SMSL PL100 Review (CD Player)

[Smitty2k1]

Thanks so much for this review. I've been looking for a tiny desktop transport to add to my small stack of Topping DAC and Wiim Pro. This fits right in and the price is right. Perfect playback from digital too!

As far as I know nothing else (that's been reviewed) comes even close in terms of size and price?

 

[Jcrow]

Actually it's just a transport...

I hear you and you're right, it was an indulgence. I was working long hours and had plenty of money and no time to spend it, so it was a reward of sorts.

It doesn't sound any different to the much cheaper one it replaced, nor did I expect it to.

There are worse ways to spend your money I’ve got a cheap one now, but I can see myself wanting something nicer down the line.

 

[aagstn]

Great review, I'm really curious about the new PL150 that is only $50 more but supposedly has better components.

 

[NTTY]

Great review, I'm really curious about the new PL150 that is only $50 more but supposedly has better components.

I ordered one, review to come soon

 

[NTTY]

I suppose these CD players can feel quite cool & retro, but they're not very practical and are expensive for what they do given you can spend £10-20 on a USB DVD drive and use it to rip all your CD's to a PC or something similar - then you get perfect playback every time once you've ripped them. I suppose it's an item worth testing though for people that want to play their music directly from CD's each time.

My wife and I were born just before the digital era and we both went a little crazy about buying CDs. So we ended up with lots of them and stopped counting at 5’000. I tried to rip them all but it was very time consuming, especially for those unknown albums by existing databases. I also had to upgrade several times my computer to handle the size and load. At 3’300 CDs ripped, there was nothing I could do, or wanted to do more than what I already did, to make it fast enough to satisfy our needs. It just was too much efforts.

So I went with a subscription, convinced by my kids that everything would be on line… and… no… not everything is online. I’m surprised that sometimes we can access only remastered versions of popular albums, sounding too loud and/or too different from my memory. We have a lot of special editions bought in some festivals, or promo versions, etc… simply not available indeed.
And so we slowly started going back to the physical media.

And we rediscovered the pleasure of searching for one specific album, not finding it, of course, and inevitably falling on a forgotten one "oh yeah, I thought I lost this one, it’s been so many years!". The PC is now forever closed, and we equally listen to the physical albums, and online newer stuff too, of course.

 

[aagstn]

My wife and I were born just before the digital era and we both went a little crazy about buying CDs. So we ended up with lots of them and stopped counting at 5’000. I tried to rip them all but it was very time consuming, especially for those unknown albums by existing databases. I also had to upgrade several times my computer to handle the size and load. At 3’300 CDs ripped, there was nothing I could do, or wanted to do more than what I already did, to make it fast enough to satisfy our needs. It just was too much efforts.

So I went with a subscription, convinced by my kids that everything would be on line… and… no… not everything is online. I’m surprised that sometimes we can access only remastered versions of popular albums, sounding too loud and/or too different from my memory. We have a lot of special editions bought in some festivals, or promo versions, etc… simply not available indeed.
And so we slowly started going back to the physical media.

And we rediscovered the pleasure of searching for one specific album, not finding it, of course, and inevitably falling on one forgotten "oh yeah, I thought I lost this one, it’s been so many years!". The PC is now forever closed, and we equally listen to the physical albums, and online newer stuff too, of course.

My collection is ripped and there are advantages, but there are still times I just want to grab physical media off the shelf and listen to that too. It is much easier for me to discover an album I haven't listened to in a long time by finding the physical copy on the shelf. That same album in my digital collection just gets skipped over and I forget it is there.

 

[Robbo99999]

My wife and I were born just before the digital era and we both went a little crazy about buying CDs. So we ended up with lots of them and stopped counting at 5’000. I tried to rip them all but it was very time consuming, especially for those unknown albums by existing databases. I also had to upgrade several times my computer to handle the size and load. At 3’300 CDs ripped, there was nothing I could do, or wanted to do more than what I already did, to make it fast enough to satisfy our needs. It just was too much efforts.

So I went with a subscription, convinced by my kids that everything would be on line… and… no… not everything is online. I’m surprised that sometimes we can access only remastered versions of popular albums, sounding too loud and/or too different from my memory. We have a lot of special editions bought in some festivals, or promo versions, etc… simply not available indeed.
And so we slowly started going back to the physical media.

And we rediscovered the pleasure of searching for one specific album, not finding it, of course, and inevitably falling on one forgotten "oh yeah, I thought I lost this one, it’s been so many years!". The PC is now forever closed, and we equally listen to the physical albums, and online newer stuff too, of course.

That's interesting & to be fair it would be quite hard finding stuff even if you'd ripped that many CD's - 3300 or 5000 odd CD's! Probably a bit easier finding it on a PC because search by artist or type in the albumn title, but I can see the "adventure" you have when you choose what to play, so that helps spark creativity in what you decide to listen to in that moment. I mean that's just a LOT of music! I've gone down the route of buying 2nd hand CD's online when I find some new music I want to listen to, and then I rip them to my PC, but I haven't gone mad with it, I mean I've only got 1911 songs ripped to my PC between 383 Artists and 200 Albumns, and I've been buying music on & off on CD since my first one which was Vanilla Ice song Ice Ice Baby - which is both amusing that it was my first one & you get an idea! (I do have a fair few I've not bothered to rip to PC though as I decided I wouldn't be listening to it!)

 

[FTB]

My wife and I were born just before the digital era and we both went a little crazy about buying CDs. So we ended up with lots of them and stopped counting at 5’000. I tried to rip them all but it was very time consuming, especially for those unknown albums by existing databases. I also had to upgrade several times my computer to handle the size and load. At 3’300 CDs ripped, there was nothing I could do, or wanted to do more than what I already did, to make it fast enough to satisfy our needs. It just was too much efforts.

So I went with a subscription, convinced by my kids that everything would be on line… and… no… not everything is online. I’m surprised that sometimes we can access only remastered versions of popular albums, sounding too loud and/or too different from my memory. We have a lot of special editions bought in some festivals, or promo versions, etc… simply not available indeed.
And so we slowly started going back to the physical media.

And we rediscovered the pleasure of searching for one specific album, not finding it, of course, and inevitably falling on a forgotten one "oh yeah, I thought I lost this one, it’s been so many years!". The PC is now forever closed, and we equally listen to the physical albums, and online newer stuff too, of course.

That's a good way to go.
I now mostly listen on streaming platforms with my phone and headphones but sure, there are some rarities not available on these platforms and/or not the good version like you say.

Plus the pleasure of browsing the booklet, reading some texts in it, take a look at the pictures in a material way.

I have to reboot my CD and LPs listenings with a proper CD player and turntable...

 

[Bogda]

I did not understand how it is handling gapless playback?
SMSL is advertising vertical orientation option. Display text rotation would be a nice option.

 

[pma]

Strange audio component with some strange nastiness in the spectra.

 

[NTTY]

I did not understand how it is handling gapless playback?
SMSL is advertising vertical orientation option. Display text rotation would be a nice option.

It is gapless playback.
If you fast forward or rewind in a track, gapless playback stops.

 

[Ruffy]

Very interesting. I wonder if I could use the volume control out to a Schiit gjallarhorn I have on my desk - only problem might be the amount of gain. Would make for a tidy setup though.

 

[NTTY]

Hi @Ruffy,
Note that the volume control does not influence analog RCA nor digital outputs, only the phones out.

 

[fordiebianco]

I am a happy owner. It feeds into a vintage receiver from the seventies, so I am really not that worried about inaudible flaws its chipset might have. Currently listening to a recording of Rosza's violin concerto from 1953, so I am sure it will suffice. Great job SMSL and @NTTY .

 

[Noske]

I use mine as a transport and I would like to say that I am perfectly happy with it, but I'm not.

Sometimes it just stops playing and other times it stutters a bit. On replay it doesn't. This on some new CDs.

Using 5V 2A lenovo phone AC adaptor, I might try something else. Anyway, it's OK probably about 95+% of the time. Just sayin'

 

[NTTY]

Since some of you shared concerns about the PL100 potentially scratching CDs, so I did this:

Yes, you guessed it. I inserted and removed 100 times the same CD (my test CD actually), it's the pink count
I checked every time if the CD would show some traces, but no.

I additionally did the same with a "commercial" CD (DE LA SOUL - ///AOI:BIONIX, not to mention it) which is thicker than my burnt CD, for 20 more tests (blue count) and no signs of wear:

Hopefully, people who have reported such issues were just not lucky.

Cheers

 

[Ruffy]

Hi @Ruffy,
Note that the volume control does not influence analog RCA nor digital outputs, only the phones out.

All good, I was thinking a bit of a dodgy with a 3.5mm jack to RCA cable. It’s mainly used by my daughter at the moment, splitting between a Wiim pro plus and a cheap Philips discman using the 3.5mm jack out. Might just be a bit more elegant with the smsl, and I’m guessing it measures better than the Philips unit!

Cheers,
Andrew

 

[DavidM1]

Using 5V 2A lenovo phone AC adaptor, I might try something else. Anyway, it's OK probably about 95+% of the time. Just sayin'

Yes, even though it says 2A next to the socket some have found that either 2.4A or 3A is a better choice. It would be good to know if that fixes it for you.

Mine is powered from a regular power board at 3A and has had no issues.

 

[NTTY]

All good, I was thinking a bit of a dodgy with a 3.5mm jack to RCA cable. It’s mainly used by my daughter at the moment, splitting between a Wiim pro plus and a cheap Philips discman using the 3.5mm jack out. Might just be a bit more elegant with the smsl, and I’m guessing it measures better than the Philips unit!

Cheers,
Andrew

Oh, ok, that is a very interesting indirect question.

I tested from the phones out in this context, into a 100kohms load (of my Cosmos Scaler).
The PL100 outputs 2Vrms max (so I guess it can drive your amp to max output, but to check) and I saw the same performances:

I also tested the same but reducing the output by 6dB (1Vrms output):

No changes, which is good news. And I saw that the volume control is obviously in digital domain since it goes by very precise steps of 0.5dB. So I thought of two complementary tests

First, I wondered if (at this lower output level) we'd loose linearity/precision and/or get more noise to the point of negatively impacting our famous 3DC test? And no:

This is still one of the best and most silent trace I got from this test.

What about resistance to intersamples over? Well, not a surprise, but because of the lower digital level, the interpolateur of the oversampling filter has now all required headroom to process ISOs:

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
SMSL PL100 (RCA out)	-53.1dB	-31dB	-19.1dB
SMSL PL100 (Phones out -6db into 100kohms)	-73.5dB	-74dB	-75.5dB

Note this is inclusive of noise up to 96kHz and it's impacted by the noise shaper of the converter. The THD alone ranges from -104dBr to -93dBr, ie there's no distortion to complain about.

All other tests were not impacted (at this -6dB lower output level) and actually some IMD tests improved.

These few tests mean that using the phones out to power an amp (or an external phones amplifier) is more than a good idea!

I'll update the initial post with these findings.

 

[Noske]

Yes, even though it says 2A next to the socket some have found that either 2.4A or 3A is a better choice. It would be good to know if that fixes it for you.

Mine is powered from a regular power board at 3A and has had no issues.

Yep, thanks for that - my suspicions also. Down the track a bit - I only have 2A available (currently?) but yeah will go higher.

From time to time I have read that a "quality" SMPS is advised. I don't know exactly what that means, but I am led to believe that a brand name phone adaptor is the way to go rather than say a generic white thing.

Some years ago I even remember Amir experimenting with a variety of converters before he settled on one for testing the DAC or whatever it was.

So, I guess an around about way of saying that as for power boards, I know nothing and would err on the side of caution.