SMSL PL200 (CD Player)

[Belgik]

I custom made a glass top lid for it, protected with 3D printed black outer and inner layer. It is very satisfying to see the CD spins while playing underneath it.

View attachment 338138

Now, that looks very nice indeed!

 

[Belgik]

Now, that looks very nice indeed!

 

[Belgik]

I have ordered one. Should arrive soon. I did noticed that the Shanling EC3 and ET3 set. However, the price is a bit too high comparing to this SMSL PL200. Also, I like the SMSL design. It looks more modern. The Shanling is too old school. I will share how it sounds like. I will also compare the following ones:
1. SMSL PL200 (CD)
2. SONY D-303 (CD)
3. SONY D-250 (CD)
4. SMSL M400+SP400 (Macbook Pro + wav file)
5. SMSL M200+SP200 (Macbook Pro + wav file).


I already noticed huge difference between the M400 (4499) and M200 (4497). The M400 sounds a lot better. This is also one of the reasons I ordered the PL200 since it uses the same chip as the M400. I like the sound the M400 renders. So when I saw the PL200, I placed the order immediately.

To be updated.

This is my introductory "first" post, to remain on topic, I ordered one this morning...should arrive within a month. I'm crazy! I'm primitive! My entire setup is vintage Onkyo Integra (except for the B&W DM2a speakers) mixed with "inexpensive" non-vintage CD-7030 as sole compact disk player. I basically listen only to CD and DAB+ and, in terms of "Hi-Fi", I don't pay attention to "all the rest", which I often don't even understand...
Of late, I've been looking for a "more sophisticated" CD thingy, second-hand Cyrus, Onkyo, and new Marantz CD-60, my maximum price point.
Until I read about this ...er ... SMSL PL200 machine. And, undergoing chemo in day-hospital, I immediately bought one, if its the last thing I ever do. I want a top-loader. I hope to review it.

 

[Belgik]

You can tell they hired a proper industrial design firm. With the exception of the headphone jack in the back, that is just weird.

Granted, it might be weird, but Cyrus did the same thing in their amp. Please don't ask me why...

 

[AdrianusG]

I custom made a glass top lid for it, protected with 3D printed black outer and inner layer. It is very satisfying to see the CD spins while playing underneath it.

View attachment 338138

Cool, well done

but isn't it too heavy this way for the motor to spin it around, or doesn't this affect the sound quality in any way?, just curious.

 

[HD MOVIE SOURCE]

Does this play SACD and MQA CDs? I'd be very interested if it did.

 

[Nutul]

Does this play SACD and MQA CDs? I'd be very interested if it did.

Maybe read the very first post, and you'll rule out the first question.
Maybe read the very first line of the product specs, and you'll have the second one sorted out as well.
Long story short: SACD = NO
MQA CD = YES (sadly, it's a yes...)

 

[ThatM1key]

Initially I thought this some regular "hi-fi" CD player but this appears to be the hi-fi version of all those Victrola all-in-one machines. I get people want compact devices rather then a stack of components but the separated components are already super small. Since its all glued together, if something breaks, the whole thing is (probably) useless versus just swapping out the specific bad component.

Does a CD player need a top of the line DAC chip just to play when there is plenty of regular cheap DACs that can fully reproduce 16bit? There is also that fact if I'm going to use the "USB" part of it chances are that I'm not gonna use the "CD" part of it. Subjectively, I don't like how you insert CDs, it gives me cheap PS3 Super Slim vibes.

They should've sold a normal version of this as a standalone CD player instead of lumping other parts with it.

 

[HD MOVIE SOURCE]

Maybe read the very first post, and you'll rule out the first question.
Maybe read the very first line of the product specs, and you'll have the second one sorted out as well.
Long story short: SACD = NO
MQA CD = YES (sadly, it's a yes...)

Thats unfortunate, thanks.

 

[shanyechungu]

Cool, well done

but isn't it too heavy this way for the motor to spin it around, or doesn't this affect the sound quality in any way?, just curious.

This crystal cover lid does not contact the spinning mechanism. There is a hole in the center so that the CD spindle can spin without touching it. No issue at all.

 

[Diupen]

My unit arrived last Friday. I have been listening to it for almost 3 days (on and off) and I couldn't stop. (You guys can imaging, I am listening to it as I am writing this post.) This is not just because how it sounds but also the way that I operate it, like my favorite toy. Sense of ritual is a very important aspect when playing with CDs nowadays.
View attachment 327977

Design:
First impression, the package and box are upgraded which look way better than the cheap one with the M400.

The size is a bit smaller than it looks in the pictures which is better. With this size, it looks more premium when placed on top of the SP400.

The mechanic keys feel exactly as my keyboard. It is so satisfying to hear the crisp click sound when you press the keys down. The tactile feel of mechanical keys is much better than the microswitches which most devices use. A bit loose which is expected. Imaging that how the keys on your keyboard feel when you place your finger on them and wiggle.

The disc pressure weight block is secured by magnetic force, not by gravity. With a metal shell and plastic holding the magnet inside, it is not heavy and feels cheap. When placed on top of the CD, while playing, you can tell it is not perfectly concentric and wobbles a bit. This bugs me. I tried to play CDs without placing it on and it worked fine. This is something that I wish they nailed it further before releasing the product. Maybe just a piece of solid metal without a magnet does the job? Not sure. Maybe they have tested this solution and for some reason they did not adopt it.

The opening space by the edge of the disc is a bit narrow. It can be a bit tricky to take the disc out if you have thick fingers.

As for the lid, it is a solid one-piece metal and feels premium. I do wish the lid could be somehow transparent or at least left a window on it so that we can see the spinning disc while playing. The diameter of the lid is 5.5inch. I even looked for a glass lid with this size on Amazon and found the the following one. It is $39 made in France which looks very premium. It will immediately turn this thing into a wok or a pan. Just kidding. Anyway, I hope they can release a transparent lid as an accessory and I will order it without a doubt.
View attachment 327978

Given that this thing is so beautiful, I can bear with those issues.
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Functionality:
This thing can replace my M400 for my purposes. I connect M400 to my MBP and to serve my JBL 308P monitors. In terms of this function, it somewhat covers it and plus, it plays CDs. As for BT, I don't use this function at all. For the opt out, I am not sure if I will use this function since the best DAC I have is the M400 and they are using the same chip, so there is no point to do so.

I saw other folks wish it had other means of digital inputs, I totally agree. I have a PS4 and it is currently connected to my M400 via opt in. However, I have two separate setups, one is in my garage with the PS4 and the JBL monitors; the other is in my office room with a some PCDPs and headphones. Plus, I don't play video games anymore. So this is not an issue to me.

For obvious reasons, some of the CDs are not readable by my old PCDPs and this thing reads it without any issue.

I also saw other folks wish it had SACD function, I do agree. But I do not have any SACDs so this is not an issue to me either.

Firmware:
Two weird things:
1. It only uses 4 characters or less to show the status. For example, Play, CD, USB, BT. However, when you pause it, it shows "Paus" ... This is so funny.
2. When you keep clicking the NEXT button and when you reach the end of the list, a typical CD player will stay at the last song. This one returns to the first song.
3. The loudness is displayed as dB which is different from the 0-80 digital range in the M400.
View attachment 327979

Price:
I ordered it from China directly and shipped it oversea to the US. It was during the 11.11 time (similar to the Black Friday event in the US) and there was a discount around $100. So its definitely a good price to me. I paid similar for my M400 and this thing does more than it.

Sound quality:
I am very satisfied with the sound it renders. However, I do think I need more time to listen to it and run a systematic comparison between my other devices. This can be very time consuming which is beyond my capacity now. I will find a time for it and update my findings here. My first impression is it has less bass than the Sony D-303 thus sounds cooler and thinner than it. I use ATH-A1000 with D-303 and use HD6XX with PL200. Seems a perfect match.

I dear I'm Luca from I'm passionate like you of physical supports.

I recently bought this new player , but I've been noticing that it struggles a bit with reading some of my CDs. Even though it eventually reads them by the end of the day, it's still a bit frustrating. My previous player was a Sony Blu-ray player that I used as a transport, connected to an external DAC. Have you ever experienced anything similar?

 

[Diupen]

My little Boy.

 

[Diupen]

and nothing, I'm going to request a refund from amazon... I'm continuing to have some issue reading. I use to use a Blu-ray player as a transport and with it I didn't have any kinda of problem. On the other hand, By using the same CDs with pl200 I have to face some issue randomly, I'm not sure but I could blame the sort of "reg doll" that the disc do when it is spinning... I'm very sad, because even though I will receive back my money, I will remain without a player, I really loved so much this device... and now I'm lost... I can't decide for a new one model from different company

 

[chord]

I have no any reading problem.
in fact, it reads CDs much faster, even faster than the very fast Sony players and without errors.

Here is a review:

Godzilla vs. SMSL PL200

 

[AndreaT]

Just received mine today. Superb fit’n finish. Everything works as expected. Listening to Stan Getz and The Oscar Peterson Trio on my PAS 3x/ST-35 combo, ProAc Tablette Anniversary. Very likable in the first 20 min of listening session. I wonder what the six PCM filters do to the aliases and distortion, I stay on “sharp rolloff”. Apos Audio shipped in three days via DHL and superb quality of packaging. Amir, consider testing this CD player: balanced and RCA analog outputs, LDAC BT, optical and coaxial digital out. Perfectly silent mechanical functioning (quieter than my old Esoteric X-05).

 

[Canuck57]

@AndreaT, congrats nice set up. I have the ProAc Tablette III and love them.

 

[Jazz]

- It will never play SACD as that means additional cost. Breaking what they are doing.
- A bunch of stuff on the box and web site are total nonsense. High Resolution? Piano keys? Just gimmicks.
- The puck and lid are just too much. An automatic soft closing lid would be much nicer. That is what Dieter Rams would have done. ;-)
- They should sell a version for 250 USD that has no MQA, no XLR, not BT, make the DAC on par with other DACs and allow so it can be used as an external DAC from other sources with optical and coaxial inputs.
- Use the pause symbol not Paus.

 

[NTTY]

Anyway, you can't get better than ≈93dB SINAD with some 16/44 dithered test files, whatever in digital or analog domain.

Hi, actually you can, as demonstrated here.

As figured out with the help of @AnalogSteph, a test tone of 999.91Hz will self dither. It allows to avoid using dither for high level test tone (down to -40dBFS, after which dither is again preferable).

It means you can measure down to the theoretical SNR = 6.02N + 1.76.
In addition, the self-dithering nature of that test tone means we can also perform a very precise analysis of distortion components (down to -130dB), which is cool.

Burning the test CD with WMP without “adjusting levels” option ensures best obtainable quality from an Audio CD.

Note: REW dither is a little higher (by 1.7dB) than that of Audacity’s Rectangle option.

I created a newer version of my test CD with this test tone but only had the opportunity to use it once so far and that was on an old low value Marantz CD5400 (which did not shine).

 

[bike man]

This CD player needs to be reviewed!!! Mostly the mechanics, the electronic with that Dac will probably be flawless. Of course nobody understands the optical&coax outputs, which external Dac will improve the quality of a 44.1khz/16bit signal?

It is not necessarily to improve sound quality, but rather for functionality. My NAD M33 Streaming Integrated Amp digitizes all analog inputs through an ADC! This is to be able to apply Dirac Live Room Correction and use the digital volume control in the DAC section. That's why I connected the PL200 to the M33 using digital optical. Using the analog output from the PL200 would have meant two unnecessary additional conversions: D-A in the PL200 and A-D in the M33.

 

[bike man]

It only uses 4 characters or less to show the status. For example, Play, CD, USB, BT. However, when you pause it, it shows "Paus" ... This is so funny.

That's because they appear to have a fixed layout UX design. When you enable headphones, the icon shows up where the 'e' of the Pause would go! Weird, but it is what it is.