I must say I am puzzled by the configuration. Because Roon offers DSP for the endpoint (ND555), the music being played must come to the QNAP first. Presumably the Melco registers the attached streamer as being on its switch, so the data comes back to the Melco which sends it out on its streamer port! Roon doesn’t run on the Melco so their can’t be any optimising!
With the Innuos boxes the music store and Roon are on the boxes. The Innuos dedicates 4GB of RAM to a buffer to avoid accessing the music store during playback. This results in low network traffic on the LAN side which is purely for communication with the Roon App.
As you go up the Innuos range greater attention is paid to vibration, EMI and RFI. I’ve progressed from demoing Zen Mini to Zen to Zenith. The sound gets better as you move up the range although I playback through my nDAC.
As @ChrisSU says the Zen Mini Mk 3 has spdif, USB and uPnP. What I have learned is that with a high quality USB to Spdif device my nDAC can sound far better than my CDX2 as a transport. The key is isolation of the Innuos box from the nDAC which is what the Audiophilleo + PurePower Mk II does. I have no doubt that the uPnP streamer output is equally good going up the range.
What sized HD/SSD to buy? Well it and Roon running on it are quite happy accessing music on any NAS, so why bother with a big onboard music store particularly with a 4GB music buffer. However, if you want Roon the USB output is stuck on a beta implementation which imho is a bit flakey.
That’s how i use my Melco (albeit with a different end point to you chaps). The LAN port of the Melco connects to a Netgear switch to which my Roon Nucleus is also connected. My Devialet sits on the Player port so the Melco acts as both the music store for the Nucleus and ‘optimised’ network feed back to the Devialet. I find it sounds better this way than connecting the Devialet straight to the switch. Maybe this will change when i put a 2960 in place but i’ve found with the Melco changes on the LAN port side of the network have little if any effect on the Player side. The Melco must allow discovery traffic through to the Player Port as Roon is able to see and transfer data to an appropriate RAAT or Roon capable connected to the Player port. I’m not recommending this as a solution - i just happen to have all the bits and found in this combination it all worked rather well…
Yes - it was more to answer your question to Bart - as you run an Naim DAC then the Innuos solution sounds like the best bet and from your comments, certainly seems to be doing the business.
My dealer has compared the two and their initially preferring the Melco has been superseded by the Innuos Zenith Mark 3. The simple explanation was that the latter was more ahakogie and had better software and GUI.
I agree that the configuration is a bit puzzling but, if the N10 can ensure that replay from local storage and replay from LAN (via switch/router) sound the same and if one does not mind transferring large files back and forth through the LAN at replay time, perfectly legitimate. Still it is very annoying that all these Melcos and Innuos server/transports do not offer high quality S/PDIF outputs beside high quality USB and ethernet outputs.
a new contender, state of the art server, with very high quality spdif and usb connectivity. For the reviewer, tested with 2 dacs, it is better vs melco n1zh2, top antipodes combo ( cx with ex) . But very expensive: around 16 k.
Already have thanks albeit not via my dealer. Know a couple of people with a Melco abd one kindly brought theirs round. Wasn’t night and day but the Melco was far less intuitive and had a much less involving presentation. All detail but no coherence.
I just read the review and good - there may be further to go than my Melco - but I now think I have a bargain at the price (I paid a quarter of that cost).
I agree with his description of Melco having a fluid sound and being best via Ethernet in its case.
As to discrepancies in views on it - it is fussy in that the cable you use matters a lot and it like to be on a HiFi shelf nearby the Streamer or DAC it is feeding I found.
It made other NAS devices accessed over a network via a normal Ethernet switch just sound wrong - very colored and ‘bumpy’ sounding with smearing of detail. Until I heard Melco remove these effects I thought that was what all Streaming systems had to sound like and they were not for me.
A nice review and I’m pleased at least some people are onto this. At some point I’ll audition the next model Melco up as that seems to be getting good ratings. But there is a strong camp of people that genuinely don’t like the effect the Melco brings - I respect the genuine opinions but personally disagree.
I discussed this with the Designer a few weeks ago when I talked with him at a show, as I’d preferred personally the HDD version over the SDD product they then had on offer and purchased the HDD one accordingly.
It was not that the HDD one was everywhere better, but that it had less noise in the bass and especially low-bass over the SDD version, which did in turn have better clarity in the upper-voice band.
These were my subjective appraisals in context of my Active system where the HDD Melco just romped-away over the SDD drive presentation in a way I musically loved - it was a bit more uncouth than the SSD Melco but it had a wild freedom of musical expression I enjoyed so made the call.
But in describing all this to the Designer he said they were indeed, for other reasons, moving away from SSD, due to problems with getting low noise for the overall running of them in the later iterations of product then emerging from SSD manufacturers - and discovering better ways of managing the HDD drives in meantime.
My Melco version (N1) does not incorporate these (N10) improvements as they come about by dispensing with Raid and having a separate supply. I think - my deduction here - that Melco presumed to run the version of Melco product I use in Raid 1 - found that Raid 0 sounded better - and then decided not to bother with Raid in future as Raid 0 is almost pointless anyway.
But like Naim, Melco also seem to learn from their own product development as to what actually works in terms of resulting musical performance, which I respect of both companies.
I’m sure that when most people, including me, talk about SSDs being quieter, for example in the UnitiCore, it’s because you can hear an HDD whirring away in the background and you can’t hear an SSD at all.
Best
David
