Follows is a brief update to my review of the Small Green Computer SonicTransporter i5 and Sonore UltraDigital, as new information has become available.

A couple of months into ownership of the SonicTransporter rig I made some changes to the setup. First came a Denafrips GAIA DDC to replace the Sonore UltraDigital unit. The Denafrips GAIA is a digital to digital converter that takes inputs from multiple digital sources in a range of formats, (USB, SPDIF, AES/EBU) and spits out cleaner re-clocked digital and includes i2s as an output. I reviewed the GAIA / Terminator here, so you can read about that if you wish. The GAIA offers a step up in performance over the UltraDigital, as it should, for almost four times the price. It’s also a Denafrips product and I’m using a Denafrips DAC, so there are some brand synergy benefits to consider. Anyway, all that’s good.

What isn’t so good is that I moved the digital rig from one side of the room to the other, and even though everything was plugged into the same source (my PS Audio P10 regenerator), I picked up a high frequency ‘hum’ somewhere along the way. It was annoyingly apparent with the high-efficiency Klipschorns I had in my system for a while, then later the Spatial Audio X3, which I reviewed here. With my new Piega C40 it’s barely noticeable, still, it shouldn’t be there and I can’t find a way to eliminate it entirely. I tried moving the router into another room to add distance between it and the other gear, and I also added a network switch on the recommendation of Small Green Computer. Neither of these two things made any difference. I’m living with it for now because with my less efficient Piega’s there’s really no issue, but if I switch back to horns at some point then I’m going to need to address it.

What really bugs me though, about this multi-box SonicTransporter / UltraRendu / Gaia DDC setup, is the frequent ‘crashes’. I won’t labor this point too much, but the issue is that on some occasions when I come to sit down with the intention of just relaxing and playing music, the damn thing doesn’t work. And it isn’t always the same routine that’s needed to bring it back online, which adds to the frustration and the time it takes to get things back up and running.

For example, I might open up the iPad, launch Roon, go to a playlist, hit play on a track, and the system just hangs. This might be because the USB drive has become ‘disconnected’ from the i5, or some other reason yet to be determined. So I’ll go to Roon settings and look at ‘Storage’ to see if the drive is connected or not. Sometimes it is, other times it isn’t. If it isn’t, I’ll generally start by rebooting the ASUS router, to see if that fixes it. Sometimes it does, other times it does not. If not, my next move is to log in to the SonicTransporter via a browser, then look to see if the USB drive is connected there. Sometimes it is, other times it isn’t. If not, then my next step is to reboot the i5, which, as with rebooting the router, takes a while. After the i5 is back up, it takes a while to get the USB drive reconnected, then I reboot Roon remote and hopefully, that’s fixed the issue. Sometimes it has, other times it hasn’t. If not, then I usually end up having to pull the DC power supply going into the UltraRendu, (even though the UR shows as a selectable endpoint in Roon). Sometimes that fixes it, other times it does not. After pulling the power from the UR, if that doesn’t get me back online then my next step is usually to reboot the router again and sometimes the i5. On Sunday night just gone, it took me almost an hour to get music playing, by which time I’d lost all enthusiasm for listening and just switched the thing off and went to bed.

So that’s something I’m having to live with. It’s quite possible that my situation is unique, but it is what it is. I don’t recall any such fuss with the one-box Aurender N100H.

Another quirk with the Small Green Computer i5 is that I haven’t been able to figure out how to add new files to the USB-connected hard drive without disconnecting the drive and plugging it directly into my MacBook. That goes for adding new files and also backing up the drive to a second drive on the network.

Now in the case of trying to copy new files to the USB drive, I don’t think I’m doing anything obviously wrong. I can see the drive from my Macbook Pro and I can navigate to the Music folder on the drive. I can open a folder on my Macbook and see the new files I want to copy across. But it won’t let me drag/drop from the Macbook to the Music folder on the Seagate USB drive. Permissions look OK, but it just won’t have any. Likewise going the other way. If I want to pull files from the USB onto a backup drive, it won’t allow me to.

This is an irritation compounded by the fact that I don’t have high-speed internet at home. Why is that an issue? Well, I can’t stream from services like Tidal and I can’t simply purchase new hires files and play them, because I can’t download them at home. So, to add new music, I need to buy a CD, rip the files temporarily onto my Mac, disconnect the USB drive physically from the i5, set the USB drive up adjacent to the Mac, plug into the Mac using an adaptor, because the (damn dirty) Mac doesn’t have a USB, copy the ripped files to the USB drive, then reinstall the USB drive into the system. Then I have to go through the whole rigmarole of trying to get Roon back up and seeing the USB drive. That can take a half-hour of rebooting things in the right sequence then waiting for Roon to rebuild the database for the new files to be playable. So adding a new CD can easily take an hour or more. What a pain in the arse. And if I want to back up the files from the new CD then there’s even more time needed to set up the backup USB Drive and keep it in sync with the active drive. If I want to buy high res files from HDTracks, as I do occasionally, then I need to run to the library to buy and download the music via their Internet, then go through the whole thing again back home.

So where I sit right now is that I’m seriously thinking of aborting this whole multiple box approach and going back to a simple one-box solution. I haven’t pulled the trigger at the time of writing this, but it’s probably going to happen soon.

Given my own situation, it’s hard for me to recommend the Small Green Computer SonicTransporter and Sonore equipment to anyone else, even though I’m sure some people have it all working trouble-free.

CAH

FEB 2022

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