Sense is Innuos control app. It’s got nothing to do with sq and they have said that it’s just a control app nothing more. It’s the their new OS they released that has helped combined with their hardware that helps reduce noise and to some they notice it more so with the newer 2.0.
It’s at it best apparently when using direct USB playback to a DAC as the Innuos devices utilise a large memory buffer , bigger than anything in normal streaming devices as it also houses the music on its hdd’s. This large buffer helps reduce disk access during playback and supposedly reduced noise on their systems. They also also do lots of other noise suppression things isolate different psus for different things
it’s expensive device as a result of this.
There software is also not very busy further reducing the possibility of noise. It’d doesnt try and talk to control apps and endpoints as much as Roon further keeping activity lower. They report turning internet off completely on it to reveal more sq. It’s a computer with expensive bits on it so noise is ever present on a computer so to keep this down is their primary goal.
For Roon they are actually not supported and are not classed as Roon Ready or Roon core devices, as they use lower rate CPUs than Roon recommend. Roon is a busy app and far more active network wise. This seems to cause sq issues on Innuos as it’s a core and player. On thier hardware it’s a fine balance of keeping CPU to a minimum to reduce noise and maintain sq and using their software they have more control on this and can keep tuning it. With 3rd party stuff they can’t and for Roon it uses Roon Bridge which isn’t full Roon Ready and it can’t use the memory buffer at all as Roon bypasses it.
There are other servers out there , such as Antipodes and Grimm that do Roon better and reports of these sounding better than Innuos. Grimm worked with Roon to make the best sounding server player they could and apparently the results are very very good it’s also cheaper than the Innuos statement. Like all these things some prefer one thing to another and some don’t notice this stuff at all.
Sense is really just the new control app available either as an iOS or Android download or accessed by PC/Mac by typing my.innuos.com into your browser. It’s the only way to control the InnuOS SW system on the music server to use the unit’s RAM cache to feed the stream to your Streamer/DAC, which is why you get a SQ lift over using it in other ways (UPnP or Roon) - the stream is played from the RAM and isolated from the SSD to keep noise to a minimum.
Just to clarify: they intentionally keep the frequency of Internet access to a minimum to keep noise down (Roon is conversely quite busy here, having other priorities) and have introduced the option of turning it off completely to further reduce noise, using a SW toggle in the Sense settings to run in “Offline Mode”. I must admit I haven’t played with this extensively since I use Qobuz a lot, which sounds very good via the Statement.
Give me a shout if there’s anything you want to know, @Nestor_Burma. I’m not a wizard on all the technical ins and outs, but I’ve done a bit of listening around and know what I like and why.
There was me thinking I’d cancelled Roon, but no, I’d forgotten to set auto renewal to off. It at least gave me one more comparison opportunity, which didn’t last long.
Bye Roon (for good or for now!?!) & carry on with Innuos/Sense.
Not targeted at any individual in particular btw!
I do love the fact that high end audio is a great way of finding idle cash (for some) a purpose.
I spent a bit of time a while back helping @Nestor_Burma with some Wi-Fi related setup, I do envy those in a way that have the time and funds to do these personal experiment journeys.
A good friend of mine once said, quite wisely, “I’d hate to spend all that money (on Hi-Fi) just to listen to Dire Straits”
This is why vocabulary is so important. People writing that “sense sounds better than roon” just needlessly confounds the issue.
The Naim app has no “sound.” It just controls devices; devices whose hardware and software may well have “sound.”
“Roon” can refer to many things; its control app, it’s server (core) software, and/or its own branded hardware (Nucleus). Same with many of these other brands.
Sometimes people just go for what’s shorter. Others can always ask questions. Whoever it was who first innocently referred to it being Sense is following on from discussions elsewhere, and what they really mean is as you & CG point out is that its the way the new InnuOS 2.00 works and utilises the hardware, controlled using the Sense app or control panel (which is just an InnuOS front end accessed by browser).
But I don’t think there’s any need for anyone to get judgmental. The matter has been cleared up. On some threads the value judgments and jibes take up more bandwidth than the sharing of experience and tips…
I think I may have been guilty of saying something along these lines. Of course it should have been qualified by system/set up, which sometimes is helpfully listed in the profile. The verdict on best sound quality, using either Roon, Innuos or Naim apps, can then be viewed in the context of the various systems/options.
So yes vocabulary is important in understanding a point of view.
I don’t really agree because a lot have found differences in sound quality when using different apps on a same device.
Michael for instance with his Nd555 can use Naim app, Roon, Mconnect, and Sense. The sound quality will vary with each app, so we can say that an app has a sound, even if indirect.
Not if all the app does is send essentially an URL to the streamer, like the Naim app does, or some other command like the Roon app sends to the Roon Core. The apps don’t have an influence because they are not doing anything that has anything to do with actual replay.
However, when using the Naim app or Roon, for instance, the streamer performs more different functions. That’s comparing different designs and implementations on the streamer, not apps.
I think FR means the main software here not the remote apps themselves or I hope he does. As it has been pointed out saying the Naim app or Roon app or Sense app is meaningless. It’s the server software doing the delivery not the remote app on a phone or tablet. The Naim app doesnt do anything than direct traffic from you UPnP server software and protocol of choice direct to your streamers software it doesnt enter the sonic chain unless you using mconnect to add Qobuz older equipment that doesn’t support native streaming. You can use any UPnP controller and it would sound the same.
Personally I believe the hardware/Os is more the culprit for these changes. I recently had to do some maintenance on my Roon core as I wanted to add more memory. I had to disassemble it to find out what type I needed so was without this machine for a short while whilst I ordered it in as I didn’t want to go through the phaff of taking it apart again to add in the new memory.
So I switched Roon core to run on a different machine that runs Ubuntu that runs my Plex server. So I attached my music storage to it as I use a large Usb drive for my music directly attached and restored Roon database to it.
My normal Roon core runs Rock their own OS and is a custom built silent pc from Tranquil pc, it’s nothing special audio wise
as I have no interest in spending more money on a server than my audio kit when it sounds very good already. It does have a LPS not a silly one it’s a zerozonenone that had good reviews and didn’t break the bank, cant say it made much difference in any but it was more hassle to return it so kept it as it was doing no harm.
The machine I used as a temp was an Intel NuC but running Ubuntu and more things such as Plex. Instantly it sounded different not massively but I would say a little brighter. I didnt expect to hear a change as I never had with any other server changes so this was perplexing. Had to deal with it for a few days only on switching back after receiving ram all things switched back and returned to normal.
Now this could be difference to the hardware, the os the fact it was running more server software. It’s environment as it was in my server cupboard with all my main network switches, Nas and router and modem or the LPS on my my usual core or a combination of them all. Tbh I don’t care nor am I bothered to find out but there is definitely some difference between different routes in some circumstances . But I bet someone else would have preferred the sound of the NuC to my normal core.
