Innuos Zen Mini - a Journey into Streaming Audio

Thanks Mike.
Couldn’t agree more.

You’ve following this thread, so I can assure you, it’s all about the joy of music. (Which is shared for anyone that wishes to join in).

Albeit, with the diminutive Innous ZENmini mk 3. It’s a great little package and has allowed us to rediscover our 1000+ CD collection this past year.

From the ZENmini…
Currently listening to Kate Bush, 50 Words for Snow : Among Angels. The vocals and piano work are quite beautiful.

Have a great weekend listening to music :+1:

KR
R

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I’m not a fan of playlists and I can’t say I was enamoured by the addition of Smart Mixes to Innuos Sense but over the past couple of weeks my wife and I have tried the “Play Anything” option. It selects about an hours worth of music and as it nears the last five it generates further tracks and… it’s wonderful. A far better way of browsing through 26,633 tracks than scrolling through A to Z and we’ve been playing the Zenith for pretty much any hour we’re not watching TV or reading.

Have rediscovered stuff I’ve not heard in years and albums I’ve favourited I’d never gotten around to listening to. Strongly recommended. It’s addictive.

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When our ZM returned from its upgrade to S, Innous had already set up the latest s/w version. I’ve seen that feature and others at the top of the page view.

In the short time since our ZM came back, I’ve been so occupied just playing a bunch of albums I know and love. But, up to that point, I had been doing a much more “old school” thing. Now that we have ripped all our CD’s, I have been making a point of going through the collection alphabetically and playing them one by one.

Like you say, it’s a pleasure to be reminded why you bought a disc, (even though you may not be playing it anymore).

I listened to several Aztec Camera albums recently and really enjoyed them again.

Thanks for the recommendation.
I’m going to give that particular feature a go now.

KR
R

It’s been eight days @ratrat. Is the Smart Mix still running :slight_smile:

Haha :joy:
Sure, ill write a proper reply soon :+1:

@ratrat … wondering how your getting on with the upgraded mini… is it better as Roon core? I’m finding mine slowing up with recent updates, so wondering whether to upgrade or chop it in for Roon nucleus

Hello @Hifi-dog

First, apologies for radio silence. Been busy recently, with little time on the forum. Sorry to miss your post and question.

When I originally bought our ZM, I didn’t envisage using it for Room Core duties. Somehow, I wasn’t convinced it’s specification was up to the task. Maybe the newer S specification might suit the task better.

My longer term thoughts - explored earlier in this thread - is to add a dedicated box for this task.

Hope that helps

Good luck
R

No worries! I’ve since sold the innuos combo and bought a used Roon nucleus rev b… way faster and better sounding for Roon.

And how did you find Smart Mix?

Hello @Hifi-dog. Regarding your Nucleus. Have you fitted a hard disk into it?

It came fitted with a Samsung 2tb ssd by previous owner

Do you know if Qobuz sound better through the Roon than the Nova?

With my NDX2/HugoTT, the USB Harddrive sounds best, then the NAS drive followed by Qobuz.

ill try and report back!- certainly internet radio sounds better via roon than naim app, more weight.

Thanks @Hifi-dog. How do you get your ripped content onto the 2TB SSD in your Nucleus?

Very slowly! I had to borrow my daughter’s laptop which has no Ethernet. So you open up a web page of the nucleus ( the address is given on roon site) then identify internal storage, then drag and drop your music into that folder. I only had 800gb but it took nearly 36 hrs! Would have been faster wired apparently with Ethernet from nucleus to laptop.
Check out the knowledge base on Roon website.

A USB to Ethernet adapter on the laptop might have made the process a bit less painful.

Damn it! If only I knew such a thing existed and maplin were still around to avoid posting delays.

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Mine cost less than a tenner from ebay, so it’s maybe worth having one squirreled away ready for next time.

ill search now…yep £4-99 on the bay.

Thank you @Hifi-dog. Sounds painful. I shall follow @ChrisSU’s advice I think.

Currently I have about 1000 cd’s on my Zen Mini. I have them set up as a network share, and the Roon Core on my Nucleus ‘watches’ this share for any new rips on the Zeni mini. It’s seamless. The cd’s are displayed in Roon’s massive reservoir as if the rips resided on the Nucleus itself - nice.

However…sigh…my usual hifi nutter head has kicked in again…

What are your thoughts @Hifi-dog and @ChrisSU. Do you think that rips stored on the Nucleus itself, will sound better on playback, than the Nucleus rendering a ‘watched’ folder’ containing the rips on the Zen mini. Hope this makes sense. It really is no wonder my wife think that I/we are a crazy lot :laughing:

Nice chatting to you guys…