewed.

The SMLS outputs 1.97Vrms. The two channels are perfectly matched matched at 0.00dB, which is what we should always get from a modern device.
I saw a phase shift of 180° across the bandwidth.

----

As usual, let's start with my standard 999.91Hz sine @0dBFS (without dither) from the Test CD (RCA out):

View attachment 471504

Hmmm, the THD is extremely low, but we have a pack of random and correlated noise at the foot of the fundamental. It impacts a little the SINAD, as we are loosing 2-3dB into that.
The two channels have the exact same performances.

Let's try the same 6dB lower:

View attachment 471505

Again, it repeats. THD is even lower here, too bad to have that low level noise, else we had a winner.

It's free of power supply related leakage:

View attachment 471506

On that zoomed view between 20Hz to 1kHz, and with linear frequency scale, you can better appreciate the correlated noise (all these low level spikes). Their frequencies tell me nothing, I've never seen that. Also, note how the noise floor increase when approaching the fundamental. This is very low level random noise.
Note that I tested these powering the SMSL from a phone's charger but also from a battery (delivering the required 5V/2A) and I got the same results.

We can suspect this type of issue to reveal itself with the Jitter Test, see below.

----

Next is the bandwidth:

View attachment 471507

This is very flat and you can see that the two channels are perfectly matched, even with that zooming. This is nice.

And let's have a look at it with a wider bandwidth:

View attachment 471508

The red trace show the filter's response beyond 20kHz. It's fully active at 24kHz with max attenuation of -95dB. We can see the noise shaper of the DAC increasing the noise floor past 45kHz.
You can also see that the aliases of the 18kHz&20kHz tones are very well attenuated. This is good performance.
Now, again, we can't miss the random noise floor at the feet of the two test tones, it is higher at these frequencies than previously at 1kHz. But all this being at -100dBr, at worst, will easily be masked by music.

----

Let's have a look at the multitone test that a lot of you like very much:

View attachment 471509

This is when you get to like it, because it reveals issues, when there are. This provides you with a view that this problem of low random and correlated noise (not to call it distortion) increase with the frequency. CD Audio format at 16bits is still preserved, but by an hair.

----

Well, time has really come to finger point the problem, with the jitter test:

View attachment 471510

Ah, yeah, it looks nasty.
The red trace is from the digital output of the SMSL, blue one from the RCA out.
So we get to see our noise and distortion. The SMSL suffers from Jitter, but at a low level, one more time. The highest side-bands are the closest to the fundamental, meaning that the problem will remain hidden to our ears when playing music, hopefully. But this is not nice.

Red trace is the analysis from the digital outpuT of the Yamaha, and the blue one is from RCA outs.
And again, we get a higher than usual noise floor, but the trace is good with minimum artifacts.

----

Started with the Teac VRDS-20 review, and on your request + support to get it done (more here), I'm adding now an "intersample-overs" test which intends to identify the behavior of the digital filtering and DAC when it come to process near clipping signals. Because of the oversampling, there might be interpolated data that go above 0dBFS and would saturate (clip) the DAC and therefore the output. And this effect shows through distorsion (THD+N measurement up to 96kHz):

Intersample-overs tests Bandwidth of the THD+N measurements is 20Hz - 96kHz	5512.5 Hz sine, Peak = +0.69dBFS	7350 Hz sine, Peak = +1.25dBFS	11025 Hz sine, Peak = +3.0dBFS
Teac VRDS-20	-30.7dB	-26.6dB	-17.6dB
Yamaha CD-1	-84.6dB	-84.9dB	-78.1dB
Denon DCD-900NE	-34.2dB	-27.1dB	-19.1dB
Denon DCD-SA1	-33.6dB	-27.6dB	-18.3dB
Onkyo C-733	-88.3dB	-40.4dB	-21.2dB
Denon DCD-3560	-30.2dB	-24.7dB	-17.4dB
Myryad Z210	-70.6dB (noise dominated)	-71.1dB (noise dominated)	-29.4dB (H3 dominated)
Sony CDP-X333ES	-30.5dB	-24.8dB	-16.3dB
BARCO-EMT 982	-32.7dB	-24.5dB	-16.3dB
TASCAM CD-200	-73.5dB	-36.3dB	-19.7dB
Sony CDP-597	-30.4dB	-24.7dB	-16.5dB
SMLS PL100	-53.1dB	-31dB	-19.1dB

The results of the SMLS mean that the oversampling filter has very little headroom to process intersamples over. It's better than none.

----

Let's continue with the good old 3DC measurement that Stereophile was often using as a proof of low noise DAC. It is from an undithered 997Hz sine at -90.31dBFS. With 16bits, the signal should appear (on a scope) as the 3DC levels of the smallest symmetrical sign magnitude digital signal:

View attachment 471514

Wow, this is a beautiful trace, perfectly symmetrical and undisrupted by noise at this low level. This is ver nice. Theoretically we should get a square at this lowest level of the PCM 16bits format, and we don't because of the limited bandwidth. The ringing tells us that the reconstruction is asymmetrical, and yes it is:

View attachment 471515

To come back to the noise that you might worry about, I need to tell you that the problem vanishes at lower level, proof is this very neat 3DC scope trace above, maybe the best I have to report.

And so let me show you more measurements. The below are two measurements of a 999.91Hz test tone with rectangle dither (on 0.5LSB) and they are absolutely flawless:

View attachment 471516

This is really not often that I see such neat traces, as they compare with the initial WAV file. So the problem of noise I spotted before shows itself at -20dBFS and above, in fact where it will be easily masked into music.

----

Other measurements (not shown):

• IMD AES-17 DFD "Analog" (18kHz & 20kHz 1:1) : -86.8dB
• IMD AES-17 DFD "Digital" (17'987Hz & 19'997Hz 1:1) : -96.1dB
• IMD AES-17 MD (41Hz & 7993Hz 4:1): -104.1dB
• IMD DIN (250Hz & 8kHz 4:1) : -96.5dB
• IMD CCIF (19kHz & 20kHz 1:1) : -95dB
• IMD SMPTE (60Hz & 7kHz 1:4) : -98.4dB
• IMD TDFD Bass (41Hz & 89Hz 1:1) : -115dB
• IMD TDFD (13'58Hz & 19841Hz 1:1) : -104dB
• Dynamic Range : 98.9dB (without dither @-60dBFS)
• Crosstalk: unmeasurable (below -135dBr)
• Pitch Error : 19'997.00Hz (19'997Hz requested) ie <1ppm
• Gapless playback : Yes (provided you press FFW/REW buttons)

The IMD scores are very good despite the noise I mentioned.
The Dynamic range is the best I measured and can measure. No trace of crosstalk, and my test includes very low signal on the other channel to prevent it to shutdown. But really here, no crosstalk that I can measure.

Same goes with the clock precision (pitch error) which is better than what I can measure. It had to happen one day. SMSL commented that they made an effort on this aspect, and I can confirm. Well done, I'm happy I finally witnessed that.

----

Last and not least, I like to run a THD vs Frequency sweep at -12dBFS as it shows how the conversion has evolved over time. I am currently using the beta version of REW and I discovered that this sweep gives better and more reliable results than before. And for once I did not overlay with other CD players, because it's the best trace I got, and actually it is the same as if I run the test from the digital output of the SMSL:

View attachment 471522

You can appreciate the THD score in the graph (plot at 1kHz), this is indeed the bottom of the digital recording, or say what the software can compute on this sweep. I did not put the right channel on the view, but it is very precisely the same. This CD player is absent from harmonic distortion.

----

As I did with the Sony CDP-597, I'm introducing a new "max DAC resolution" measurement. It's performed from a 999.91Hz sine @-12dBFS with shape dither. I restrict the THD+N span to 20Hz - 6kHz not to account for the noise of the shape dither beyond 6kHz. That gives me a local max resolution, which should be higher than 17bits as a proof that the CD Player can actually resolve more than the Audio CD.

Here are the results of the SMSL compared to others:

CD Player model or DAC	Calculated ENOB (999.91Hz sine @-12dBFS with shape dither, THD+N span = 20Hz - 6kHz)	Percentage of max resolution achieved (higher is better)
SMSL PS-200 (from CD player)	18.6bits	100%
Denon DCD-900NE	18.5bits	99.4%
Onkyo C-733	18bits	96.7%
SMSL PL100	17.9bits	96.2%
Sony CDP-597	17.5bits	94%
Onkyo DX-7355	17.3bits	93%
Denon DCD-3560	17.2bits	92.5%
Yamaha CD-S303	16.8bits	90.3%
Accuphase DP-70	16.6bits	89.2%
Sony CDP-337ESD	16.6bits	89.2%
Teac VRDS-25x	16.5bits	88.7%
Marantz CD-73	14.9bits	80.1%

One more time, it is the low random noise of the SMLS that limits the performance here. But, in the end, it does much better the Yamaha CD-S303. So when it comes to compare apples-to-apples...
I think I like this test


SMSL PL100 - Testing the drive

What would be good measurements if the drive would not properly read a slightly scratched CD, or one that was created at the limits of the norm? The below tests reply to these questions.

The SMLS took only 4 seconds to read the TOC of my 40 tracks test CD, this is good. It takes on 1sec to load the disc, so in five seconds max, you get music.

Here are the results:

Test type	Technical test	Results
Variation of linear cutting velocity	From 1.20m/s to 1.40m/s	Pass
Variation of track pitch	From 1.5µm to 1.7µm	Pass
Combined variations of track pitch and velocity	From 1.20m/s & 1.5µm to 1.40m/s & 1.7µm	Pass
HF detection (asymmetry pitch/flat ratio)	Variation from 2% to 18%	Pass
Dropouts resistance	From 0.05mm (0.038ms) to 4mm (3.080ms)	Up to 3mm
Combined dropouts and smallest pitch	From 1.5µm & 1mm to 1.5µm & 2.4mm	Pass
Successive dropouts	From 2x0.1mm to 2x3mm	0.1mm

The SMSL PL100 was able to read without generating typical digital noise with dropouts up to 3mm. I could measure interpolation starting at 2.4mm but I could not hear it. This is a crazy good result. Same goes with the narrower pitch and dropouts, it passed even in the worst case scenario. I rarely see this.
That said, I was surprised that it did not appreciate at all successive dropouts. It simply stops playing with as low as 0.2mm successive dropouts. Normally the score there is the same as with a single dropout. So, I suspect some software decision to stop the reading for some reasons in this case.


SMSL PL100 - Measurements (Digital Optical Out)

I know several of you want to know, is it a good transport?

So let's go with the 999.91Hz @0dBFS:

View attachment 471524

This is what is on the WAV file. Same with my usual 3DC measurement:

View attachment 471525

This is what we want to see.

The ultimate proof is when I reuse the intersample overs test at 5512.50Hz, with a phase shift of 67.5°, like I did for the TASCAM CD-200 review. This signal generates an overshoot of +0.69dB and so if the signal would be modified before being sent, it would show either a reduction of amplitude or we'd see some sort of saturation/increase noise/distorsion. So here we go, the below is a comparison between the WAV File directly processed by the PC, and when played by the SMSL via the optical out:

View attachment 471526

You could think I made a mistake and they are the same single measurement, but no, one really comes out of the SMSL. I rarely get to see exact same thing because this 999.91Hz sine @0ddBFS without dither, generates more 65k+ unique PCM subcodes in less than four seconds. So there's usually a little variation in the calculation and representation that I share. But here I got lucky and recorded at the exact same time (I did many many takes, though, so I forced my luck).

All in all, this is an obvious "perfect" transport.


Conclusion

Wow, that was long, longer review than I thought. But considering the low price, I thought you needed to know more that just about a SINAD at full scale.

The Denon DCD-900NE stays on his throne, but for a quarter of the price, this little SMSL delivers!

Yes it suffers from noise with the highest test tones. But at lower and very low levels, it's probably the most silent CD Player I measured (in audio band). So it will not hide anything in the quietest moments of any recording, especially if they were mastered with shape dither.

Should you have a concern about the analog outputs, you get a perfect transport here, so…

At the end of the day, it is good to see some small flaws as it means SMSL has room for improvements in analog domain. Does the SMSL PL150 perform even better, or the PL200? It'd be nice to know…

I hope you enjoyed this review!


----
PS: besides listening to music and testing CD Players , I thought I'd try to write a short novel (I get bored rapidly). So that's a less than 20 pages one that I'd like to share with you, if you fancy spending 15min on a sci-fi story that I created for my kids. It is the attached PDF (Echoes of Eden).

Wow for the test!
And wow for the sci-fi story!
Bravo! Dacapo eccezionale!

 

[totti1965]

@NTTY: Thank you so much for your unusual testing methods!
Subjectivists and „Objectivists“: now they can come much closer together:

New Test Reveals How Vintage CD Players Outperform Modern Models Thanks to One Forgotten Design Choice

The study shows how overlooked testing methods hid the true performance of both vintage and current models.

www.headphonesty.com

Quote:
The lesson is not that NOS is flawless or that R2R is always better. It’s that when you stress players in realistic ways, the strengths and weaknesses don’t line up with the usual spec sheets.

What the Results Mean for Listeners​

Lab plots are useful, but the question most people care about is simple: what do these differences mean when you press play? NTTY’s expanded tests show how design choices in CD players can shape what you actually hear and how a player behaves day to day.

 

[VientoB]

I think it would have been cool to have digital inputs.

 

[Berwhale]

I think it would have been cool to have digital inputs.

It has a slot on the front where one can insert Compact Discs

 

[Berwhale]

Thanks for the review. I like the small size a lot. It goes perfectly as a transport with a good dac, a couple of V3 monos and a WiiM mini that’s tucked out of sight. Large boxes no longer do it for me.

The black one I have ordered from AliExpress is going to fit nicely under my Topping DX5 II...

 

[VientoB]

It has a slot on the front where one can insert Compact Discs

haha

 

[TNT]

I hope you enjoyed this review!

Yes thanks.

But rating would have been: Poor.

//

 

[FTB]

The level of performance we can get with low prices nowadays, is amazing.

 

[Bleib]

Yes thanks.

But rating would have been: Poor.

//

Why?
I would say that updating the firmware to 1.1 was a major pain in the ass tho..

 

[anibal66]

Thanks for the review and the novel (short read, good enjoyment). Looking forward to the next of both.
To my taste, those circles in fascia kill an otherwise interesting design. Otherwise, unbeatable price/quality/performance ratio.
I miss it being top-loader, and track programming.
So not ready to retire my Denon dvd-2200 from its CD transport duty, but products as this suggest that it will happen sooner than later.

 

[Bleib]

Thanks for the review and the novel (short read, good enjoyment). Looking forward to the next of both.
To my taste, those circles in fascia kill an otherwise interesting design. Otherwise, unbeatable price/quality/performance ratio.
I miss it being top-loader, and track programming.
So not ready to retire my Denon dvd-2200 from its CD transport duty, but products as this suggest that it will happen sooner than later.

PL150 looks nicer

 

[NTTY]

Yes thanks.

But rating would have been: Poor.

//

Good idea, I never thought of adding a poll. So I did it, please yourself