Audio drop out on the Volumio App./SMSL N100

Help and Support
1

Greetings folks,

Just purchased a SMSL N100, as I needed a device to stream music and play my high resolution files which are stored on a SSD.

This device only works with the Volumio app.

The internet connection is wired.

Three weeks in and I’m tearing my hair out. This cost £480, a lot for this household, and I’ve wasted tons of time using AI/Google to find a solution. Pretty hacked off would be a good description of my current disposition.

  1. Audio drop out. This only happens when I am playing the stored music via the SSD source or Qobuz. It does not happen when I am sending Apple Music or YouTube audio to the N100 via Airplay. This strongly suggests the problem is with the Volumio app or my configuration of its settings. Both the external hard drive playback and Qobuz require the app, AirPlay does not. This also suggests the N100 is not to blame either. The dropout is intermittent but it’s ruining my listening pleasure as I’m constantly wondering when it will happen next.

  2. The DSD files from my SSD are not coming out of the N100 as DSD. I know this as the sample rate indicator on my Chord Mojo DAC is blue instead of white. Also, I can hear the difference. Possibly I have the settings wrong. My previous device, an ageing Astell&Kern player, outputted DSD and made the magic white indicator glow no problem.

I would be quite happy to admit I’m configuring these products wrong. In fact I would be relieved if that was the case.

Is there a detailed manual specifically for the Volumio app to tell me what setting does what?

Perhaps there is but I can’t find it.

The manual for the N100 is pretty minimal.

Would be grateful for any advice. My technical knowledge is poor so please explain any solutions to me as if you were addressing a 5 year old. But there again, why should I need a PhD in Rocket Surgery to make my £480 purchase work as advertised?

In case you’re wondering why I paid that amount over the odds for the N100, I have two words: import tax. Right now it’s a very expensive sculpture sitting in the corner of my living room and my wife has questions.

Many thanks.

2

It is a bit difficult to help if we don’t even know on which hardware you are running Volumio and which version (never say “the latest”).
Running on PI, x86, other?

3

Seems to be a streamer using OEM Volumio.

https://www.smsl-audio.com/portal/product/detail/id/907.html

4

In that case it is an issue for the Volumio Team, there would not be any support in this forum.
@volumio

5

As stated, the device ia a SMSL N100 which can only function with the Volumio App.

https://www.smsl-audio.com/portal/product/detail/id/907.html

As well as the persistent drop-out, over the weekend the Volumio App stopped connecting to the device, rendering it completely unusable.

I have now asked for a refund from the vendor via AliExpress.

This is done very reluctantly and I wish I could have avoided this because I was also charged £40 UK import tax, so I have lost money.

I am not criticising SMSL or Volumio, but the device/app simply did not work for me and I spent a long time trying to resolve the problem.

Volumio set up a meeting to discuss the issues but then cancelled because of an Italian national holiday. When I contacted them again to reschedule I heard nothing back.

6

Hello,

I am sorry for the unpleasant situation.

As I mentioned, the webcall was canceled due to the reason you reported. However, we did not receive any contact from your side to reschedule it.
Could you please let us know which email address you used to reach out?

Thanks for your cooperation.

Best regards,
Davide
VOLUMIO TECH SUPPORT

7

Apologies Davide, I made the request via return email. I should have used the main customer support addess instead. My fault. I appreciate the follow up but I have reluctantly decided to seek a refund off the vendor due to the issues outlined above.

Just to recap:

  1. Persistent audio-drop out on Qobuz and audio from the external SSD.
  2. The app is no longer connecting to the device. It takes 10 or more refreshes before the N100 appears on the Volumio opening screen and when it does appear, the screen goes blank - permanently. It just hangs, forever. This means that I cannot even do a factory reset.
  3. My DSD files not registering on the Chord Mojo.

Once again, thank you for the offer and I think it shows good customer service but I have decided to cut my losses.

Kind regards,

Matt

8

To answer your previous question, I replied using the email: techsupport@volumio.org

I have now returned the SMSL N100 to the vendor in China and I am seeking a refund off them, at considerable cost (£34 shipping, on top of paying the initial import tax of £40).

I expected the product to be straightforward ‘plug in and play’. You know, like 99.99% of other consumer level audio products out there. How naive I was!

Instead I spent two weeks trying to work out why it did not operate as advertised.

Here’s a brief rundown of the problems with the SMSL N100/Volumio and the various troubleshooting routes I went down.

1. The audio interruption issue with Qobuz and external SSD playback

Possible reasons: Network instability (Wi Fi/wired network interference or insufficient bandwidth). The N100 was wired via an ethernet cable (1GB/sec displayed on the app). I am not aware of network issues. My other internet enabled devices work fine. Apple Music - which bypassed the Volumio App - worked perfectly on the N100, as did Youtube.

The internet suggested that perhaps there might be a bug in the N100 or Volumio firmware?

I considered USB/SSD compatibility issues (such as unsupported format, insufficient power supply). But there was also dropout on the native Qobuz installation as well as the SSD.

Perhaps insufficient device cache resulted in data stream interruption?

The solution to that would have been prioritising a wired network (Ethernet) to reduce Wi Fi interference. But as I just mentioned, the N100 was wired. I did do that.

Another solution offered by Google/AI was to reduce audio resolution (e.g. play 16bit/44.1kHz FLAC).

Well, that would have defeated the entire point of acquiring the N100 - to play music in HD formats.

Another ‘solution’ the internet suggested was to format SSD as FAT32/exFAT (to avoid NTFS compatibility issues).

I did this. No joy.

Perhaps update firmware?

I downloaded the latest firmware from the SMSL official website.

Eliminate hardware poor contact or power supply issues was also suggested.

Every other electrical device in my house works fine, including my audio equipment. Why should the SMSL N100 get special power supply modifications? Any anway, how on earth would I be able to do that?

2. The abnormal DSD output.

Regarding the abnormal DSD audio output (ie wasn’t correctly recognized by the Chord Mojo, didn’t show ‘white’ indicator).

Possible reasons suggested: N100 has not correctly set the DSD output mode (such as mistakenly setting it to PCM transcoding).

Compatibility issues with USB DAC (Chord Mojo)? Perhaps the DSD file format did not match (such as DSD64/DSD128)?

I checked N100/Volumio audio output settings. Couldn’t find “Native DSD” to select instead of “DoP” or PCM.

I tried different DSD files to eliminate single file corruption issues as a possible cause. This did not resolve it.

Suggestion: replace USB cable. Yep, did that. No dice.

Suggestion: test other DACs: verify if it is a compatibility issue with Chord Mojo.

I can’t afford multiple DAC’s (in fact the N100 was already stretching my budget), but the Mojo works just fine with my old and slow Astell&Kern Kann, and the white light always appears with that device and it sounds like DSD (unlike the DSD playout on the N100).

3. After 2 weeks the Volumio application froze - blank screen after multiple connection attampts to the N100 - and so the N100 couldn’t be operated.

This was the final straw. My ‘fuck it’ moment.

Possible reasons suggested by Google/AI: N100 not on the same LAN as the phone/tablet (yes it was).

I restarted the N100 and router a number of times.

Checked the IP address of N100 in the router background to ensure that the phone is on the same network as it.

I didn’t switch to web-based control ie enterring http:// [N100’s IP address] to directly accesses Volumio. Perhaps I should have but bny that point I had given up.

I ralso einstalled the Volumio App, didn’t work.

I wanted to restore factory settings on the N100 but was unable to do so because the app wouldn’t start.

Epilogue

So buying the N100 cost me an extra £70+ in import tax and shipping costs to send it back, even if I get a full refund off the vendor which is by no means certain.

I spent hours and hours and hours trying to resolve the issues before the App eventually froze me out of the N100.

I emailed Volumio asking for the chat to be rescheduled and heard nothing back. I can produce the email to techsupport@volumio.org to prove this.

Would all of this have this happened if this was an established audio brand with a good reputation, such as Naim? Hard to say, but I suspect not.

When things started to go wrong I went on to the Volumio forums (here) looking for a solution. Then I saw all the posts from people experiencing problems with other devices using Volumio products and my heart sank. I should have checked that first before making my purchase. The reviews on the App Store should have been a warning as well.

What can I say? I’ve lost a lot of money. Sticking with established audio brands next time. When I can finally save up the money.

9

Dear @MattP ,

Thank you for taking the time to share your experience in such detail, we’re truly sorry to hear about the frustration and inconvenience you’ve faced.
We fully understand how disappointing it is to invest time, effort, and money into a product that didn’t meet your expectations.

About the reply you mention, I did not receive anything about rescheduling. If you want you can forward the mail to the techsupport address.

Regarding the issues you encountered, especially audio dropouts, DSD playback, and the app freezing, we take these matters seriously.
Every report helps us improve and strengthen Volumio’s compatibility, particularly with third-party hardware like the SMSL N100.

I am confident we could find a way to troubleshoot these issues as they are not normal behavior, especially considering the device had successfully passed a detailed QA test.

We truly appreciate your honesty and the effort you put into explaining everything, your feedback is extremely valuable to us.
Should you ever consider giving Volumio another try in the future, we’d be happy to offer you direct support with setup and troubleshooting, with access to priority assistance channels.

We wish you all the best in your future audio journey, and please don’t hesitate to reach out if there’s anything else we can do.

Kind regards,
Davide
VOLUMIO TECH SUPPORT

10

@DED
I’d like to revive the topic if possible, I’m another SMSL N100 buyer that is having issues with the hardware using Volumio.
For me, when the device is working, it’s working fine. The main issue however is connectivity. When setting up the device, you pretty much have to disable any wireless internet around the flat, because SMSL is having hard time creating a hotspot network. And don’t you think about switching it off (the streamer), because it may not connect with network again. I had numerous cases of issues described above - looks like something is trying to connect, but not fully succeeding (aforementioned black screens when try to reach the device using its IP address or errors like CONNECTION REFUSED). Also, I remember the streamer looking to be connected with my WIFI (via router settings), but no connection could be made, so it’s pretty weird. My internet is not a problem, as my another streamer (ifi Zen Stream), which is built on modified Volumio has no issues at all (but I remember it had some in the beginning). The worst thing is that the moment SMSL starts having the issues it’s all over, it’s either factory reset or no connectivity. I’m pretty sure there are some issues on the software level and they would need to be resolved via Volumio firmware update on SMSL (the same way as ifi resolved their issues). Is that something that you plan to work (with SMSL?) on to resolve that in the future? And if so, is there any estimated time of arrival for the fix? Scrolling through internet, lot of users report similar issues so I’d assume Volumio should be well alerted about the problem. Thanks in advance for you reply.

11

I’m facing a similar issue, the device seems to be connected but cannot be accessed either by app or webpage. In this situation a factory reset has to be made, and to do the reset you have to shut down the wifi for it to stop trying to connect and open its hotspot. It’s really annoying

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12

How do you do a factory reset of the N100 when it can’t connect to the app? Is that done by holding the power button down?

I have also had the issue of the N100 showing it’s connected to my router but I can’t access it using Volumio on the phone or via webpage in windows browser after it was working fine initially. However if I let it sit for quite a while, I haven’t actually timed how long, I just leave it and check later in the day, it eventually establishes a connection. Then if I keep it powered on the connection remains good. But if I shut down and power it back on it might connect or might not and then I have to let it sit for quite a while before a connection gets established again.

I’m not ready to give up on the N100 yet because sound quality is the best of all streamers I own and the price/performance ratio is fantastic. I hope they can get this issue fixed so it will be recognized by Volumio as soon as it’s powered on 100% of the time.

For people who want to primarily use the N100 with Roon someone on another forum found that with Balena Etcher they were able to create their own SD card with the FriendlyElec NanoPi NEO3 distro of Debian Linux and then they installed Roon-bridge, and with that Roon recognizes the N100 as Roon certified. With that option only USB works on the N100. However if you are going USB out to a DAC then that’s all you need. You also have the option to go back to the stock Volumio OS by swapping the sd card back in.

1 Like
13

Yep, the same experience here, seems to be common thing across many N100 users. Factory reset needs to be done via Volumio app or entering its IP address in your browser (which is actually more reliable way of doing it). Like one of the above post mentioned, it’s best to block it on router, but from my experience it is not always needed. You just have to hold down the power button for 5 secs or so and connect to the device using netork it creates (on mine it’s volumio-xxx(where xs are some digits) or via its hostpot IP. Then you do the restart and it should work. What I also noticed is that I cannot assign myVolumio account to this unit, there are some issues with date etc, but for anyone interested - I sent Volumio support team my error log and from what I was told - software fix is on its way (but no ETA given unfortunately), we just have to wait. The issues the streamer is experiencing are very similar to what happened to ifi Zen Stream at the beginning, so I’m quite hopefull they can be rectified, it’s just a matter of time.

14

Thanks for the info and feedback on your experience. I ended up reinstalling the firmware and then disabling the wireless connection in the Volumio app settings since I use a wired connection for the best sound quality, and the N100 has worked flawlessly since I did that. It immediately connects to the app every time now.

Is there a way to install Volumio plugins? When I go to that tab nothing can be searched for. Was that feature disabled?

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15

Interesting because I was not ale to make it work via ethernet even when I assigned a separate IP adress to it and connection was displayed in the Volumio app.

Regarding plugins - my understanding is this is the same issue as with the device missing on the list of hardware available to activate myVolumio on, it has something to do with Volumio having hard time pulling correct time and date from internet, which is weird, but I found it reocurring couple of times on this forum.

Lastly, SSH can be activated via dev options (/dev) but can’t say anything about connecting to the streamer or sending commands.

16

If I’m not mistaken, the N100 runs on a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (CM4). There are multiple reports that certain CM4 and Raspberry Pi 4 batches have issues with date synchronization. I own two units, one works flawlessly, while the other consistently throws date misalignment errors.
So stating that Volumio is having issues pulling the date is not fully accurate.

The latter can be easy resolved by running a simple startup service, which does miracles.

And if you dislike google, you can also use:
ExecStart=/bin/bash -c "sleep 30; /usr/bin/sudo /bin/date -s \"$(/usr/bin/curl -s --head head http://time.is | grep ^Date: | sed 's/Date: //g')\""

17

Tomasz_G, I had a spare high speed sd card and did a clean install of the firmware on that and I’m loving the N100 now. I noticed an improvement in SQ with ethernet versus wireless and Tharbamar did as well in his review of the N100.

I was able to access ssh on the N100 but it’s asking for a password to get in. I tried a few commonly used one and they didn’t work.

1 Like
18

Wheaton, I know very little about Linux and Pi devices but on Headfi it was stated that instead of Raspberry Pi CM4 the N100 runs on NanoPi NEO3. Does this change the method to fix the date synchronization? Is there a way to apply a date fix when the ssh connection to the N100 is asking for a password?

19

I think the best way is to connect with the Vendor as this is an OEM build.

20

Ok. In the meantime I’ve changed my router and finally was able to connect SMSL via ethernet and since then, it works without any issues. The password thing is the same issue that stopped me from connecting to the streamer and entering some magic commands :wink: all over the internet they say it should be “volumio” but it is not. Since Volumio support assured me about the fix coming in the future, I’m happy to wait for now and see if the date synchronization issue will be rectified.

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