Thanks Michael, enjoy the Statement (and PheonixNET?).
1 Like
Just another couple of points to complete the picture. I would guess that Mikehughescq is correct in saying that a Zenith MkIII + Phoenix USB will get you something like 80% of a Statement’s performance, and frankly would give a wonderful and most satisfying rendition of your music collection. Adding the additional PhoenixNET would certainly bring the Z+N2 performance to 85 if not 90% of the Statement’s.
There are of course some other additional considerations. If gradual improvement is your bag, then you’ll probably want to use good quality USB, Ethernet and Power cables, which do bring substantial rewards with the Innuos boxes. That being the case, you’d need to add the cost of 1 or 2 power cables, a USB and an Ethernet cable to the equation.
In addition, if you did elect to buy the Statement, you’d still be able to upgrade the PC plus umbilicals and add a PhoenixNET to give a level of sound quality performance very rarely achieved in the digital domain.
1 Like
I have to ask a very stupid question. I have an eR, Nucleus+, Meridian Ultra Dac with Network Card. I stream Tidal. All connected via cat 5/6 cables–Blue Jeans, and others. I am contemplating getting a PhoenixNET, which would replace the eR. Can someone explain what and where a Zenith, Phoenix USB, and or a Statement would do and how they would be connected. While I have followed this thread hoping to get more insight, but it appears everyone else must know this. I have been to the Innuos web sight, and still have no clue. Stealing the tag line from another thread, HiFi in the 70’s and 80’s was so simple.
The Statement would replace and upgrade on the Nucleus+ and quite probably EtherRegen + AD clock in one fell swoop. The PhoenixNet would take the last part even further.
The Zenith would replace and probably upgrade on the Nucleus+. The PhoenixNet on the EtherRegen + AD clock.
If the Meridian DAC connects via Ethernet you won’t need the Phoenix USB - but if it connects via USB, the Phoenix USB will improve things further.
Trying to be succinct and clear there, but if it’s simply mystifying I’ll come back with something more long winded….
Hi Michael, bear with an ageing fading memory here should others have asked the same question, but would you mind declaring your system on your profile. We are all in different camps on system balance, but it would be great to understand your front end emphasis ( around 50 K? ) in the confines of the rest of your gear. ATB Peter
Sorry. I thought it was there - the last brain cell died of loneliness many years ago over here!
Its ND555 with 2xDR PSU, Hi-Line, 552 DR with 500DR and Shahinian Diapasons, Sean Jabobs PowerBlack mains blocks (2) and Belden Cat6a Ethernet cable (floating) put together by DesignaCable. Plus, now, of course: Innuos Statement + PN.
1 Like
Well, here I am wrapping up my impressions with a little information on the tracks I initially used to evaluate the gear and what it was I heard or didn’t.
First off is Elisabeth Schwarzkopf’s earlier and less mannered recorded performance of the Strauss Last Songs – with Ackermann not Szell conducting. This is an old mono recording but it captures her voice at this stage very well, with all its body and breath. Many systems and components simply fail to get this across. A boring little trick on this is the fricative “t” on the end of traumert in September. Even certain cables that lower the noise floor at the expense of the music, such as the Chord Music and Naim Superlumina DIN to DIN, can lose this. But it’s the resonant body of her voice, particularly on September and Im Abendrodt, that are important to me. They make her incomparable for me in these performances.
The there’s Angela Hewitt’s performance of the Chopin Nocturnes. I want her Fazioli to sound like one and not a Steinway or Bosendorfer. And I want to be able to follow (and be enchanted by) all the inflections in her playing.
Still on Chopin, there’s Murray Perahia’s Etudes, where I want to be reminded that he piano is also a percussion instrument with rasping resonant lows and strings that can be struck harshly as well as vibrate with bell-like highs. I also want to be able to hear the mixture of decay and impact in complex passages.
No less demanding is Provkofiev’s 2nd piano concerto – I generally choose Krainev’s performance with Kitaenko. When a system can hold the first movement together in al its stridency, resonance and interplay, I find it an incredibly moving experience.
A completely different kettle of fish is the Naim album Propaganda by Ted Sirota’s Rebel Soul and in particular the first track: Geronimo’s Free. This for a number of reasons – it has great rhythmic drive and is very well recorded, so there are plenty of timbres and textures the system can capture, from the drums through to the brass. Most important, there is some really great messing around with the performers playing off each other and this should come across, not get lost in a mush of detail.
A weirdo that has caused many Hi-Fi store people to blench is the Cocteau Twins’ Musette and Drums which has howling crescendo of flailing guitar and Elizabeth Fraser keening in what can and should be a very powerful interplay over the drum machine. Either a system holds it together and allows her voice to float above or it barely works at all.
I use Afgin’s Astral Projection as a reasonable benchmark for complex trance.
The first track in Friday Night in San Francisco – Mediterranean Sundance / Rio Ancho, mainly because it presents two challenges from the virtuoso guitar playing: to catch the interplay between the performers and also the body of the guitars, which can otherwise just sound like a jangle of strings.
Lastly comes a bit of cello, mainly to see whether the system can capture the sound of rosin and rasping in bowing as well as the full body on calmer sections. I chose the very well-known hi-res version of Du Pre’s performance of the Elgar concerto and the ECM album of Anja Lechner with Schubert’s Die Nacht and Arpeggione Sonata – which also captures Pablo Marquez’s guitar well.
Bela Fleck’s Cosmic Hippo is another for the very deep but textured bass and rhythmic drive, as well as interplay with his banjo, which should cut through clearly.
Last but not least is Lhasa’s voice on Live in Reykjavík and Haitink’s Pastorale for orchestral ebb and flow and a few others.
My experiment with the Chord gear was unsuccessful because although I found the Dave very smooth and a little warm, it simply couldn’t capture the body, breath and richness of Schwarzkopf’s voice, made Hewitt’s Fazioli sound more like Steinway and made percussive crescendos blur into one another. Nor could it capture the full harshness and texture of bass piano notes (Mike del Ferro’s Resonating Piano on Skylark – great album! – was another “test” it didn’t really pass). Overall, I found the piano was lacking in body and both textural and rhythmic complexity. Equally, the Dave couldn’t allow the crescendo on the Prokofiev to build properly in my opinion. On the Cosmic Hippo, the bass extension and dynamics weren’t bad, but not up to the ND555. Nor did it have the same drive and nothing of the textural detail. The banjo couldn’t cut through clearly either. It was a flatter experience. On Geronimo’s Free, you had much less sense of the musicians playing off each other. The little variations in tone and timing weren’t conveyed to nearly the same extent. Bass drums also lacked body and tactility. And all this was with the Dave set to Phase -ive, which improved all these aspects in my system. The first track of Friday Night in San Francisco was also well behind the Naim – much more jangly and less bodied and controlled. Dave handled the Afgin nicely, though, separating the sounds out nicely across the width of the soundstage.
I found that Dave+MScaler made all these weaknesses worse, despite increasing the sense of air, sparkle and space.
This was vs. ND555 + 2x PSUs however. So a big difference in price as well as sound to try and be fair. But in the end, there’s no doubt that I simply find the Naim sound more realistic, more like the instruments and more like a live performance, more compelling and more moving.
All the above was with the Statement and PhoenixNet for both.
Adding the PhoenixNet (PN) to my Roon Nucleus+ into ND555 made a big difference on its own compared to the EtherRegen, which itself increased soundstage, detail and texture without losing drive – supercharged with the addition of the Sean Jacobs DC3+ power supply. The PN took this up several notches, considerably increasing textural detail and nuance, while removing a certain residual hardness. Everything became more organic and also more out-of-speaker with good depth and height as well as breadth to the soundstage. Instrumental clarity and interplay improved.
All the tracks mentioned benefited in the attributes I have described, as was the placement of individual coherence of instruments.
Piano became significantly more realistic and lifelike, with the soft, bell-like highs benefitting as well the guttural bass crescendos. Female voice gained in presence, complexity and body.
Bringing the Statement into the mix in place of the Nucleus+ (itself an improvement on Naim Uniti Core and QNAP fanless NAS) was transformative. But this wasn’t just a matter of more of the same. Initially I was a bit foxed by a massive drop in noise because whereas previously the soundstage had some sort of noisefloor presence, with the Statement there is nothing. The instruments appear out of silence and although the soundstage is room-filling it is without artifice – there’s none of the spreading instruments or voices across the room as I have experienced with Chord cables and the Melco switch, for example. This is eerily natural with a really solid presence of musicians and instruments, an ability to follow first and second violins, experience the tension in the Prokofiev, follow the teasing blaring of the brass play in the Sirota, have Fraser’s voice float above the machine chaos while the guitar on Musette remains clear, distinct and no less penetrating.
PRaT is as strong as ever but it becomes less of a leading edge affair because there is so much greater complexity of timbre, texture and decay.
I found the Statement quite unlike how it is described in many of the reviews: I found it much better. I can only conclude that many of the reviewers either had a new one that was not fully burnt in, or didn’t keep it for long an allow it to warm up and stabilise properly (when auditioning one, remember that it needs at least a day to give you an idea of its potential and continues to sound better for up to about a week, which is the nature of the OXCO clocks).
For me, it really transforms the already excellent ND555 in respect of all the attributes described above and more. PRaT is excellent – it really does boogie like a bugger. But it’s also really strong at allowing the ND555 to work its magic in conveying small shifts in timing and tonal inflection, to capture the harshness as well as the sweetness of acoustic instruments, to preserve their body and not just turn them into reeds or strings etc. I’m listening to Buena Vista Social as I type this – and the sense of having actual instruments and musicians the room is tremendous. The same goes for some of the Chopin recordings mentioned. I’ve never had such a sense of piano in the room from a system. It’s been a game changer for me, at least as much as the ND555 and possibly more, though it needs the ND555 to do it.
Take away the PN and what happens? There’s a little less space, a little less of that sense of organic integrity, things become a little less moving for reasons that are difficult to pinpoint – just as it’s difficult to pinpoint what the Statement itself brings in this department – which is massive. Some of it is the sense of body and presence, the fine textural details, the palpability of the instruments. But some of it is a fairy dust that comes from the combination of them all. It reminds me of an audition of an LP12 with Aro vs CDX some years ago. The CDX was proficient whereas the Linn was moving although it was near impossible to pinpoint why. There were many times I just listened and loved the music. Anyway, the Statement without PN loses a little of that, but by no means all. Or, to put it another way, the PN adds less to the Statement than it does to the Roon Nucleus+.
Anyway, I’ve clearly been impressed to enough to grab both and very happy I am. As I said, it really is a transformative difference. And hopefully some of the details of what turns me on will help others put that in a perspective in a way that’s more helpful than vague technical or emotional adjectives.
6 Likes
That is is a very comprehensive personal perspective, the Innous guys are on to something with their products. I have the Phoenix net for many months it is a great product……detail, dynamics……but the Naim sound is still there.
Hi Michael, thank you and is over here The US out of curiosity? Have you tried anything like say SL interconnect over the HiLine?
Anyway haven’t got the slightest scooby-doo about streaming so I’ll shut up now. 
ATB Peter
Yes, I tried SL and Chord Music amongst others (as mentioned above) and prefer the HL.
1 Like
I see you have the Ultima 6. Did you try the TToby or Etude and if so how does the 6 compare?
Also did you try any integrates with the TT2 in DAC mode?
I ask because I have the same front end except the M Scaler and my next move is likely an amp upgrade.
Much appreciated
Ray
No, I had a 282 with two hicap Drs with a 250dr and decided to move to Digital only sources. I auditioned the ultima and it was so much better that I didn’t even think about trying anything else. They really fo go extremely well together
I don’t blame you 
1 Like
Hi Michael,
Some very interesting descriptions and conclusions there. Recently, since implementing Innuos Statement (and Zenith MkII SE before) plus a fully optimised network based on SJ DC4 and DC3/4 hybrids I’ve struggled to describe the quite profound changes to the musical presentation. The typical hi-fi adjectives are really insufficient and I realised that what was mainly changing was my reaction to the music. Most hi-fi descriptions are addressed by/from the conscious mind, whereas I believe that the changes we are now hearing and hugely appreciating have more to do with the subconscious, limbic part of the brain, which is more ‘convinced’ that the sounds it’s hearing are produced by real instruments played by real musicians communicating more of the soul of the music and performance, thereby creating far stronger moods, feelings and emotions, things we have no conscious control over, but that can feel very, very good and extremely moving
3 Likes
Just to wrap up as my own units gradually burn in (the Mundorf capacitors take ages), I have to say how immensely pleased I am with this Innuos Statement + PhoenixNet combination. It really is only now that I have been able to experience the full potential of the ND555. It’s an extremely satisfying upgrade. I’ve been having a wonderful symphonic evening. I very highly recommend an audition to any ND555 owners looking to optimise their systems, especially if they are classical music lovers. When I started out trying to get the best out of my own, I little suspected this sort of an additional step up was possible.
8 Likes
Having taken in the detailed reviews from Michaelb (thanks again Michael) I thought the least I could do is update the InnuOs app. For whatever reason the blue LED light on the front panel is now white and the statement is not detectable on the network. Nuno kindly offered an on line session to try and identify the problem this morning. Alas, nothing doing so it’s off to Coventry for further investigations. The folks at InnuOs have been very helpful with trying to help resolve this unfortunate problem.
Peter
Have just been added as a beta tester.
Very sorry to hear you’ve hit a problem there, Peter, and hope you get it resolved quickly.
The new Sense app, whether from a browser or the app, sounds very much better than everything else. Unfortunately the LMS workaround for Ethernet implementation can be glitchy and irritatingly unpredictable about it, working fine for days and then messing you around with track skips and dropouts… However, it sounds so good that I’m sticking with it for the time being.
Hopefully they’ll get a release with this incorporated as a stable feature soon.
Great! What did you do to get included?
Largely hung around at Feature Requests - innuOS Feedback Zone pointing out when issues detailed as resolved didn’t appear to be 
1 Like