IMPRESSIONS: Have had my DMP-A8 (firmware 1.2.45) for a bit over a week and am VERY pleased with the sound it delivers WHEN it actually works. The DMP-A8 with AKM DAC's delivers a sound stage with far more breadth, depth and detail than my beloved OPPO-105D with SABRE DACs. Yet as other reviews have observed the DMP-A8 does this in an understated way that's not overly bright or fatiguing for multi-hour listening sessions. ISSUES: Have had a LOT of them.....all apparently networking and software-related. 1) GENERAL NETWORKING, RESCANNING and 4TB INTERNAL DRIVES I have a QNAP NAS with over a TB of FLAC files that I hoped to transfer over my LAN to the 4TB NVME drive I installed in my DMP-A8 to turn it into an audiophile jukebox holding all music files locally. SMB networking via the default credentials (user=root password=123) was abysmally slow between my NAS and the DMP-A8. It was also slow when I tried uploading Qobuzz HD files directly from my iMac running latest OSX Sonoma to the DMP-A8 as well. Connections were fast at first, then slowed to a crawl taking many hours to move music folders that should have taken only minutes on my wired LAN. Rescanning my EversoloMusic Library on the 4TB NVME drive took a long time and often stalled. At present no amounts of reboots of my computer, my iPad, my DMP-A8 or my router are able to unfreeze the EverSoloMusic folder on my 4TB NVME SSD. The latest EverSolo iPad app shows the following Library error: EverSoloMusic | 24120 tracks Not scan usb://ED8F-75DD/EverSoloMusic The re-scanning function is somehow broken because if I tediously navigate via FILES to specific folders not findable by SEARCH, I can locate and manually play tracks. The 2nd line in the above error seems to indicate that the internal 4TB NVME drive holding my root EverSoloMusic folder is being treated/used like an external USB drive rather than a PCIe 3.0 bus. SUGGESTION: If all local and networking access to the 4TB NVME m.2 SSD drive is mediated by a USB rather than PCIe 3.0 interface it's possible this could be a root cause of a variety of networking-related issues. 2) DMP-A8 KEEPS LOSING PLAY LISTS After spending non-trivial amount of time creating playlists, I found to my surprise they all became lost whenever major networking issue arose. SUGGESTION: Given the investment in time users make to create and curate playlists, Eversolo should have a playlist backup feature allowing playlists to be exported to a network drive and/or USB flash drive so they can be re-imported if/when the DMP-A8 crashes or is factory reset. 3) BRAND/QUALITY OF 4TB NVME SSD OPTIONS I normally purchase top-of-the-line Samsung SSDs for all my computer gear. However, after reading online that any brand of PCIe 3.0 would be fine given the access speeds of the DMP-A8 and that PCIe 4.0 NVME drives would be overpriced overkill, I purchased a 4TB TeamGroup SSD from NewEgg that appeared to meet all of the official EverSolo specs. I learned today from the dealer who sold me my DMP-A8 that drive brands can and do matter and that he and others have had similar issues that disappeared once they switched to a name-brand drive like SAMSUNG. I now will have to spend the time to remove my current 4TB drive, copy its contents to an interim drive, return drive to NewEgg for refund, purchase a much more expensive Samsung SSD, restore previously saved contents upon its arrival, and re-install new SSD it in my DMP-A8. SUGGESTIONS: EverSolo should certify and/or recommend a list of NVME SSD drives that are known to work flawlessly with the DMP-A8 so users can confidently purchase internal SSD drives that will solve problems rather than introduce them. And as with playlist suggestion above, it would be very useful for users to be able to backup the internal SSDs in their DMP-A8's to external drives so that in the event of a failed drive, file system corruption, factory reset, or the need to upgrade DMP-A* to a larger internal SSD that the backup can be restored to a new or larger SSD drive.
I am using a Crucial P3 with 4TB NVME SSD and it works fine. The issue i have is, never fill the 4TB up to the max, cause the Eversolo DMP-A8 can't handle it very well. Database will be terrible slow and the rescan needs ages to do. It can handle up to 1TB in good speed, if you really fill it up to the 4TB max you will not have any fluent experience with your DMP-A8 anymore. The A8 is acting very slow then and the database is getting very slow. i needed two days to fill up the 4TB SSD just to see the result was an nearly unusable device. After formating the 4TB back to virgin and just used 1TB max, it works fine. Anything else will slow the device incredible down. I am using NTFS btw.
It would be interesting to see if filling to 1TB a disc with 1TB capacity makes it slow too; my point is the database size growing too much, and not the disc being "too full". Apart the fact that wasting the 75% of a 4TB NVME SSD is also a waste of money...
I experience the same problem very slow transfer thru A8, so I got Orico M.2 NVMe SSD enclosure on Amazon. I put my 4TB HP FX900 Pro into it, connect to desktop by USB C and transfer 3.6 TB of ISO, Flac, MP3 files within 10 hours. Then install 4TB SSD back to A8. Everything works great and super fast playing audio files speed !!!
For clarification, the DMP-A8 uses AKM DAC chips (AK4191EQ + AK4499EX) Fwiw, I'm using only a 1TB Western Digital BLACK SN770 M.2 NVMe without any issues. Yeah, it's geared towards gaming but it's inexpensive and good enough. I keep only the highest of hi-res files on it. The rest of the media comes either from streaming services or locally stored files on an ethernet connected Synology NAS. If I need to add more hi-res to the NVMe I use a usb thumb drive to copy over to it. Fairly convenient.
I used a 2 TB WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe™ SSD without issues. I formatted it as ExFAT (following Eversolo recommendation) and I plan to leave 1/3 of the space unused. The folders & files transfer was done following Method 2 on the "DMP-A6 Song Transfer Tutorial" available in the support pages. It was pretty straightforward using a Mac as I did a quick drag & drop between both windows (DMP-A8 and the Mac). Once everything was correctly displaying under the Files menu, you just have to create the Music Library selecting the SSD Folder. Tutorial "DMP-A6 Music Library User Guide---Index, Track, Artists, Albums". Hope it helps. Cheers.
@Resili22 Thanks for help, i could try the same way. I was just concerned to use ExFat cause some people reported about disappeared SSD Drives after formating to ExFat, so i've chosen NTFS to go for sure. Probably it is the best way to leave 1/3 of space in any way, so the database and Eversolo Firmware can operate in perfect speed. The interesting to know would be if just the 4TB sizes are probably to slow if filled to max. I've ordered an exclosure case now like @nhtdm recommended and then i try it again. I am also at a iMac Pro and filled it up over LAN Connection. I will give a feedback as soon as possible, need to wait for my case first.
I have fully loaded 3.6TB of SACD ISO, Flac and MP3 files of three music languages English, French and Vietnamese on a 4TB SSD. So I can't used database feature of the A8 and I prefer not to.
This has already been asked for many times, although under different names, one of which being: "The screensaver to have an OFF option". Hopefully it will be implemented (I think the devs are getting bored of seeing this asked everywhere... :-D )
Very good, then let's hope that a miracle will happen in the new year (even if this is a marginal problem)
First post here, wanted to chime in on the 4TB SSD comments. I use a Crucial 4TB drive. I first formatted the SSD in the A8, then took it out and copied on my laptop more or less 2,5 TB of music to the "Music" folder on the SSD (about 45000 tracks, 2500 artists, mainly CD quality Flac, but quite a bit of hi-res music as well from Qobuz & HD Tracks). I then re-installed the SSD and assigned the "Music" folder on the SSD as Music Library. It took the A8 about 50 minutes to scan it all. Operation is quite smooth, it does take some time for the artist pictures to load. What is bugging me a little about those artist pictures is that, despite the "local data" option being selected, images are being attributed to the artists. I'd prefer that the cover of an album would be shown as standard option to mimic more using my library of physical CDs. But I'll make a post with a couple of suggestions/questions about navigating bigger libraries on local SSD, I haven't found a post about that topic.
