Micromega M-100/150 field reports

I received my M100 last week.  So far, so great.  It is replacing a VAC Avatar Super, so going from pure tubes to pretty much pure digital.  The amp and streamer are outstanding with really good imaging and presence.  I run a Thorens TD125 Mk II (Vinyl Nirvana modded with SME M2-9 tonearm and Ortofon 2M Black) into the phono.  I can say the phono stage on the VAC was better, but the Micromega is very good.  I’m going to try feeding a Parks Audio Puffin to see if I can warm it up a bit.  
I have the MARS and really like it.  The difference on and off is not subtle and plan to leave it on auto (on).  Other items are a Purepower 1050 power regenerator and the power to the M100 is via an Audience Powerchord. I haven’t compared to stock.  

"The amp and streamer are outstanding with really good imaging and presence."

benb: that's my experience too with the M-100, and it just keeps getting better the more material I listen to (varying genres, recordings, volume levels etc). No MARS, no power conditioning and a Cullen Cable Crossover Series as power cable. Other than Audioquest Sydney rca from CDP (which I don't use much), no other fancy-pants interconnects to speak of. For my money those aren't a good & credible investment.

Like you I'm getting super-good imaging & stage, presence and drive. Totally stoked.

I did have a weird encounter during .flac playback via http over ethernet through the M-100 LAN input. I use the BubbleUPnP for DLNA/Chromecast android app as control point, with the M-100 as UPnP renderer via its LAN input. Btw the BubbleUPnP app is excellent: well-designed, feature-wealthy, responsibly and frequently maintained, rock-solid stable. Superb value, from the Google Play Store.

I use the Micromega android app to control the M-100 hardware: volume, input sources, etc. Sadly, that app is of entirely different caliber than BubbleUPnP (see my earlier posts about that).  No response from Micromega to my questions about that. 

I had just played back a single track from .flac, and selected another single track in BubbleUPnP.   I hit Play - and nothing happened. Tried again: nothing. Rebooted the BubbleUPnP app - and it no longer found the M-100 as a UPnP renderer on the LAN. Rescanned for devices in the Micromega app, and it too no longer found the M-100. Restarted both Micromega app and M-100: still no UPnP renderer.  M-100 still had a valid IP, an active network connection and responded to ping. All other M-100 functions and source inputs still worked fine, as did the remote.

The tl;dr: after hours of troubleshooting including router and network debugging, and hw/sw isolation, I finally pulled the nuclear option and reapplied the firmware update to the M-100 network module. That fixed it: M-100 reappeared as UPnP renderer and playback via its LAN input works again.

A cautionary tale but hopefully useful outcome if other owners have the same problem (I didn't find any out on the interwebz). I think it's highly unlikely the BubbleUPnP control app 'exploded' the UPnP interface on the M-100 network module - for now I'm treating it as an isolated "lost-its-mind" failure on Micromega's part.

Mine gets lost in internet space all the time. The android app can't even find it now, jriver loses it all the time I don't bother with it anymore I just use my cdp. I can ping it, I can get to it typing in it's ip address. I did all the recent updates. The MARS works bery well.