Innuos Zenith SE MkII

[BigAlMc]

Seems mostly metadata and library tools based. Real shame they didn't get that Roon cache memory enhancement working tho as that's the biggy on my wishlist.

[rickca]

1 hour ago, BigAlMc said:

Seems mostly metadata and library tools based.

Yes.   Couldn't care less.

[austinpop]

2 hours ago, BigAlMc said:

Seems mostly metadata and library tools based. Real shame they didn't get that Roon cache memory enhancement working tho as that's the biggy on my wishlist.

 

Yes, I find this frustrating too.

 

Innuos have decided, for better or worse, to invest a good deal of energy on their own library management and metadata features. They seem to think that is of value to their customer base, which let's face it, is not the tweakers here on CA, but more the computer-phobic audiophiles getting into digital.

 

The irony is that their hardware improvements are very interesting to the cutting edge computer audiophile. I would like to see them put more effort into improving sound quality in general, and Roon in particular. If you care about this, make sure your voice is heard, and convey this to Nuno et al. I have had a chance to do this personally at AXPONA and RMAF, but I'm just one voice. You folks need to speak up too.

[BigAlMc]

6 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

Yes, I find this frustrating too.

 

Innuos have decided, for better or worse, to invest a good deal of energy on their own library management and metadata features. They seem to think that is of value to their customer base, which let's face it, is not the tweakers here on CA, but more the computer-phobic audiophiles getting into digital.

 

The irony is that their hardware improvements are very interesting to the cutting edge computer audiophile. I would like to see them put more effort into improving sound quality in general, and Roon in particular. If you care about this, make sure your voice is heard, and convey this to Nuno et al. I have had a chance to do this personally at AXPONA and RMAF, but I'm just one voice. You folks need to speak up too.

 

@nvitorino - hey Nuno, hope you are well.

 

Sorry for being a little abrupt but what he said.

 

There seems to be a whole lot of focus on the Statement whilst us SE owners are being left behind.

 

Library and metadata fixes can be done already via pc or laptop. This release doesn't appear to further what we care about, sound quality.

 

Cache memory Roon or anything else that improves the SQ should be the focus.

 

Cheers,

Alan

[rickca]

5 hours ago, BigAlMc said:

Cache memory Roon or anything else that improves the SQ should be the focus.

I agree.  I'd love to have HQPlayer NAA on the SE.  Library/metadata management is just reinventing the wheel.

[FrankMA]

13 hours ago, BigAlMc said:

Library and metadata fixes can be done already via pc or laptop. This release doesn't appear to further what we care about, sound quality.

 

Cache memory Roon or anything else that improves the SQ should be the focus.

 

Cheers,

Alan

Well said Alan @austinpop 

 

Innuos support had told me last week the Roon/LMS output wasn't ready yet and wouldn't be in this update:

We do not have this function implemented yet, we are working on it but need to be sure its stable before releasing this feature.

 

Totally agree improving the sound quality should be the #1 focus.

[your momo]

Whether I can understand Roon power user expectations are not met by the latest Innuos FW update, it remains those devices are meant to address needs of a much wider population.

 

The fact Innuos server are much more than "yet another Roon endpoint". Offering one box CD-rip, tag and library management from the finger tip through smartphone or tablet is pretty unique and one good reason I buy such unit. 
Also the fact it provides excellent sound quality out of the box without messing with SW tweaks and this, even out of legacy player like Squeezebox, and obviously the fact it support USB out with all kind of format being PCM or DSD native.

In that sense it's fully understandable that Innuos keep working on delighting all his customers, especially avoiding to release something half-back, rushed out for a niche, that might degrade existing user base sound or overall genius UX.

 

So thank you Innuos to keep working and delivering turn key CD-rip, tag, server solutions that probably reach best "uber sound quality / effort" ratio yet. It's understandable that many power users could build simpler, more focussed systems reaching, or even exceeding, Innuos sound quality, but there is no way such solutions would offer a home run UX for the mass.

So again, thank you and keep doing Innuos...

[seeteeyou]

Interesting to read something about their co-founder Amélia Santos

 

https://www.f6s.com/innuos

https://www.f6s.com/ameliasantos

http://rr.sapo.pt/omeupais/loule.html

 

 

https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/digital4her-10-finalists-pitching-session-announced

 

It's fun to hear where their competitions are coming from. Obviously Aurender should be on her mind when she mentioned South Korea, then the Japanese one might be Melco.

 

BTW, are they the only one who collaborated with a university so far?

 

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/30376-a-novel-way-to-massively-improve-the-sq-of-computer-audio-streaming/?page=305&tab=comments#comment-808121

Quote

Our efforts are valuable research for them, although I pointed out that they were in a unique position to explore some things that are hard for us to do - for example, do OCXO clocks matter equally for Ethernet, USB, and system clocks? In that context, he described a research collaboration they are undertaking with Warwick University, where they are co-located, to use machine learning and neural nets to aggregate and navigate the experiments they are doing.

 

[austinpop]

4 hours ago, seeteeyou said:

Interesting to read something about their co-founder Amélia Santos

 

https://www.f6s.com/innuos

https://www.f6s.com/ameliasantos

http://rr.sapo.pt/omeupais/loule.html

 

 

https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/digital4her-10-finalists-pitching-session-announced

 

It's fun to hear where their competitions are coming from. Obviously Aurender should be on her mind when she mentioned South Korea, then the Japanese one might be Melco.

 

BTW, are they the only one who collaborated with a university so far?

 

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/30376-a-novel-way-to-massively-improve-the-sq-of-computer-audio-streaming/?page=305&tab=comments#comment-808121

 

 

Wow, where do you find this stuff? Bravo!

 

Yes, I suspect Aurender and Melco are the logical references.

[seeteeyou]

I was reading this thread about the availability in Mk3 here in Hong Kong, though I wasn't so sure about why they're using UK in the subject instead of Portugal

 

http://www.hiendy.com/hififorum/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=98394

 

That's why I just did a search on Innuos and Portugal, I wasn't expecting to see a female name. Therefore I kept searching and found quite a few things about her online.

 

I'm a big fan of Crystal Cable and their founder Gabi van der Kley-Rijnveld turned out to be a pianist before starting her own business back in 2004. Recently they released their flagship headphone cables called Dream Duet and many audiophiles here in Asia liked that very much. (Some of us even joked about making our own hybrid headphone cables by combining Gabi's Dream Duet and his husband Edwin's Siltech Duchess Crown.)

 

IMHO it's somewhat rare to see these successful women to thrive in an industry with so many guys, that's certainly providing us a fresh perspective with their innovative products.

[nvitorino]

Hi everyone,

 

It's been a crazy season with shows a bit around the world and visiting factories to ensure suppliers would keep to their words with delivery (which they didn't...) so time has been shorter than usual.

 

Given a lot of you have provided feedback about the your disillusionment with Innuos regarding the focus of the latest 1.4 update being on library management, I thought I'd just answer to everyone right here.

 

First I'd like to address the feeling the SE users have been "abandoned". Not the case at all. With our software development cycle, we try to balance between "front-end" features (like metadata management) and "back-end" features (like kernel updates). Do note that the updates are for all our servers and not just for the SE (although there are specific settings for each model). Version 1.4 was already being finished by the time we made a quick test with Rajiv with Roon/Squeezelite integration so it could never be part of the update. Furthermore, in order for the Roon/Squeezelite integration to work, we need to disable the LMS music library as this conflicts with Roon. A number of our features depend on that so those will need to be disabled too. Do be aware that is will always be a beta feature as it depends largely on Roon maintaining support for it. It already limits it to 24/192 audio anyway.  We plan to bring this option on the 1.4.1 update that we are developing now. The focus for our next updates will be almost exclusively on the OS side as we feel the library management features are now at the level of functionality we wanted,

 

A lot of you are Roon users. There is very limited scope to what we can improve in terms of sound quality with Roon. We can improve things on the OS side of the system that will benefit both Roon and innuOS users. However, I hope you understand that it's likely there will always be differences between the platforms. Software implementation matters and whilst we can do improvements on the Squeezelite player, we cannot to them to the Roon player as we have no access to its code. 

 

On a sidenote, the external USB reclocker based on the Statement board will also allow a very audible upgrade to SE users. The electronics are all designed already, it's now a matter of chassis (meaning a fresh round of chasing suppliers...)

 

Nuno

[rickca]

3 hours ago, nvitorino said:

We can improve things on the OS side of the system that will benefit both Roon and innuOS users.

That's exactly where I'd like you to concentrate.

[baconbrain]

On 10/13/2018 at 3:58 AM, rickca said:

I agree.  I'd love to have HQPlayer NAA on the SE.  Library/metadata management is just reinventing the wheel.

 

3 hours ago, nvitorino said:

Hi everyone,

 

It's been a crazy season with shows a bit around the world and visiting factories to ensure suppliers would keep to their words with delivery (which they didn't...) so time has been shorter than usual.

 

Given a lot of you have provided feedback about the your disillusionment with Innuos regarding the focus of the latest 1.4 update being on library management, I thought I'd just answer to everyone right here.

 

First I'd like to address the feeling the SE users have been "abandoned". Not the case at all. With our software development cycle, we try to balance between "front-end" features (like metadata management) and "back-end" features (like kernel updates). Do note that the updates are for all our servers and not just for the SE (although there are specific settings for each model). Version 1.4 was already being finished by the time we made a quick test with Rajiv with Roon/Squeezelite integration so it could never be part of the update. Furthermore, in order for the Roon/Squeezelite integration to work, we need to disable the LMS music library as this conflicts with Roon. A number of our features depend on that so those will need to be disabled too. Do be aware that is will always be a beta feature as it depends largely on Roon maintaining support for it. It already limits it to 24/192 audio anyway.  We plan to bring this option on the 1.4.1 update that we are developing now. The focus for our next updates will be almost exclusively on the OS side as we feel the library management features are now at the level of functionality we wanted,

 

A lot of you are Roon users. There is very limited scope to what we can improve in terms of sound quality with Roon. We can improve things on the OS side of the system that will benefit both Roon and innuOS users. However, I hope you understand that it's likely there will always be differences between the platforms. Software implementation matters and whilst we can do improvements on the Squeezelite player, we cannot to them to the Roon player as we have no access to its code. 

 

On a sidenote, the external USB reclocker based on the Statement board will also allow a very audible upgrade to SE users. The electronics are all designed already, it's now a matter of chassis (meaning a fresh round of chasing suppliers...)

 

Nuno

Really appreciate the update and I would also like to second the wish for HqPlayer NAA functionality in a future release.

[austinpop]

4 hours ago, nvitorino said:

We plan to bring this option on the 1.4.1 update that we are developing now.

 

Excellent news, Nuno!

[austinpop]

5 hours ago, nvitorino said:

A lot of you are Roon users. There is very limited scope to what we can improve in terms of sound quality with Roon. We can improve things on the OS side of the system that will benefit both Roon and innuOS users. However, I hope you understand that it's likely there will always be differences between the platforms. Software implementation matters and whilst we can do improvements on the Squeezelite player, we cannot to them to the Roon player as we have no access to its code. 

 

Nuno,

 

Have you discussed this ability with Roon? Maybe we can make a 2-pronged effort to effect a change: you from your manufacturer relationship, and we from the community side.

 

i found a thread on this on the Roon community forum: https://community.roonlabs.com/t/does-roon-download-entire-track-into-ram-memory-playback-discussion/12397/23

 

i suggest we get vocal with Roon about this. I’ve already done so.

[moby1977]

On 10/31/2018 at 6:00 PM, nvitorino said:

Hi everyone,

 

It's been a crazy season with shows a bit around the world and visiting factories to ensure suppliers would keep to their words with delivery (which they didn't...) so time has been shorter than usual.

 

Given a lot of you have provided feedback about the your disillusionment with Innuos regarding the focus of the latest 1.4 update being on library management, I thought I'd just answer to everyone right here.

 

First I'd like to address the feeling the SE users have been "abandoned". Not the case at all. With our software development cycle, we try to balance between "front-end" features (like metadata management) and "back-end" features (like kernel updates). Do note that the updates are for all our servers and not just for the SE (although there are specific settings for each model). Version 1.4 was already being finished by the time we made a quick test with Rajiv with Roon/Squeezelite integration so it could never be part of the update. Furthermore, in order for the Roon/Squeezelite integration to work, we need to disable the LMS music library as this conflicts with Roon. A number of our features depend on that so those will need to be disabled too. Do be aware that is will always be a beta feature as it depends largely on Roon maintaining support for it. It already limits it to 24/192 audio anyway.  We plan to bring this option on the 1.4.1 update that we are developing now. The focus for our next updates will be almost exclusively on the OS side as we feel the library management features are now at the level of functionality we wanted,

 

A lot of you are Roon users. There is very limited scope to what we can improve in terms of sound quality with Roon. We can improve things on the OS side of the system that will benefit both Roon and innuOS users. However, I hope you understand that it's likely there will always be differences between the platforms. Software implementation matters and whilst we can do improvements on the Squeezelite player, we cannot to them to the Roon player as we have no access to its code. 

 

On a sidenote, the external USB reclocker based on the Statement board will also allow a very audible upgrade to SE users. The electronics are all designed already, it's now a matter of chassis (meaning a fresh round of chasing suppliers...)

 

Nuno

Hello 

 

Thanks for the update. According to all my reading it seems a lot of efforts have been put on the USB output ( being for the MK3 or the Statement ).  Am I right ?

Does it mean that the USB output should be preferentially used vs Ethernet assuming on the input side both are at the same level ?

 

Alex

[simorag]

Hi fellow SE owners!

 

I am looking for an upmarket power cable for mine, based on the good results reported by @austinpop , other experienced audiophiles I have corresponded with privately, and on some mail exchanges with Nuno Vitorino himself, who confirmed that the ZENith SE sound quality can be further elevated by a high-end power cord.

 

So far, I have collected good feedback about Cardas Clear (possibly further improved by the Clear Beyond?), Chord Sarum T (very expensive, but often used by Innuos at trade shows and well regarded by Nuno), Shunyata Alpha HC. Also, I noticed that Innuos was using Swisscables cords at the AXPONA with the SE and the Statement, so I tend to believe they could be a good match as well.

 

What are you guys using / have tried? 

 

Here is quite difficult to arrange a serious (long term, in-house) audition of the various high-end brands, so I am interested in what are the findings that others can share, to come up with a short list to rely on.

 

Would prefer a neutral-to-warmish signature (if that word applies to power cables).

 

I am using a power conditioner (IsoTek EVO3 Aquarius), so I would be especially interested in opinions from people using conditioners as well.

[Blackmorec]

Hey Simorag, 

 

Defintely worth upgrading the power cable of your SE. Personally I use Synergistic Research but I’m sure you’ll find lots of other very good alternatives that will suite your installation. 

 

What I would like to say is that on the SE, power cables, especially those made with heavy gauge cable take an age to run in and can sound quite strange during the running in process. Mine sounded like I had a bass room node at a very specific frequency, especially with double bass. 

 

In order to speed up the burn in process I bought an IEC to mains plug adapter which allowed me to use the cable with a reciprocating fan, which I set to high and left running for almost 3 weeks. The end result was extended frequency extremes, wider, deeper more filled out sound stage and greater timbral ‘saturation’.The ‘room node’ disappeared entirely once run in was complete.

If you are going to audition anything it’s really only worth borrowing cables that have been well run in otherwise its very likely going to get confusing. 

[austinpop]

7 hours ago, simorag said:

Would prefer a neutral-to-warmish signature (if that word applies to power cables).

 

The Cardas Clear family certainly match the warm-of-neutral profile. But there are a ton of choices. And it is really hard to know what to try. If you were in the US, you could use the Cable Co. cable lending library to try out cables, but not sure about the options in Italy. If you have any local audio dealers, see if they'll lend you cables while they are closed over the weekend.

 

5 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

... power cables, especially those made with heavy gauge cable take an age to run in and can sound quite strange during the running in process...

 

... I bought an IEC to mains plug adapter which allowed me to use the cable with a reciprocating fan

 

This is hilarious! I just today bought a pair of these...

... so I could connect a pair of Cardas Clear Beyond cables (that I received for my reviewing needs) in series with my refrigerator, to let them burn in for a couple weeks. In the past, I've used power cables on desktop computers to burn them in.

 

I long ago found that burn in mattered with pretty much most components, so these days, I don't even think about the what and why... I just give anything new at least 200 hours of "use" before listening critically.

[thyname]

I am contemplating getting a Zen MK3 when it comes out to use it as a Roon Core.

 

My DAC is also a Roon Ready streamer (built in), Ayre QX-5. Currently connected directly to Router via Cat8, with Fiber Optics isolators in between. 

 

How would I connect the Zen to my DAC? Simply via Ethernet and still use the Bridge built in my Ayre?

[BigAlMc]

9 hours ago, thyname said:

I am contemplating getting a Zen MK3 when it comes out to use it as a Roon Core.

 

My DAC is also a Roon Ready streamer (built in), Ayre QX-5. Currently connected directly to Router via Cat8, with Fiber Optics isolators in between. 

 

How would I connect the Zen to my DAC? Simply via Ethernet and still use the Bridge built in my Ayre?

 

Hi @thyname,

 

Not sure I completely follow the question but the Zeniths have LAN in and out, and USB out.

 

So you'd have the choice between LAN direct to your Ayre DAC or LAN to router (assuming your Router acts as a switch) and onward to the Ayre.

 

LAN out from the Zen is better on paper versus a potentially noisy Router.

 

Please elaborate if I've misjudged your question.

 

Cheers,

Alan

[thyname]

34 minutes ago, BigAlMc said:

 

Hi @thyname,

 

Not sure I completely follow the question but the Zeniths have LAN in and out, and USB out.

 

So you'd have the choice between LAN direct to your Ayre DAC or LAN to router (assuming your Router acts as a switch) and onward to the Ayre.

 

LAN out from the Zen is better on paper versus a potentially noisy Router.

 

Please elaborate if I've misjudged your question.

 

Cheers,

Alan

 

Thanks Alan,

 

It does not make sense for me to use the Innuous Zen as a Roon Endpoint, and stream via it and USB to my Ayre. Ayre has a network bridge built in. And I try to avoid USB audio when I can.

 

Basically for me the Zen would be a server (Roon Core), and the only other use is to "clean" the Ethernet signal going to my Ayre, by going first from router to Zen, then from Zen Ethernet out to Ayre. Basically Zen acting as an Ethernet Bridge / or switch. Right?

 

In which case, does it really matter, since I am already using a pair of fiber optics isolators in my ethernet chain (powered by linear PS)?

[BigAlMc]

Yeah I'm not really sure it'll make too much of a difference.

 

What do you currently use for Roon Core?

[thyname]

1 minute ago, BigAlMc said:

Yeah I'm not really sure it'll make too much of a difference.

 

What do you currently use for Roon Core?

 

A 7th Generation i7 NUC (BNH type). With Roon Optimized Core Kit (ROCK).

 

As a server, I am not sure it will make any difference either. I agree with you. At least in theory, buy I don't know what I don't have ?

[BigAlMc]

I'm no expert and this is only my best guess but I doubt you'd see much of a difference, if any at all.

 

Innuos do lovely turnkey servers. But if you already have one that's working well then why fix something that isn't broken.

 

Assuming you use Tidal I'd consider something like a better network switch such as the Aqvox, sNH-10G or upcoming EtherRegen from Uptone to improve your LAN in and out of your server.

 

Just a thought.

 

Cheers,

Alan