First Impressions
S.M.S.L X3 Review - Part One.
Packaging
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Nice form-fitted foam in attractive box. Not as nice as Apple packaging, but close.
Outside
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Looks to be quality construction -- metal case, no exposed screws (hidden under rubber feet I assume), white lettering clean and crisp, gold (colored) connectors.
Power supply
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S.M.S.L - labeled wall wart - 5V, 1A switching supply with USB cable. (I like that the power supply is labeled with S.M.S.L. so it doesn't get mixed up with my other generic wall-warts.)
Also, I like that the box itself has the voltage and polarity of the connector labeled (although almost everything is center-positive these days).
User Manual
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Broken English. Diagrams are good. A computer/audio novice may have difficulty.
Setup
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Web page via Direct Mode:
The device-generated hot-spot came up right away, and my Samsung Galaxy tablet connected it to easily. However, the default web page comes up in Chinese (yikes!),
and you can't translate it, because the device has no internet connection at this point. But if you study the user manual, you can figure out which of the two radio buttons
on the home page is for LAN setup. Once you click that, you see the networks it has detected, and you can pick out your network name among the hànzì. Once you select your network and
enter your password in the next popup dialog box, it simply drops its local hot spot and connects to your network. So you are left with a broken link until you switch back to your LAN.
Once you connect to the S.M.S.L box via your PC or tablet browser with it connected to your LAN, you can translate the Chinese to English. Then you can navigate to the Information tab and find the
device language setting and change it to English. I assume they will have fixed this in later shipments (default to English when shipping to USA).
Also on the information tab is a "detect and update" button. The text box next to it explains that this will download and update the device with the latest firmware.
Once you click this button, your music stops, and a female voice speaks through your headphones "Detect latest version", followed by "file download start", and then she
updates the percentage complete in your headphones every 15 seconds -- "one percent, two percent ....". It must be a slow connection back in China -- as I have 50 mbps down internet service, and it took
15 minutes to download about 15%. It then announced "Download file failed". Oh well, The voice prompts are cool.
(Second update attempt: Much faster download this time - took 4-5 minutes. It then announced it was restarting, and rebooted back in Chinese mode - Argh! It also lost the WAN
settings).
WPS Button:
I tried this after the firmware update and it worked. This would be the best option if your router supports it.
Sound
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Headphones:
I am not a cans guy, but using my old Sennheiser PXC 250's, it sounded quite good when streaming Tidal to it via Bubbleupnp. No discernible background noise.
Volume adjustment is more than ample - got to uncomfortably loud so I didn't max it out.
I connected a pair of Bose headphones (I think I won as a door prize) and turned it all the way up (who cares if I blow these up?).
I could hear the music clearly from 3 feet away with the phones laying on the table, so plenty loud. I wouldn't put them on my head
that loud, so not sure how distorted it was, but sounded o.k. from a distance.
Line out:
(Review coming in part two)
Digital out:
(I'll do an A/B test with my Emotiva DAC and compare with the internal DAC and post in a follow up review).
Changing Modes
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The Mode button on the front switches from Direct Mode (its own hot-spot), WiFi mode (connected to your LAN), and local mode (play from MicroSD or USB thumb drive).
The voice prompt tells you which mode is active. Local mode is pronounced "Loco Mode" -- crazy, eh?
Digging deeper
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The box is running embedded Linux 2.6.31.3 and has five TCP ports open:
23 - telnet
80 - http
9000 - Shairport (Apple AirPlay)
49152 - DLNA Play
49156 - /usr/app/xxx ( The X3 app - ELF binary - still has debug symbols)
Looks like about 64 MB of ram:
~ # free -b
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 59871232 39981056 19890176 0 0
-/+ buffers: 39981056 19890176
Swap: 0 0 0
Built-in storage is 42 MB:
~ # fdisk -l
Disk /dev/ubiblock0: 42 MB, 42663936 bytes
4 heads, 16 sectors/track, 1302 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 64 * 512 = 32768 bytes
~ # df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
ubi0:ubifs 36696 32724 3972 89% /
tmpfs 29232 16 29216 0% /dev
tmpfs 29232 108 29124 0% /tmp
tmpfs 29232 8 29224 0% /var
tmpfs 29232 92 29140 0% /etc
ubi1:config_ro 344 24 268 8% /mnt/config_ro
ubi2:config_rw 4584 36 4548 1% /mnt/config_rw
ubi3:cache 36696 5204 31492 14% /cache
none 29232 4 29228 0% /usr/etc/avahi/services
none 29232 4 29228 0% /usr/var/run
The box has a telnet daemon running, and no root password:
(none) login: root
~ #
~ # uname -a
Linux (none) 2.6.31.3 #108 PREEMPT Mon Jun 9 12:16:53 CST 2014 mips GNU/Linux
~ #
Process list:
(none) login: root
~ #
~ #
~ # ps -aef
PID USER TIME COMMAND
1 root 0:01 init
2 root 0:00 [kthreadd]
3 root 0:00 [ksoftirqd/0]
4 root 0:00 [events/0]
5 root 0:00 [khelper]
6 root 0:00 [async/mgr]
7 root 0:00 [kblockd/0]
8 root 0:00 [ksuspend_usbd]
9 root 0:00 [khubd]
10 root 0:00 [kmmcd]
11 root 0:00 [pdflush]
12 root 0:00 [pdflush]
13 root 0:00 [kswapd0]
14 root 0:00 [aio/0]
15 root 0:00 [nfsiod]
16 root 0:00 [crypto/0]
27 root 0:00 [mtdblockd]
28 root 0:00 [ubi_bgt0d]
29 root 0:00 [ubiblockd]
30 root 0:00 [rpciod/0]
51 root 0:00 /sbin/udevd --daemon
287 root 0:00 [ubi_bgt1d]
297 root 0:00 [ubi_bgt2d]
300 root 0:00 [ubifs_bgt2_0]
303 root 0:00 [ubi_bgt3d]
307 root 0:00 [ubifs_bgt3_0]
317 root 0:00 creatSystem
318 root 0:00 iappleplay
320 root 0:00 -/bin/sh
321 root 0:00 telnetd
2720 root 0:00 [RTW_CMD_THREAD]
2727 root 0:01 wpa_supplicant -i wlan0 -D wext -c /tmp/network.cfg -B
2756 root 0:00 udhcpc -T 1 -A 1 -i wlan0
2764 root 0:00 /usr/app/dlnaplay
2767 root 0:00 /usr/app/xxx
2770 root 0:00 /usr/app/emplayer
2773 root 0:00 /usr/app/webs
2822 root 0:00 /usr/app/shairport -a SMSL WIFI-017F29 - 192.168.0.190 -d
2823 avahi 0:00 avahi-daemon: running [none.local]
3612 root 0:00 -sh
3659 root 0:00 ps -aef
~ #
(Review will continue in the next few days after I play with it some more).