SMSL VMV PL100 CD player £110

[Bleib]

Ouch, so true gapless playback still isn't true. D'oh!
(and I should have my unit tomorrow)

 

[ziggurcat]

I've just received my PL150 and hooked it up to my Topping DX3 Pro+ via Toslink. It cost around £120 shipped from China and I consider that a bit of a bargain.

Despite being incredibly tiny and lightweight compared with the 90s Rotel CD transport it replaced, the PL150 looks and feels pretty high quality to me. Even the remote doesn't feel as cheap as I expected.

For me the little screen is perfectly fine, I can see track time from across the room and I don't care about CD text.

Responsiveness is good, i.e. it plays/pauses/stops/ejects pretty much instantly when I push a button. A newly inserted CD is ready to play in couple of seconds.

I can barely hear the disc spinning even with the volume off and my ear near the player. It's quieter than my old tray loading Rotel and much quieter than portable CD players and compact hi-fi systems I've used.

An initial issue was powering it. I'd assumed USB-C when I read it had USB power, so the USB-DC cable was a surprise. It meant that my spare Raspberry Pi PSU with wired USB-C wasn't usable. I tried plugging it into a USB charging port on my multiblock and it powered up, but when I put in a CD it stuck on reading the disk and wouldn't play or eject it. Fortunately it seems to work fine with my (Huawei P30 Pro) phone charger.

One thing that might annoy some people is that it has the exact same gapless playback glitch as the PL100.

If you fast forward/rewind within a track then it breaks gapless playback: for the rest of the CD you get noticeable pauses between tracks. Track skipping is fine and hitting stop resets it for gapless playback when you play the CD again. I hardly ever search within a track so it's a non-issue for me. I might never have noticed if I hadn't seen this mentioned in reviews of the PL100, making me go out of my way to test it with an obligatory Pink Floyd CD.

Still, I'm surprised that this hasn't been fixed. I haven't compared the spec, but it suggests to me that this is basically the PL100 in a different box.

So basically the PL150 is the same device in a nicer-looking case. It's such an oddly-specific thing to cause the gapless functionality to break that it might not be something they even bother with. I used to work in video game QA (started out as general QA, then eventually moved to PS3 compliance), and there were bugs that most people would encounter during normal use of the product, and there were "tester bugs" -- bugs that really only happen because of outside the box thinking, and likely wouldn't occur out in the real world. That doesn't mean that people won't find those bugs, but if it's not a thing that happens through "normal" use, it's going to be labeled as a known shippable.

 

[SteveJ]

Ouch, so true gapless playback still isn't true. D'oh!
(and I should have my unit tomorrow)

I'm sure I remember "True Gapless Playback" being listed as one of the features when I ordered it, but looking at SMSL's website now I don't see any mention of gapless: https://www.smsl-audio.com/portal/product/detail/id/919.html

Not a big deal to me, but definitely a bit weird.

 

[Bleib]

I'm sure I remember "True Gapless Playback" being listed as one of the features when I ordered it, but looking at SMSL's website now I don't see any mention of gapless: https://www.smsl-audio.com/portal/product/detail/id/919.html

Not a big deal to me, but definitely a bit weird.

The information can still be found

 

[Bleib]

It's still very small, DAC-sized

 

[ziggurcat]

View attachment 460953View attachment 460954

It's still very small, DAC-sized

Would love to hear your impressions once you've given it a test drive. It's certainly nicer-looking that the PL100, so I might have to think about this one. I understand it's not functionally different than the PL100, so it's more of an aesthetics decision (which does matter a bit to me, but I won't ever choose bad performance over looks).

 

[Bleib]

OK, I have used it a bit now. Mechanically it's as quiet as PL100, which is very. It's likely the same Philips inside both units.
The headphone out requires a bit force to insert all the way in unlike PL100 which is more normal. Both units drive the headphones I have with ease.

When it comes to sound I probably won't do any sound comparisons because it's connected optically to the SMSL RAW MDA1 DAC anyway.
LCD display is still on the cheap side, doesn't turn off 100% when the unit is off, which is a shame.
I'm gonna burn a gapless CD in the coming week or two to try this part of it as well.. also try a mp3 CD.

At this point I can recommend both

 

[Pausi]

So the PL150 is basically a repack of the PL100 with a higher price. That is a big disappointment. Higher fidelity and true gapless they marketed on their website. Guess not. I had the PL100 and replaced it with the higher end transport PL200T and now it is not reading any CDs anymore after just three months. The build quality seems to be below par. I have started to lose fate in SMSL.

 

[anonyless]

I'm sure I remember "True Gapless Playback" being listed as one of the features when I ordered it, but looking at SMSL's website now I don't see any mention of gapless: https://www.smsl-audio.com/portal/product/detail/id/919.html

Not a big deal to me, but definitely a bit weird.

you're absolutely right, I remember that too from somewhere on SMSL website. and they removed that line when they created the "upcoming products" page for the PL150

 

[Torin Krell]

For SMSL PL150 units shipped outside China, do they come with an external power supply or just a USB-DC cable?

 

[Torin Krell]

Does anyone know if the SMSL PL150 decodes older CDs with pre-emphasis?

 

[DavidM1]

For SMSL PL150 units shipped outside China, do they come with an external power supply or just a USB-DC cable?

Good question. I’m sure I saw an early feature list that mentioned a power supply. I may have mistaken that as a separate power supply or I might be right but they have quietly dropped it. I don’t know. The current needs are lower than the PL100, perhaps due to the different DAC chip?

 

[Jim Creek]

I used to be worried that my old SMSL DO100 DAC didn’t have MQA. Now that MQA is dead I have no more worries.

 

[peachey777]

I've had the PL100 for 2 months now and just noticed it's scratching my discs. It leaves 2 scratch marks parallel from each other which to me seems like it's the mechanism that grabs the disc and rolls it into the player. Anyone else having this issue? The seller on Amazon won't let me do a return as I've had it for over a month now, I haven't been this disappointed in a purchase in a long time

 

[Torin Krell]

I've had the PL100 for 2 months now and just noticed it's scratching my discs. It leaves 2 scratch marks parallel from each other which to me seems like it's the mechanism that grabs the disc and rolls it into the player. Anyone else having this issue? The seller on Amazon won't let me do a return as I've had it for over a month now, I haven't been this disappointed in a purchase in a long time

That's really a shame since the PL100 has a lot going for it. I remember my old 2011 iMc G5 had a similar optical drive slot which would, on few but unpredictable intervals, either scratch my disks or spit them across the room.

 

[DavidM1]

When I read the posts above my first thought was how easy it is to damage the reputation of a piece of gear. I imagine the larger hifi companies must feel especially tempted to knock over a quality product from a Chinese brand for sale at a new lowest price point. One of the first YouTube videos on this CD player was especially egregious and no matter how many comments pointed out that the "fault" he'd found was due to using a power supply with less than the necessary current the YouTuber did not remove it. It was the only video on that channel.

So, in the spirit of enquiry that this site is all about I took a brand new, blank Verbatim CD from the middle of a bulk stack that we have on hand. It was completely new, fresh, unscathed in any way and, of course, free of scratches. I inserted and removed the CD fully from the player 5 times in fairly quick succession, not taking any special precautions. After the 5th I took it to the light and examined it as closely as possible with the naked eye. I found no marks of any sort and certainly no scratches. With the magnification of my phone I found a faint dust line that disappeared when I touched it.

As we know, one anecdotal result counter to another anecdotal result amounts to not very much at all. However, post #234 asks if anyone else has this issue and I'm happy to say that I have not.

Actually, I'm not sure I have ever experienced scratches from any CD player. I've just had a good look at some CDs that I have owned for more than 20 years and they are remarkably clean. I expect most scratches come from mishandling CDs.

 

[peachey777]

When I read the posts above my first thought was how easy it is to damage the reputation of a piece of gear. I imagine the larger hifi companies must feel especially tempted to knock over a quality product from a Chinese brand for sale at a new lowest price point. One of the first YouTube videos on this CD player was especially egregious and no matter how many comments pointed out that the "fault" he'd found was due to using a power supply with less than the necessary current the YouTuber did not remove it. It was the only video on that channel.

So, in the spirit of enquiry that this site is all about I took a brand new, blank Verbatim CD from the middle of a bulk stack that we have on hand. It was completely new, fresh, unscathed in any way and, of course, free of scratches. I inserted and removed the CD fully from the player 5 times in fairly quick succession, not taking any special precautions. After the 5th I took it to the light and examined it as closely as possible with the naked eye. I found no marks of any sort and certainly no scratches. With the magnification of my phone I found a faint dust line that disappeared when I touched it.

As we know, one anecdotal result counter to another anecdotal result amounts to not very much at all. However, post #234 asks if anyone else has this issue and I'm happy to say that I have not.

Actually, I'm not sure I have ever experienced scratches from any CD player. I've just had a good look at some CDs that I have owned for more than 20 years and they are remarkably clean. I expect most scratches come from mishandling CDs.

I appreciate the feedback and you testing. When I first bought this CD player and I was waiting for it to arrive from China I read a few posts from people saying things like "I'd never by a slot loading player, it will scratch your discs" etc. That had me worries so I burned some CDs to test with once it arrived. When it got here I tested out the burned CD's, only playing them for a few days and I never had a single scratch or mark, they looked as good as when I burned them.

I only just started noticing this recently as I was buying more used CD's and thinking wow these are in perfect shape and then after playing them I would notice these faint scratches on them. I burned some more CD's and tested some more and found the scratches were consistently in the exact same spots and parallel to each other and they're right about in the spot where the mechanism would be grabbing the disc to insert it.

I tried to take some pictures of it (attached to this post). I find them easier to see with my eyes but capturing a picture of them was challenging to say the least. The reflections, getting the right angle and getting it to properly focus using the macro mode etc. They probably really aren't THAT bad and don't seem to affect playback at all. And to be fair they are very faint (another reason it's so hard to get a picture of them) but it's just kind of ruined my confidence of using this player as I'll always just be nervously checking discs after I play them wondering if some scratch is new.

My disappointment was mainly that the Amazon seller wouldn't really help me out, but after talking to them a bit more they letting me return it so I'm already feeling a lot better. I'm not super wealthy and even though this is among the cheapest new CD player you can buy this was still a somewhat big purchase for me as I could have just picked up a cheap used DVD player or something like that.

I could be overreacting to this as well, this might not bother someone as much as it's bothered me, and I also could just have a faulty unit and this might never happen again if I just got it replaced. I've had other slot loading devices before, the Nintendo Wii and Wii U for example and I certainly can't remember them ever scratching my discs and I used them a lot.

 

[DavidM1]

Yep, CDs are hard to photograph although these are clear enough. Is the surface actually scratched or are these dust marks? Do they clean off?

 

[peachey777]

Yep, CDs are hard to photograph although these are clear enough. Is the surface actually scratched or are these dust marks? Do they clean off?

That CD does have dust on it as I just left it out for a while after testing that but no those marks aren't dust and they will not clean off

 

[Droid_chinchilla]

So, in the end...does it scratch CDs? Did anyone hear about other cases or is it singular? The price is too good....