I agree with him one hand and not on the other as his tests don’t always go far enough. Especially the one on network cables as he dismisses they change sound but does not try the expensive ones only a bunch of standard ones. For me they made no difference but I have tried a number and a so called audiophile one.
Danger of looking at that stuff in isolation is you can make the figures do what you want, ideally need to consider it as part of a complete ecosystem. It’s certainly easy to over analyse this kind of thing. Experiment within your own budget I say and stick with what you like.
@Dave think i’m going the Zen 3 dealer has one in stock, i was going to try a home demo, but the more i read up about it, it makes so much sense and offers so much more (Roon/DAC/CD Ripping) and as you mentioned many LPS options, plus the company answers questions quickly and are very knowledgeable.
I have a stack on old CD’s i was going to through away, once i find them i intend to rip them, something i said i never wanted to do, but I am initially buying the Zen 3 as a server, then later maybe Roon and MAYBE later make use of it DAC.
Question is I also have 0.5TB of ripped and downloaded HiRes 24bit/FLAC/WAV/DSD files on my mobile and USB, with the Zen 3 do i just slot in the USB and it will pull it all in ?
Good choice, it’s a cracking device and will make life easy.
Yes, in the import screen you have the choice of adding via a USB or Nas. It’s pretty much intuitive.
I recently had a try of the Zen Mini Mk3 (assuming thats what you mean here) I found it was well built, was easy to setup and use and had some nice features like extra digital and analogue outputs giving it some extra flexibility later down the line if it got repurposed.
I was mainly interested in it being easy to use and being configurable as a Roon Core.
I’ve since repurposed a 2012 Mac Mini Server I had being used very occasionally which does have 2x SSD drives and 16GB RAM as well as a reasonable quad core i7 CPU. I may have an afternoon taking that apart and fit a 2TB SSD and see how that goes as a Roon Core.
I guess the right choice of product for most folks will need to factor for a number of elements. I certainly wouldn’t pick any of the viable choices on assumed sound quality alone as any of the music servers I’ve personally evaluated all seemed to fit well in to an equivalent system to the one I use each day.
I was fortunate that my local dealer was happy to prepare a system in their demo room that was a very close match to what I have at home and within that listening session had a chance to see how the various products were to actually use and live with. The nice thing I found with the Innuos was it had a good balance between the things that are usually important to someone buying a music server.
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Build quality - Solid mechanics and quiet operation
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Stable OS and user interface - InnuOS was easy to navigate, responsive and straightforwards
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“one box” rip/tag/store
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Output options - The Mini has a DAC and digital outputs, so you could just add active speakers and have a complete system
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PSU upgrade - £500 for a LPSU to satisfy that urge
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Price - It was attractively priced below £1k, this is smart on their part as beyond £1k is a psychological barrier when purchasing for many
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Roon - Can run as a basic Roon Core, it will probably struggle with more intensive DSP processing and won’t do room correction (not tested that personally)
I tried the Uniti core and it’s good in terms of rip and store and you choose your own storage which I like and which is a limitation of Melco and Innuos in my mind. It can’t be a Roon Core however and I’ve read enough niggles about it to wonder if more is possible with less cost and with me having more control of the setup. I think if it was priced at £1500 i’d rethink its value, at the price point its at, you can get a lot more for you money, a half decent spec Mac Mini for example or even a Roon Nucleus.
I’ve been close to buying a Melco server on a number of occasions both new and used but always found the user experience and “day to day” aspect of it as a product somewhat lacking.
You also rarely if at all see it demoed in a mid range or entry level system, in my experience it’s usually plumbed in to a system that is 500 level or above which in itself will do a grand job making music sound wonderful, however the conclusion there is that you could probably plug a modest PC or NAS in to the same system and still enjoy the music and be many ££ better off.
Personally mileage here may vary, this is just an opinion.
I’ve only had a chance to start looking at the Mac Mini Roon Core setup for a day or two, mostly as a first step and it was kit I had to hand that did the job I was looking to spend perhaps £2k on new hardware to do.
So far I’ve been pretty impressed with how polished it feels, and how it brings many sources in to one place, I’m going to experiment a little on ripping and DSP and maybe rewire things a bit on the LAN. It’s also nice as the Mac Mini is actually in another room and has a USB DAC which is on another system so it ties that all together and it also works on Sonos which I also have.
I imagine the Innuos could do a similar job, the Melco and Uniti Core cannot so for me having a Roon Core box as the content hub seems to be the right balance.
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Arghhh dealer sold the only unit, saying will try and get another in a day or so.
Late in the day question as committed and hopefully dealer will loan their Zen whilst waiting for mine, nice of them if they do as it runs their Roon as well.
Anyway I know I cant transcode to WAV, but can the Zen rip to WAV
I believe it can (at work so can’t check) but mine is set up for flac
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Roon sends everything as PCM anyway if you plan on using it with your Nova or as an endpoint itself. Only if you use it via UPnP it won’t transcode.
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At the moment no plan to use Roon.
Funny though today I linked all my Alexa Shows to Spotify and Tidal was dreadful sound, but love the Alexa play …
I thought you where, considering you mentioned it in your Zen posts. Obviously not.
Maybe, or maybe not, but with the I see it as bundled.
What Roon does, has no appeal for me.
Ok got the Zen from my dealer, have added it between the router and switch, went into the innuous web portal, shame I thought it was an innuos app.
Anyway turned off Roon, switched on UPnP, logged into Qobuz, but using the Android Bubbleupnp app its working, I think or have I missed something.
Initial thoughts are quite a big difference in scale, presence, detail.
I made minimal changes, as in just swapped out the Raspberry Pi for the Zen.
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I think you have a Nova ? My Zen is ethernet to switch, Nova ethernet to Zen.
For ease of demo I have, router into the Zen, then Zen through Cisco switch to Nova.
I’m sure it will sound good, I’m very happy with the Zen, works well as a Roon core as well.
I emailed Innuos, they’re support is superb, the had good knowledge of the Naim architecture, but never forced an opinion, as I had asked best way install, suggestion was remove the Cisco as another block in the chain and to use ethernet as that’s what Naim focus on.
I was expecting some major setup drama, so a bit shocked when it just worked.
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No it’s easy, I’m totally crap at I.T. and it was easy to set up, Innuos are really good on the support side. Is it the Zen Mk3 you are trialling ?
Roon I’m not sold on for my setup, as I don’t multiroom, dont want the DSP and not a fanboy of reading the artist blurb whilst listening.
However as mentioned @CrystalGipsy Roon streams PCM, but to be honest for now BubbleUPnP works just fine.
Yes MK3, the MK2 I was considering secondhand at half the price, but to me the Zen Mini MK3 was a all singing all dancing, no drama package.