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  #81  
Old 10-27-2020, 01:18 PM
substance substance is offline
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Originally Posted by Bobone View Post
Oops, it's the MB50 that is Linux.
(I read an incorrect MS500 review that made me confused)

So... the MS500 is the last piece of HW designed for the MCS in the Windows version. Would you know which mobo is used?

Sorry for all the questions. Hopefully you can follow them and like the topic.

My main question remains which 7.1 USB DAC card or external USB DAC you would consider as I am looking for a replacement.

I don’t own the MS500 because I think it is inferior to MB100. MS500 uses the same control app as the MB100. The new linux based Autonomic servers use the new Tune Bridge app. This is a good give away that MS500 is still based on WinCE.
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  #82  
Old 10-27-2020, 01:21 PM
substance substance is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bobone View Post
Oops, it's the MB50 that is Linux.
(I read an incorrect MS500 review that made me confused)

So... the MS500 is the last piece of HW designed for the MCS in the Windows version. Would you know which mobo is used?

Sorry for all the questions. Hopefully you can follow them and like the topic.

My main question remains which 7.1 USB DAC card or external USB DAC you would consider as I am looking for a replacement.
Probably some Intel Celeron based board. The sw is not demanding. I upgraded mine to i7 just because. I considered water cooling it but then settled on a Noctua heatsink/fan combo. As I said, extremely overkill but I do this as a hobby, not expecting good results every time.
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  #83  
Old 10-27-2020, 04:33 PM
Bobone Bobone is offline
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Originally Posted by substance View Post
On the MMS-5a, the additional daughterboard which the 4x2ch analog outputs and digital coax are on, is not a DAC. It taps to the 7.1ch analog output header on the motherboard.
The operating system would see most other DACs but I don’t know if the Autonomic software would utilize all. I tried connecting various different DACs. Autonomic sw only recognized 2ch DACs and only 1 at a time.
Thanks!

The Nuvo card is definitely a DAC connected to a USB header. No doubt.

The way the MCS accepts the number and kinds of output is slightly mysterious. It may count the whole card as one unique playback device as seen in Windows mixer. Inside the MCS config utility, WMP enables you to split it up into 4 pairs and adress them separately. (As a side note, it is unknown how to adress the other pairs from other SW)

Would you by any chance know which VLC version is used (for streaming)? It ships with 2.1.2, but works with 2.2.8.

Last edited by Bobone; 10-29-2020 at 04:29 PM.
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  #84  
Old 10-27-2020, 08:16 PM
Bobone Bobone is offline
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Originally Posted by substance View Post
did anyone try the usb output of the mb100 and successfully get 24/192 output? for me it's always "unknown dac" and won't allow to select anything above 96khz.
Did you ever solve this issue?
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  #85  
Old 10-29-2020, 05:45 PM
substance substance is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bobone View Post
Thanks!

The Nuvo card is definitely a DAC connected to a USB header. No doubt.

The way the MCS accepts the number and kinds of output is slightly mysterious. It may count the whole card as one unique playback device as seen in Windows mixer. Inside the MCS config utility, WMP enables you to split it up into 4 pairs and adress them separately. (As a side note, it is unknown how to adress the other pairs from other SW)

Would you by any chance know which VLC version is used (for streaming)? It ships with 2.1.2, but works with 2.2.8.
I don’t know about the VLC version. It would be really cool if it could do DSD but I know that’s a limitation of the Windows OS.
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  #86  
Old 10-29-2020, 05:46 PM
substance substance is offline
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Originally Posted by Bobone View Post
Did you ever solve this issue?
Yes, it can do upto 192kHz.
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  #87  
Old 10-29-2020, 06:43 PM
Bobone Bobone is offline
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The development of the Autonomic product line and licensing is interesting...

Early, before 2010, Autonomic and Nuvo cooperated very tightly. You can see it in the SW, but also in the HW. The Nuvo NV-MP was in fact a small piece of HW that bridged between MCS installs on PCs and Nuvo multi-room equipment such as the Grand Concerto and Essentia.
The MPS4 V1 was launched around 2010. It combined a pc mobo running Autonomic’s MCS, the NV-MP bridge and a USB DAC soundcard. V2 was just a hw upgrade 2011-2013.

After that, or due to Autonomics launch of the the MMS hardware series, the relationship starts to falter. As you have noted, the hw in the MMS original series is rather cheap. Especially on the audio side. Somewhat inferior to Nuvo’s MPS4 that has a separate DAC. The lower quality could have been to avoid direct Nuvo competition?

Nuvo thereafter chooses to focus on wireless, like Sonos. They thereby detach themselves further from Autonomic and abandon their wired customer base. Pretty astonishing as the MPS4 could easily have been modified to provide a bridge between the two. Unclear if strategy or owner changes for both companies is behind the break. An unfortunate development as support for the MPS4 ceased. Especially as the V2 Seagate drive proved prone to crash...

Autonomic on the other hand extended their cooperation with Savant, Wadia, McIntosh to essentially clone the MMS/MPS4. With this success, they launched a project to port the MCS C# to Linux resulting in the MMS-e series. It appears to be largely the same core code. Unclear to me if they have now taken a leap with regards to the audio architecture?

The MMS-5A, Savant, McIntosh and MPS4 can basically run the same SW (5.35). Only small changes in settings and cosmetic skins differ.
As the MS500 is the latest(last) in the MCS-windows series from as late as 2018, I was hoping that it had some interesting specs, but apparently not?
Has anyone determined the details of the motherboard?

Furthermore, I am a bit interested in some of the functionality.
Does anyone use their MB100 to control multiroom systems?
If so, is it possible to address individual speakers from a smartphone? I loved this feature!
The ability still exists for AirPlay, but SpotifyConnect to speakers seems to have become broken recently in some Spotify upgrade.
What about for the MB100? Can you launch multiple SpotifyConnect streams (from two different smart phones/accounts) or address the speakers directly from the Spotify app? (Please excuse my limited knowledge of McIntosh’s multiroom abilities.]

Last edited by Bobone; 10-30-2020 at 10:32 AM. Reason: Typos
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  #88  
Old 10-30-2020, 12:39 PM
substance substance is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bobone View Post
The development of the Autonomic product line and licensing is interesting...

Early, before 2010, Autonomic and Nuvo cooperated very tightly. You can see it in the SW, but also in the HW. The Nuvo NV-MP was in fact a small piece of HW that bridged between MCS installs on PCs and Nuvo multi-room equipment such as the Grand Concerto and Essentia.
The MPS4 V1 was launched around 2010. It combined a pc mobo running Autonomic’s MCS, the NV-MP bridge and a USB DAC soundcard. V2 was just a hw upgrade 2011-2013.

After that, or due to Autonomics launch of the the MMS hardware series, the relationship starts to falter. As you have noted, the hw in the MMS original series is rather cheap. Especially on the audio side. Somewhat inferior to Nuvo’s MPS4 that has a separate DAC. The lower quality could have been to avoid direct Nuvo competition?

Nuvo thereafter chooses to focus on wireless, like Sonos. They thereby detach themselves further from Autonomic and abandon their wired customer base. Pretty astonishing as the MPS4 could easily have been modified to provide a bridge between the two. Unclear if strategy or owner changes for both companies is behind the break. An unfortunate development as support for the MPS4 ceased. Especially as the V2 Seagate drive proved prone to crash...

Autonomic on the other hand extended their cooperation with Savant, Wadia, McIntosh to essentially clone the MMS/MPS4. With this success, they launched a project to port the MCS C# to Linux resulting in the MMS-e series. It appears to be largely the same core code. Unclear to me if they have now taken a leap with regards to the audio architecture?

The MMS-5A, Savant, McIntosh and MPS4 can basically run the same SW (5.35). Only small changes in settings and cosmetic skins differ.
As the MS500 is the latest(last) in the MCS-windows series from as late as 2018, I was hoping that it had some interesting specs, but apparently not?
Has anyone determined the details of the motherboard?

Furthermore, I am a bit interested in some of the functionality.
Does anyone use their MB100 to control multiroom systems?
If so, is it possible to address individual speakers from a smartphone? I loved this feature!
The ability still exists for AirPlay, but SpotifyConnect to speakers seems to have become broken recently in some Spotify upgrade.
What about for the MB100? Can you launch multiple SpotifyConnect streams (from two different smart phones/accounts) or address the speakers directly from the Spotify app? (Please excuse my limited knowledge of McIntosh’s multiroom abilities.]
MB100 is single room only by default. You can make it two rooms if you connect a usb DAC. The software is exactly the same as autonomic mms. You can do airplay to each room. No spotify connect or roon. Since the mms-e series, mms-a platform has been abandoned. I don’t expect any new features added in the future.
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  #89  
Old 10-30-2020, 06:59 PM
Bobone Bobone is offline
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Ok, I understand. Is the MS500 more multi-room adapted and ready for e.g. the M128? Sorry for not understanding the McIntosh product suite.

SpotifyConnect is not a new feature. In multi room set-ups, for every Airplay speaker the MCS also publishes a SpotifyConnect speaker.
Airplay works perfectly and SpotifyConnecy still works partially, but a bug has been introduced recently: defined speakers get published to your smartphone, but only one works. I am hoping for an update to fix the problem as it’s a really cool feature.
It should be present for all multiroom or multi source MMS users.

If you can’t get SpotifyConnect to work on the MB100 from your Spotify app I guess that there may be two options:
- edit the registry
- fiddle with the Web configurator (and thereby edit the registry)

If the MB100 is set-up as a MMS, I could be able to guide you through it.
We could try on your MMS-5A first.

Last edited by Bobone; 11-12-2020 at 05:36 PM.
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  #90  
Old 02-14-2021, 03:07 PM
Golucid Golucid is offline
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I enjoy that this thread grew a few legs since I posted my initial upgrade essay in April 2015. I own 2 MB100 units and continue to use them actively. The only notable upgrade I installed since 2014 is switching out the 1TB SSD for a 2TB SSD.
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