Sense sounds better. I’ve kept my Nucleus to keep them running in parallel, or that was the idea, but I never use it any more, having got the Statement and PheonixNet. Have already sold the Sean Jacobs PSU for it and will probably let the Nucleus itself also go.
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Yes, the last time I ran both Roon and Innuos Sense, I agreed it did.
However, I still miss Roon’s other superior features: a better integration of my ripped CD content and Qobuz. Roon Radio. The album display on my Nova screen.
Purely in terms of SQ, there’s a discernible improvement with Innuos Sense (in my set up it’s Zenith outputting via SPDIF converter to Nova’s BNC) over Roon enabled from Innuos app.
The experimental mode closes the gap but not fully.
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Innuos Sense sound quality is better than Roon, still have a Roon account but never use it.
Agree with your comments re Roon having better data, something that Innuos has to improve on.
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Same here, which is why I have considered keeping the Nucleus. Only, whenever I listen, I choose Sense instead for the wonderful SQ
Agreed. I have no plans on replacing it. It still serves some small TimeMachine backup duties. Perhaps when one of the 2 drives fails I’ll check into alternatives, but as you said running Roon Core is pretty easy of a load.
Just curious: Roon+MM+USB (with integer mode/exclusive mode) sounds very good to me! So does MM+USB+Audirvana. How does it compare to the Statement Innuos USB out?
Edited: After doing some research with google, some guys out there conclude that the winner is… Audirvana with the Mac Mini.
I’m assuming that some of the difference in SQ is not just down to the Roon vs Sense implementations but also the different way the ND555 handles UPnP vs Roon RAAT (differing levels of network activity)
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It’s a hardware as well as a SW story.
I found Roon via Nucleus+ sounded better than UPnP using Asset and a fanless QNAP NAS. It improved further when using a Sean Jacobs souped up DC high-out linear power supply. Adding an EtherRegen improved it further. The overal improvement was really considerable.
But all that is totally outclassed with Sense on the Statement with a PhoenixNet. There’s simply no comparison.
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But if I follow you’re comparing software and various pieces of hardware. Not just Roon (?)
Yes, of course. In my experience the SQ improvements are in fact more related to HW, including keeping processing to a minimum by minimising the SW run. Shutting down everything on the QNAP that was not essential to Asset made an audible difference. The advantage of Roon Core and the Nucleus is likewise the paring down to the minimum needed. That what Innuos do, too. On the SW side (as far as I understand it) Roon RAAT uses PCM, so there’s no big deal.
I believe (with some reservations) the forum members’ words that Innuos products are good stuffs, but I have also heard better things about the Antipodes products out of New Zealand.
Which ones are these, I’m not aware of any?
Antipodes audio, google is your friend.
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Hi Michaelb, what is not clear to me when you write “Sense sounds bette” (than Roon). Do you mean the Sense app on what Innuos hardware…or is it possible to run the Sense app on any laptop just like Roon?
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.
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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.
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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.
And still better things from the Taiko server….There will always be better.
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I feel Nestor Burma is interested by the Innuos Statement. You can point him your past thread on it. I don’t remember the title.
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Oh. I missed that! 
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.
The thread went by the inspiring subject line of Optimal SQ config for Innuos Zenith/Statement with ND555 and Roon (or not) and that should link to it. It tracks my experiments with the Innuos Statement, which led up to me buying one. I can also say their support is very good.
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