Innuos ZENith "STATEMENT"

[marce]

Cheers

[Adyc]

http://www.my-hiend.com/vbb/showthread.php?12108-2018年德國慕尼黑High-End音響展實況報導-Munich-High-End-Show/page19

 

post 183

[nbpf]

On 5/6/2018 at 4:59 PM, Yorkshireman said:

Considering Naim originally came up with the perfect recipe for the best digital source using a separate power supply I can’t for the life of me understand why they didn’t lead the way and come out with a super server first using there knowledge and expertise. For non Naimies the image bellow shows the Naim CDS with separate power supply c1991.

 

This is because they got stuck with the old outsourced UnitiServe platform and completely missed the software developments that have lead to the current generation of Linux based music server and network renderers: from Innuos, Antipodes, SoTM, Sonore, Allo, HiFiBerry, etc. 

 

Now they are trying to catch up. However, the results obtained so far with the new Uniti range are, from the point of view of software, quite disappointing in my view.

[davide256]

Darko piece on the rest of the new Innuos line

 

https://darko.audio/2018/05/innuos-introduce-zen-mk3-music-servers/

[Superdad]

3 hours ago, Adyc said:

http://www.my-hiend.com/vbb/showthread.php?12108-2018年德國慕尼黑High-End音響展實況報導-Munich-High-End-Show/page19

 

Great photo essay of the whole show, thanks!

[barrows]

On 4/15/2018 at 5:50 AM, rafa said:

Sotm never stated all parameters so hard to say which is better.

 

3PPB clock stability is very very good. But still, it doesn't mean it will be the best audio server.

Hahahaha!  3 pp/B is long term clock stability and means nothing for performance of this device.  Long term clock stability is important if you want your clock to be accurate over a period of months or years (as for an atomic clock to tell time).  Since audio listening is a short term thing, it means nothing for audio performance and is pure marketing.

[Blackmorec]

3ppb is a measure of how accurately a clock produces a designated frequency so is by definition not a measure of long term stability. A 3ppb accurate clock running at 10Mhz would therefore meet its designated frequency within 3 billionths of that frequency. Its long term stability would be the integration of that error rate and may be expressed as either a fixed error over a variable time period for example 1 second in 10,000 years  or as a variable error over a fixed time period, for example 0.000001 seconds per year. 

 

Whether a clock has good long term stability in a DAC is irrelevant, unless you’re using your DAC to wake you up every morning. The fact that you switch it off every day renders long term accuracy moot. What’s important it that when its switched on it defines the sampling rate accurately, which means how accurately does it produce its designated frequency. 

[rafa]

On 5/23/2018 at 4:30 PM, barrows said:

Hahahaha!  3 pp/B is long term clock stability and means nothing for performance of this device.  Long term clock stability is important if you want your clock to be accurate over a period of months or years (as for an atomic clock to tell time).  Since audio listening is a short term thing, it means nothing for audio performance and is pure marketing.

hahaha...

[Yorkshireman]

After the news from Innuos at Munich I’m very much looking forward to the release of the SE ADD ON/Upgrade box/option. 

 

Does anyone have any rough idea of when it might be available or specs?

[vpnogueira]

On 5/26/2018 at 7:17 AM, Yorkshireman said:

After the news from Innuos at Munich I’m very much looking forward to the release of the SE ADD ON/Upgrade box/option. 

 

Does anyone have any rough idea of when it might be available or specs?

 

I own an Innuos Zenith SE.  Did Innuos say there will be an SE ADD ON/upgrade box/option to bring it to Statement level?

Thanks

 

[Yorkshireman]

2 hours ago, vpnogueira said:

 

I own an Innuos Zenith SE.  Did Innuos say there will be an SE ADD ON/upgrade box/option to bring it to Statement level?

Thanks

 

There is a video on YouTube from the Munich show where Nuno Vitorino from Innuos talks about an upgrade for the SE. But he says it won’t take the SE up to statement level but will improve on the standard SE.  

[NOMBEDES]

My guy sez.  A 2TB will be pax 14K US  --   this is his guess.   The Mk III, also no official price, will be more "affordable".

 

My take is they ask a lot of money to go from X TB to Y TB.    Greedy.  IMHO.

[str-1]

Just saw photo of tne Innuos setup at the North West Audio Show.  I have the same Atacama shelf stack and have options to increase the spacer height, so could accomodate the Statement’s two boxes stacked.  Just wondering how much of a noise penalty there would be in doing that.  Would welcome Innuos comments.  Thanks.

[bmichels]

I wonder if it is possible to use DEEZER hifi streaming direct with the ZENITH, using the DEEZER iPAD interface (to take advantage if the lyrics that DEEZER offer more often than ROON) ?

[barrows]

On 5/23/2018 at 12:23 PM, Blackmorec said:

Whether a clock has good long term stability in a DAC is irrelevant, unless you’re using your DAC to wake you up every morning. The fact that you switch it off every day renders long term accuracy moot. What’s important it that when its switched on it defines the sampling rate accurately, which means how accurately does it produce its designated frequency. 

Not really.  All clocks used for audio have good enough accuracy to to be running at the correct speed for audio reproduction with proper pitch (this would be analogous to turntable speed accuracy).  For audio playback accuracy there is no difference between a 2 ppb XO or a 50 ppb XO, they are all good enough to produce perfect pitch accuracy well beyond what is audible. What is important for audio clocks is the short term variations which give rise to jitter, specifically the phase noise at low frequencies.  Now, it may be true that some 2 ppb XOs also have excellent phase noise characteristics, but it may not be as well.  It is true that some OCXO Also have excellent phase noise characteristics (like the Pulsar clock and the NDK DuCoLon clock) but it not necessarily true just because the XO is oven stabilized.

Interestingly, it is also true that the use of low phase noise clocks improve the performance of things like Ethernet, hence the use of low phase noise XOs in Sonore's best Ethernet Renderers.

It maybe that Innuous' "Statement" uses an XO which does have low phase noise, but telling us the ppb gives no indication of this.  If Innuous wants to give a meaningful specification they should give the phase noise plot of their OCXO, or at least the phase noise at 10 HZ.

 

And for heavens sake, if you are concerned about clock performance, you are going to defeat the purpose of a high performance clock by turning it off every day.  The better the clock, the longer it takes to stabilize at its lowest phase noise.  Keep anything with a critical clock powered up 24/7 for best performance.

[Blackmorec]

My original post addressed your assertion that the parts per billion spec for an OCXO clock is a long term stability spec, which it isn’t. Its a short term accuracy spec. 

Regarding oscillator clocks, jitter is a measure of variations in the time domain

Phase noise is the resulting product of jitter in the frequency domain. The more time variation, the more frequency variation, hence the spectrum of phase noise. 

If you look at all the major oscillator manufacturers and resellers, they all spec their clock’s accuracy in ppm or ppb.  The lower the number, the more accurate the clock (the closer it comes to always producing the desired frequency) the less jitter and resulting phase noise.

 

I have several devices with high end clocks. They all benefit from a warm-up but there’s no real SQ benefit that I can hear from leaving them on 24/7 

Generally speaking, in terms of sound quality, a 30 minute warm up with signal flow is far more effective than leaving a device idling 24/7, as the idling device still requires the 30 minutes with signal to sound its best.  The only exception I’ve found was with my Naim Active System, which seemed to need several days to reach optimum performance and did indeed benefit from remaining on 24/7. And that system had no oscillators; until I added a CDS. 

[Summit]

Understanding Oscillator Specs.

http://freqelec.com/oscillators/understnding_osc_specs.pdf 

[Superdad]

5 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

If you look at all the major oscillator manufacturers and resellers, they all spec their clock’s accuracy in ppm or ppb.  The lower the number, the more accurate the clock (the closer it comes to always producing the desired frequency) the less jitter and resulting phase noise.

 

This is incorrect as the relationship between accuracy and phase noise in OCXOs is just somewhat consequential.  There are plenty of high accuracy (“low ppb”) OCXOs—priced in the hundreds of $—whose phase noise is much worse than the $10 Crystek CCHD-575.

Techniques and design goals for high accuracy/stability clocks are not the same as they are for ultra-low phase-noise clocks!  That is why you will see that many oscillator manufacturers call out different models in their lineup as being one or the other.

[Blackmorec]

Thanks for the comment. 

If my explanation is incorrect, would you mind helping me understand the relationship between time related jitter and frequency related phase noise. 

Thanks!

[auricgoldfinger]

1 hour ago, Blackmorec said:

Thanks for the comment. 

If my explanation is incorrect, would you mind helping me understand the relationship between time related jitter and frequency related phase noise. 

Thanks!

 

Maybe this explanation will help:

 

 

[barrows]

8 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

My original post addressed your assertion that the parts per billion spec for an OCXO clock is a long term stability spec, which it isn’t. Its a short term accuracy spec. 

Regarding oscillator clocks, jitter is a measure of variations in the time domain

Phase noise is the resulting product of jitter in the frequency domain. The more time variation, the more frequency variation, hence the spectrum of phase noise. 

If you look at all the major oscillator manufacturers and resellers, they all spec their clock’s accuracy in ppm or ppb.  The lower the number, the more accurate the clock (the closer it comes to always producing the desired frequency) the less jitter and resulting phase noise.

 

I have several devices with high end clocks. They all benefit from a warm-up but there’s no real SQ benefit that I can hear from leaving them on 24/7 

Generally speaking, in terms of sound quality, a 30 minute warm up with signal flow is far more effective than leaving a device idling 24/7, as the idling device still requires the 30 minutes with signal to sound its best.  The only exception I’ve found was with my Naim Active System, which seemed to need several days to reach optimum performance and did indeed benefit from remaining on 24/7. And that system had no oscillators; until I added a CDS. 

I suspect you might learn something from this:

 

http://www.ndk.com/en/ad/2013/001/index.html

 

ppm/ppb indeed is a measure of long term clock accuracy (and clock frequency accuracy in general as you suggest), but is has no correlation to what matters for our purposes: clock phase noise, especially at low frequencies.  The NDK Ducolon is one of the best OCXO for audio purposes (but not necessarily for a server, as the frequencies available are the audio frequencies) although the ppm/ppb is not all that impressive, the low frequency phase noise is.

I am not trying to suggest the clock in the Innuous is bad at all, just that we do not know much of anything unless Innuopus publishes a phase noise curve for it.  It does make me wonder though, that they only specify the ppm/ppb spec...

[Blackmorec]

Here’s the website I use to check certain definitions

 

http://www.4timing.com/techoscillator.htm

 

As far I can see, the ppb spec defines maximum deviation, jitter is a statistical measure of time deviations and phase noise is basically a statistical measure of the results of jitter in the frequency domain. 

 

So, an oscillator with high ppm deviation will vary substantially from the nominal desired time or frequency, while an oscillator with low ppb deviation will exhibit very low deviation from the desired time or frequency. 

 

If I have this wrong, would you kind illustrate how and where. Thanks

[barrows]

@Blackmorec, read your link.  Phase noise is the specification which matters for our purposes here.  Phase noise is the frequencies present outside the nominal operating frequency of the XO.  All XOs used for audio purposes, and for clocking of computers, interfaces, etc, have enough frequency accuracy for our purposes: ppm/ppb.  

Especially what we would want to know is the Phase Noise at low frequencies: 10 Hz and below, so the best way to evaluate XO performance for our purposes is to look at the Phase Noise plot.

There is no need to be concerned about the ultimate frequency accuracy, as all the XOs are good enough.  A little bit slow XO, or a little bit fast XO is not going to make a difference.  Indeed I would rather spec this XO: Phase Noise at 10 Hz= -115 dBc/Hz and 50 ppm, than this one: Phase Noise at 10 HZ= -90 dBc/Hz and 25 ppm.

 

Another example: if we have an XO that is nominally 45.1584 MHz, and it is actually running at 45.1583 MHz it makes no difference to us, but if we can get an XO with few dB better Phase Noise at low frequencies, that is something worth doing.

 

This is also why "Atomic" clocks are generally overkill and not an advantage for audio purposes.  Great for super precise measurements of time over the longer term, but we are not perceiving musical notes over a period of years.

 

 

[Blackmorec]

Hi Barrows,

Thanks for the info. 

[octaviars]

Chassi looks to be all silver, will it also be available in all black?