strange SMSL M500 high 3rd harmonic

[JohnYang1997]

I don't really understand why the discussion here gets off tangent and heated once in a while, as the intentions overall are from what I gather, well-meant on both sides. I think it's super great @liu found the issue and that SMSL will fix it. I don't understand however the occasional "(predominately Chinese)" or "Chinese manufacturer (Topping) who the admins on this site will never ban" comment. I honestly don't see what that has got to do with any of this. I don't believe a Western designed/made DAC will be otherwise immune to design issues...? At least, I don't think so.

This is where the issue is at.

 

[JSmith]

when the L30 issue popped up, I have to give credit where it’s due - John is very quick to respond, very passionate and proud of his designs, and most importantly, seems to deeply care about the reputation of his designs and the brand.

Whilst that may be the case, this thread isn't about Topping products. Most members in this thread are eagerly waiting on a solution to updating the firmware on the M500 and SU-9.

someone that just stonewalls customers and feeds them marketing/corporate bs.

Who is doing this here?

It seems considering the SU-9 has the exposed header underneath that a firmware update path is feasible. The M500 will need to be opened to locate same, which many people will be able to do fine. Those that can't may need to send the unit back or exchange for an updated unit.



JSmith

 

[JohnYang1997]

Also remember where the IMD hump is discovered?

 

[ceausuc]

Just a general comment: while @JohnYang1997 and I have had our verbals in the past when the L30 issue popped up, I have to give credit where it’s due - John is very quick to respond, very passionate and proud of his designs, and most importantly, seems to deeply care about the reputation of his designs and the brand.

he deeply cares about his income first of all.
as a MANUFACTURER he SHOULD NOT comment on any products other than his own. and yet he does! and as it is not enough now he is threatening members that don't praise his products! and guess what - nobody cares!
JohnYang - The Godfather!

 

[JohnYang1997]

he deeply cares about his income first of all.
as a MANUFACTURER he SHOULD NOT comment on any products other than his own. and yet he does! and as it is not enough now he is threatening members that don't praise his products! and guess what - nobody cares!
JohnYang - The Godfather!

You are also being irrational.

 

[JohnYang1997]

he deeply cares about his income first of all.
as a MANUFACTURER he SHOULD NOT comment on any products other than his own. and yet he does! and as it is not enough now he is threatening members that don't praise his products! and guess what - nobody cares!
JohnYang - The Godfather!

I joined this forum in 2018 when I was a student, a few months after you did. I was at the time very active, commenting on various devices and giving suggestions even doing my own experiments sharing on this site. I truly believed in this site. In 2019 an engineer of THX said to me something like "until you are a competitor", and here we come. And in a gehselli thread I said making that performance was easy but many doubted, and here we come. And now you are here accusing me for this?

 

[bboris77]

he deeply cares about his income first of all.
as a MANUFACTURER he SHOULD NOT comment on any products other than his own. and yet he does! and as it is not enough now he is threatening members that don't praise his products! and guess what - nobody cares!
JohnYang - The Godfather!

Actually, you could argue that if it was all about money, he would have already been muzzled by his corporate overlords

Taking the high road by not commenting on competitors’ products is a choice and good in principle but could also be seen as a marketing tactic to elevate the perception of your own products and brand. Again, I would rather take genuine outbursts of passion than false modesty.

 

[diddley]

Indeed when i read JohnYang's comments i see passion and knowledge.

 

[BDWoody]

he deeply cares about his income first of all.
as a MANUFACTURER he SHOULD NOT comment on any products other than his own. and yet he does! and as it is not enough now he is threatening members that don't praise his products! and guess what - nobody cares!
JohnYang - The Godfather!

You need to take a deep breath...

He isn't threatening anyone, and John has earned his place here. Manufacturers will often comment on other competitors' products, we just ask them to keep their critical comments out of review threads. Otherwise, he can contribute like anyone else.

Let's all try to get back on the thread topic please.

 

[liu]

'manufacturers who want to promote their products here'
That's not how things work.

come on, this is one of the most important reason why this site exists.
you also know how amir's "sinad leaderboard" shapes the audiophile industry.

That's not how things work. 1KHz is widely adopted as the single one important test for audio product. It's a base line, a simple test to give a long way for how a device perform. It's not limited to this site and no one is really "optimizing" to test on this site but optimizing for best performance possible and inevitably 1KHz is a starting point.

so this is in align with my theory that manufacturers optimize for 1khz, an arbitrary number.
we can see you guys using that as a "starting point" in your design.
we can also see a few manufacturers starting from 1khz, stoping at 1khz, and calling it a day.
whatever the purpose is, 1khz is used as a golden test.
but now we know, 1khz test does not represent whole story, and it's not even human's most sensitive frequency.

ironically, you don't even find the rationale behind that strange --- you care about 1khz sinad for long,
and you think it's very straightforward to evaluate a product by benchmarking the performance of 1khz.
it's inside your thinking pattern ---- and you never questioned why.
Your thinking pattern even makes you feels my statement weird.
but actually I'm not.

Also look at X16's imd hump. Many people talked about it.

X16's hump also exactly aligns with my point that manufacturers put more emphases on sinad. See wolf's review:
"The familiar ESS hump appeared again... But after communicating with Lao Huang, he said that this is what they already know. And told me that 9068 is different from 38. They have not found a way to eliminate the hump without affecting SINAD. And they pay more attention to SINAD."
It is very clear that manufacturer's balance here: SINAD is significantly more important than IMD.

He isn't threatening anyone,

I said it very clearly, several times --- I feel threatened and assaulted. Such behavior is unacceptable to me.
You are in no position to say he isn't threatening --- you're not the one being threatened.

 

[BDWoody]

I said it very clearly, several times --- I feel threatened and assaulted. Such behavior is unacceptable to me.
You are in no position to say he isn't threatening --- you're not the one being threatened.

Threatened and assaulted...wow.

John has no administrative power here. I'm not sure what you feel he is assaulting or threatening you with. Maybe ignoring him would be best...

 

[3125b]

come on, this is one of the most important reason why this site exists.

I think you have ASR confused with head-fi there
I'm all for criticizing anyone for real issues and agree with some of the points you made, but now you are just making stuff up.

 

[aandres_gm]

Someone brought up the anti-China sentiment you see in this forum and all over the internet when it comes to hifi products (and beyond), and I think it is a discussion that must be had, because it is a real issue which I find very repulsive.

In this case, SMSL made a mistake during the development of the code, whether that was related to this (in my opinion) baseless assumption that some companies are designing an optimizing to perform well in one or two tests, can't be concluded from this one example. While it may be true and this hunch should grant an optimization/expansion of the test suite, condemning a manufacturer using this as proof is questionable, but condemning a whole country based upon this is simply reductionistic and (borderline) racist.

Language matters. This is a fact. And language gets increasingly used in a derogatory fashion towards China, using some faulty products as a proxy. This thread is filled with such examples using phrases and formulations like "welcome to chifi". This week we had another huge example of this Anti-Chinese behaviour: someone opened a thread to mock how a "Chinese" Mars rover (yes, Chinese, not made by the CNSA) uses zipties while mistakenly assuming a "NASA" rover (yes, not American rover) does not, only to have a whole country as the butt of a stupid joke.

I'm not sure when was the last time I heard someone say they'd never buy an American product, just because Boeing fucked up the design of the 737 MAX, neither have I heard similar statements demeaning German engineering based upon the poor reliability some Germans car have. But a DAC shows some unwanted and unexpected noise in a certain test? Oh, then automatically Topping, SMSL and the whole of China and its engineering are unreliable and whatever.

We should talk about products and manufacturers and not make blanket generalizations about whole countries when we speak.

 

[liu]

Someone brought up the anti-China sentiment you see in this forum and all over the internet when it comes to hifi products (and beyond), and I think it is a discussion that must be had, because it is a real issue which I find very repulsive.

In this case, SMSL made a mistake during the development of the code, whether that was related to this (in my opinion) baseless assumption that some companies are designing an optimizing to perform well in one or two tests, can't be concluded from this one example. While it may be true and this hunch should grant an optimization/expansion of the test suite, condemning a manufacturer using this as proof is questionable, but condemning a whole country based upon this is simply reductionistic and (borderline) racist.

...

We should talk about products and manufacturers and not make blanket generalizations about whole countries when we speak.

Your are just making baseless assumptions. All I said in previous thread is I want to see more diversity.

I think you have ASR confused with head-fi there
I'm all for criticizing anyone for real issues and agree with some of the points you made, but now you are just making stuff up.

Welcome aboard!

 

[bboris77]

Someone brought up the anti-China sentiment you see in this forum and all over the internet when it comes to hifi products (and beyond), and I think it is a discussion that must be had, because it is a real issue which I find very repulsive.

In this case, SMSL made a mistake during the development of the code, whether that was related to this (in my opinion) baseless assumption that some companies are designing an optimizing to perform well in one or two tests, can't be concluded from this one example. While it may be true and this hunch should grant an optimization/expansion of the test suite, condemning a manufacturer using this as proof is questionable, but condemning a whole country based upon this is simply reductionistic and (borderline) racist.

Language matters. This is a fact. And language gets increasingly used in a derogatory fashion towards China, using some faulty products as a proxy. This thread is filled with such examples using phrases and formulations like "welcome to chifi". This week we had another huge example of this Anti-Chinese behaviour: someone opened a thread to mock how a "Chinese" Mars rover (yes, Chinese, not made by the CNSA) uses zipties while mistakenly assuming a "NASA" rover (yes, not American rover) does not, only to have a whole country as the butt of a stupid joke.

I'm not sure when was the last time I heard someone say they'd never buy an American product, just because Boeing fucked up the design of the 737 MAX, neither have I heard similar statements demeaning German engineering based upon the poor reliability some Germans car have. But a DAC shows some unwanted and unexpected noise in a certain test? Oh, then automatically Topping, SMSL and the whole of China and its engineering are unreliable and whatever.

We should talk about products and manufacturers and not make blanket generalizations about whole countries when we speak.

I agree with this 100%. It is Western hypocrisy at its worst rearing its ugly head. I know this discussion is veering into dangerous political/cultural zone, but by ignoring this phenomenon, we end up effectively enabling and cementing these stereotypes and preconceived notions as "truths". Perhaps there could be a separate thread created dedicated to tackling this issue. Then people who buy into and perpetuate these cultural stereotypes and myths could be simply pointed there to be educated. And I genuinely don't mean this in a patronizing way. You know, there are a lot of people who parrot things they hear elsewhere without really questioning them. Perhaps they could be educated to see how offensive some of these things that you mentioned truly are to a person from another country and culture. Kind of like cultural sensitivity training for audiophiles

 

[BDWoody]

Mr. Liu asked that we remove him from the membership, so I obliged him.

We can decide if the thread gets closed depending on how it goes from here.

 

[aandres_gm]

Your are just making baseless assumptions. All I said in previous thread is I want to see more diversity.

Sorry, baseless assumptions? I could get you the receipts of the things I mentioned. People using faulty products to bury the whole of China, branding the country as unreliable, unrefined or whatever. We have a bunch of examples of western companies (iFi, AudioQuest, Schiit, PS Audio) who sell or have sold faulty products, or products that don't perform any different than cheaper alternatives (cables), yet nowhere does anyone condemn western engineering as being a nest of snake oil salesmen. Or have you seen that? MQA is another great example of a complete fraud of a product/technology developed in the UK, but you can check the complete GoldenSound v. MQA thread and you will not find a single mention of "well, welcome to brihifi" or "well, expected from the English".

Somehow, a lot of people can discern between a product/company and a country when it comes to western-made or designed stuff, but are completely incapable of doing so when it comes to Chinese products.

Mr. Liu asked that we remove him from the membership, so I obliged him.

We can decide if the thread gets closed depending on how it goes from here.

I didn't want to derail the thread. I apologize if I did so. I just felt it was appropriate to mention it due to the fact this attitude I'm criticizing is present in this very thread.

 

[ceausuc]

Someone brought up the anti-China sentiment you see in this forum .

I see no anti-China sentiment in this thread. I see only only anti-bad-product sentiments. anti-cheating-products sentiments, too.

 

[bboris77]

Just to expand a bit on my angle on this. I am not some cancel-culture crusader that is for sanitizing everything to the point that we can't even poke fun at our own culture or other cultures. That would be extremely boring. But there is a time and place when humor based on cultural stereotypes may be funny and appropriate. In most other cases, especially when someone is being serious and criticizing something, using cultural stereotypes of this kind is just dehumanizing and not-well intentioned.

 

[Veri]

Mr. Liu asked that we remove him from the membership, so I obliged him.

We can decide if the thread gets closed depending on how it goes from here.

=( sad end to an otherwise very interesting thread. Sigh.