austinpop Posted January 20, 2018 Share Posted January 20, 2018 Yes, there are some minefields in getting Roon up and running on the Zenith. There are actually 3 logical stages to this: Physically copy music over to the Zenith SE's internal SSD Bring up Roon correctly on the Zenith SE, by restoring from a database backup of your existing Core Fixup the music location under Roon > Settings > Storage Do the following first, on your existing Roon Core server: Make a backup to something you can access on the SE - a network share, or even a USB stick. Go to Roon > Settings > Storage and note down where your music is currently stored. Let's assume your current Roon Core is on a Windows machine named WinRoon, and your music is in E:\MyMusicLib Let't take each in turn. Physically copy music over to the Zenith SE's internal SSD The key pitfall here is to avoid the Auto-Import at all costs! On the machine WinRoon, open the Zenith network share, and copy the folder MyMusicLib into the Music folder on the Zenith Bring up Roon correctly on the Zenith SE, by restoring from a database backup of your existing Core See https://kb.roonlabs.com/Migration It's really useful to do it this way Fixup the music location under Roon > Settings > Storage You'll see the previous location you had there - [E:] MyMusicLib is broken. Right click and "Disable" it. The Roon Core on Zenith will already have the Music folder enabled by default. This should work. I say should, because in my case, my music was on a NAS. This was much cleaner and easier to bring up. After the restore, I went to the NAS link in Storage, and selected Edit, then Browse. Since my NAS requires login creds, I had to essentially recreate the storage path to my music folder on my NAS. Since then I have been selectively moving a few albums over into the Music folder, to assess "local vs. NAS" performance, but I have not yet done a wholesale copy of my (1.7TB) library over. Advanced tip: by default Innuous locks you out of setting any other local storage location in Roon, but upon request, they can open up other folders for you. In summary, don't be afraid to start over, using the steps above. It should go a lot cleaner. My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted January 20, 2018 Share Posted January 20, 2018 3 minutes ago, BigAlMc said: Hey Rajiv, Are you any closer to posting your much anticipated listening impressions of the SE? Or are your TX-USBultra problems slowing things down? Cheers, Alan Hi Alan, Getting there. Yes, the failure of the tX-USBultra was a real spanner in the works. I just got a shipping notification that I will receive it back midweek. It too will need burn in, so I should have something to say in about 2 weeks, perhaps sooner. On the plus side, my SE is well past 300 hours burned in, so it's raring to go! BTW - May and Lee gave me pretty amazing customer service as usual. My problem was an intermittent one, and rather than hold me up, they just replaced the internal boards in my unit. Kudos to SOtM. My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted January 22, 2018 Share Posted January 22, 2018 It's a connectivity issue of some kind. Whenever we've tried attaching anything to the "streamer" ethernet port of the SE, we've not been successful getting music to flow. I'm sure it's a solvable problem, and probably isn't helped by the extra switches we're playing with - Netgear for shunting, and the reclocked switch. At some point, I might circle back and troubleshoot it, but it's not high on my list. I'd rather see how the SE can simplify the chain compared to a trifecta, while elevating SQ. A tall order? Yes - but for a component of this price, a reasonable expectation. My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted January 27, 2018 Share Posted January 27, 2018 My review of the Zenith MkII SE is over on this thread. My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted February 2, 2018 Share Posted February 2, 2018 Zenith SE owners: I am finding that with version 1.3.2, the native player is unconditionally transcoding all DSD to 352.8 FLAC. It does not change even if I set the DSD flag from transcode to native. Has anyone else experienced this issue? It was working fine before in 1.3.1. I should clarify that my DAC only accepts DoP, but the SE was correctly sending DoP even with the DSD flag set to Native. (There is no DoP flag). I've emailed support. My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted February 2, 2018 Share Posted February 2, 2018 On 1/20/2018 at 12:08 PM, austinpop said: Yes, there are some minefields in getting Roon up and running on the Zenith. There are actually 3 logical stages to this: Physically copy music over to the Zenith SE's internal SSD Bring up Roon correctly on the Zenith SE, by restoring from a database backup of your existing Core Fixup the music location under Roon > Settings > Storage Do the following first, on your existing Roon Core server: Make a backup to something you can access on the SE - a network share, or even a USB stick. Go to Roon > Settings > Storage and note down where your music is currently stored. Let's assume your current Roon Core is on a Windows machine named WinRoon, and your music is in E:\MyMusicLib Let't take each in turn. Physically copy music over to the Zenith SE's internal SSD The key pitfall here is to avoid the Auto-Import at all costs! On the machine WinRoon, open the Zenith network share, and copy the folder MyMusicLib into the Music folder on the Zenith Bring up Roon correctly on the Zenith SE, by restoring from a database backup of your existing Core See https://kb.roonlabs.com/Migration It's really useful to do it this way Fixup the music location under Roon > Settings > Storage You'll see the previous location you had there - [E:] MyMusicLib is broken. Right click and "Disable" it. The Roon Core on Zenith will already have the Music folder enabled by default. This should work. I say should, because in my case, my music was on a NAS. This was much cleaner and easier to bring up. After the restore, I went to the NAS link in Storage, and selected Edit, then Browse. Since my NAS requires login creds, I had to essentially recreate the storage path to my music folder on my NAS. Since then I have been selectively moving a few albums over into the Music folder, to assess "local vs. NAS" performance, but I have not yet done a wholesale copy of my (1.7TB) library over. Advanced tip: by default Innuous locks you out of setting any other local storage location in Roon, but upon request, they can open up other folders for you. In summary, don't be afraid to start over, using the steps above. It should go a lot cleaner. I wanted to come back and update this advice after having finally done this successfully. Here are my updated instructions. Before starting, contact Nuno at Innuos support and have him do a remote session to unlock the local SSD as a selectable storage location in Roon. This is very important! Now, there are 3 logical stages to the migration: Physically copy music over to the Zenith SE's internal SSD Bring up Roon correctly on the Zenith SE, by restoring from a database backup of your existing Core Fixup the music location under Roon > Settings > Storage Do the following first, on your existing Roon Core server: Make a backup to something you can access on the SE - a network share, or even a USB stick. Go to Roon > Settings > Storage and note down where your music is currently stored. Let's assume your current Roon Core is on a Windows machine named WinRoon, and your music is in E:\MyMusicLib Let't take each in turn. Physically copy music over to the Zenith SE's internal SSD The key pitfall here is to avoid the Auto-Import at all costs! On the machine WinRoon, open the Zenith network share, and copy the folder E:\MyMusicLib over to the Music folder on the Zenith. Note: once this completes, the full path to your music folder in the SE is /storage/Music/MyMusicLib Bring up Roon correctly on the Zenith SE, by restoring from a database backup of your existing Core See https://kb.roonlabs.com/Migration It's really useful to do it this way The key is to select "Restore from backup" on the Roon login screen Fixup the music location under Roon > Settings > Storage You'll see the previous location you had there - [E:] MyMusicLib. Obviously, it's meaningless on the Zenith. Click on the 3 vertical dots next to this location, and select Edit. On the next screen, hit Browse Now navigate to your music on the local SSD. That will be at /storage/Music/MyMusicLib Select, and save. At this point, you'll see Roon scanning your files Verify everything works. In my case, it worked perfectly. My library looked exactly as it had, and all my playlists, play counts, Date Added etc were all as before. The real trick to this is to get Nuno to unlock the SSD in Roon, so you can actually Edit your existing storage location, and change the location by browsing to /storage/Music/MyMusicLib. The current default of just having Music be a non-navigable location in Roon does not work well. There is a difference between editing your existing music storage location, rather than disabling it, and enabling another location. I'm going to point Nuno to this post and ask him to consider providing a navigable storage option in Roon in future updates of their system. My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted February 3, 2018 Share Posted February 3, 2018 2 minutes ago, Patatorz said: Hello AustinPop. I should receive a SE on Monday and my main usage is with Roon. i use today a PC with passive cooling and linear power supply as Roon server. What i understand from your post is that there is no possibility to select from Roon Core (the server) installed on the Zenith to select the folders that should be imported/managed through Roon ? If it is the case for the local SSD I think it should be the same for folders on a NAS : no possibility to use folded on a NAS through smb, cifs or nfs sharing. did I understand well ? BR No I did not mean to suggest that. Yes, you can select a folder on a network share (SMB) with no problem. The current limitation is on is the local SSD. It is exposed as just the Music folder, not as a drive into which you can navigate. Like I said, you can have Nuno unlock the drive in Roon, but I have asked them to make it the default. We’ll see. My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted February 3, 2018 Share Posted February 3, 2018 11 hours ago, Patatorz said: I understood what you said about unlocking with the support of Innuos. But sorry if I reformulate, just to ensure I understand. What you say is that there is only access to the music folder on the SSD but no possibility to create another folder dedicated for Roon : i’m right ? thanks Correct. My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted February 3, 2018 Share Posted February 3, 2018 10 hours ago, One and a half said: How does an Innuous server hold a 6TB library? It doesn’t. Not sure how you fit 6TB of music on a 2TB drive? what am I missing? My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted February 3, 2018 Share Posted February 3, 2018 5 minutes ago, str-1 said: Can some kind soul with more technical knowledge than me explain why Innuos would expect this option to give better sound quality? Cheers Not really. I've played with that setting, and can't say it made any difference - but then I have tX-USBultra in the path. My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted February 3, 2018 Share Posted February 3, 2018 Has anyone else migrated to 1.3.2? The internal player is not really working for me on 1.3.2. As you know, I finally did my migration of content to the local SSD, so the amount of music in the Zenith is now significant. I have ~1250 albums, with about 40% of the SSD capacity in use. The basic issue is I cannot get iPeng9 to display and play my library. If I select Albums, I do eventually get an album list displayed, but then if I select an album, iPeng will just hang with a "working" cursor, but never display the tracks. It gets worse. If I select genres, I will get the list of genres, but selecting any one also hangs. So basically, the internal player is unusable. I don't know if this is related to the size of my library (hardly THAT big), or the new version of squeezelite in 1.3.2. I have tried all of these actions to no avail: Rebuild index on SE Rescan library on SE Flush cache on iPeng9 None of these change the behavior. I even let the SE alone overnight on the premise that it was indexing all the artwork, creating thumbnails, etc, but even after 24 hours, the behavior is the same. Again, this is not critical for me, as Roon works fine as before, but just wondered if others, who use the internal player, have seen this behavior. My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted February 3, 2018 Share Posted February 3, 2018 59 minutes ago, austinpop said: Has anyone else migrated to 1.3.2? The internal player is not really working for me on 1.3.2. As you know, I finally did my migration of content to the local SSD, so the amount of music in the Zenith is now significant. I have ~1250 albums, with about 40% of the SSD capacity in use. The basic issue is I cannot get iPeng9 to display and play my library. If I select Albums, I do eventually get an album list displayed, but then if I select an album, iPeng will just hang with a "working" cursor, but never display the tracks. It gets worse. If I select genres, I will get the list of genres, but selecting any one also hangs. So basically, the internal player is unusable. I don't know if this is related to the size of my library (hardly THAT big), or the new version of squeezelite in 1.3.2. I have tried all of these actions to no avail: Rebuild index on SE Rescan library on SE Flush cache on iPeng9 None of these change the behavior. I even let the SE alone overnight on the premise that it was indexing all the artwork, creating thumbnails, etc, but even after 24 hours, the behavior is the same. Again, this is not critical for me, as Roon works fine as before, but just wondered if others, who use the internal player, have seen this behavior. Update - Nuno gave me a way to fix this problem. I had to drop down into the web UI (<SE's IP>:9000) of the LMS (Logitech Media Server), which is the actual server running on the SE, from which the internal player pulls. I went into LMS settings, and did a "clear library and rescan," which cleared things right up. He did confirm that the DSD issue I was seeing - where all DSD is transcoded to 352.8 - was something they were aware of and working on a hotfix. Scuba 1 My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted February 3, 2018 Share Posted February 3, 2018 30 minutes ago, One and a half said: A music server should be around for a long time, and a music libary does tend to go. At the moment, the disk size of my library is just under 3TB, 2.46TB. An allowance of at least double for the future should be taken into account. The largest drive Innuous offers is 4TB, that won't fit plans. Roon has the ability to collect data from multiple shares on the network or attached drives to the server. From really early days, Gordon Rankin recommended to store music files on a 'large pipe' as he called it, PCIe is such a pipe. Ethernet, USB Drives are smaller pipes, the main problem with them is extra noise transmissions and reliability of portable drives for 24/7 use in plastic enclosures that cook drives rather than cool them. Fair enough, but the product clearly states the capacity offered (2 or 4TB). Obviously, it does not meet your requirements. That said, I find that the SQ difference between playing local files off of SSD, and pulling from my NAS to be very very small. Of course, this is with the assistance of my sCLK-EX reclocked switch, so I may yet revert to just using my NAS for storage. My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted February 5, 2018 Share Posted February 5, 2018 21 minutes ago, Advieira said: Austin, the modded switch can be connected to TX-USBUltra rather than SMS-200ultra? I mean, SQ would be the same as it is connected to SMS200Ultra? The chain is: PC > SMS200Ultra > Tx-USBUltra (modded) Be careful with your terms here. Yes, the modded switch can be "connected" to the tX-USBultra, in the context of clocks - i.e. the tX-USBultra has been modded to expose a 25MHz clock via an SMB port on the back panel, and this is what you would connect to the modded switch, using an SMB clock cable. Not "connected" in the sense of Ethernet, obviously. My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted February 6, 2018 Share Posted February 6, 2018 4 hours ago, Advieira said: Should be gain in SQ if the switch is connected (SMB) to both Ultras? Or only one is enough? Please make sure you understand the design here. The switch is being modded such that the internal clock is being disabled, and the clocking signal is fed from one, exactly one, sCLK-EX board resident in an Ultra device. You and SOtM decide what that is. For most switches, that is a 25MHz clock. So there is no meaningful way to connect the SMB from the switch to more than one Ultra device. My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted February 7, 2018 Share Posted February 7, 2018 BTW - I have been struggling with an inability to mount the Zenith SE shared folders on my Windows 10 machine. I assumed it was some Netbios issue, but after it persisted through multiple reboots, I decided to get to the bottom of this. The answer is here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4046019/guest-access-smb2-disabled-by-default-in-windows-10-server-2016 In Windows 10 Fall Creators Update and Windows Server version 1709, the SMB2 client no longer allows the following actions: Guest account access to a remote server The fix is to edit the Local Group Policy: Computer configuration\administrative templates\network\Lanman Workstation\"Enable insecure guest logons" - set to ON Bingo! darkless 1 My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted February 16, 2018 Share Posted February 16, 2018 Expanding a bit on @Patatorz's excellent points above... I have been having a spirited debate with Nuno via email on a similar theme. I've pointed out to him that, as delivered, the Zenith SE does not provide a path to users of certain ecosystems: HQPlayer Audirvana+, which also enables MQA SW decoding. My observation to him was that they (Innuos) could, with very modest SW enhancements, massively expand the capability of the box. Their design principle is to deliver a highly optimized music server/player with a slick easy-to-use GUI. Given their design choices, they clearly do not have the horsepower for complex DSP and upsampling, for example. My proposal was to enable NAA and UPnP renderer functionality on the box. Yes, these are renderer/endpoint functions, not server/player functions. But aren't server/endpoint distinctions artificial? in essence, the Zenith is a bespoke, ultra high-quality computer that can deliver exceptional signal integrity on the USB port to the DAC. With these enhancements, they could server much larger communities. They could make clear that there is a hierarchy for SQ: for best sonic performance, use the internal player with music files on local SSD Need Roon? No problem. Run Roon Core locally for performance approaching the internal player. Want to do more compute intensive upsampling or DSP in Roon? No problem. Run Roon Core on a powerful box on the network, and stream it through the Zenith via Roon Bridge. Does your DAC sing with HQPlayer upsampling to DSD512? No problem. Run HQPlayer on a powerful box on the network, and stream it through the Zenith via NAA. Want to pass through MQA to your MQA-enabled DAC? Oops sorry - our internal player doesn't (yet) passthrough MQA from Tidal, but we'll fix that. Right? Roon will pass through MQA to your MQA DAC Don't have an MQA DAC, but want to leverage MQA software decoding in Audirvana+? No problem. Enable the UPnP renderer on the Zenith Enable UPnP/DLNA streaming in A+, and select the Zenith as the endpoint. So far, he is somewhat cool to these suggestions, as I think he/they really conceived of this product for technophobe audiophiles, not us tweakers here. But as I pointed out to him, both audiences can, and do, appreciate a well-engineered product, and he should open himself to the possibilities. Adding NAA and UPnP renderer function isn't hard, and the bang for buck is significant. If you have an opinion on this, please share it here, but also with Innuos, as they need to hear that this is a desirable feature set expansion. My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted February 16, 2018 Share Posted February 16, 2018 Well, if there is one thing Innuos should do well, it is customer support. They should do what it takes to solve your problem. End of story. If they can't, that's pretty pathetic. My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted February 17, 2018 Share Posted February 17, 2018 In my recent review of the Zenith SE, I mentioned that I ran many more experiments than I could report. Well, one of the experiments I ran was comparing the Zenith SE running as a Roon Core serving local content vs. the SE running as a Roon Bridge, serving content from a remote Core on the network. My key findings were: While the local case (Roon Core, local files) did sound a tad better, the difference was not very large. The intermediate case - Roon core on the SE, with remote files on the NAS - slotted in between these 2 configurations, SQ wise. Caveat - the remote cases are greatly improved by all the known ethernet improvements, that i had in place: bridging from the remote Core isolation from the JS combo of low- and high-impedance noise using ground shunts and a switch with known magnetics - the Netgear GS105 Reclocked switch - my modded Zyxel with sCLK-EX input My point here is that even though the SE may not be marketed as an endpoint, it can deliver the same benefits when run as a renderer as it dose as a server. This is due to the HW. Now - I understand marketing and market positioning, so if Innuos choose not to put features like NAA or UPnP player functionality, it's their choice. 6 hours ago, BigAlMc said: Does playing the music on a "powerful box" upstream and turning the SE into a (very expensive) NAA not risk reintroducing the noise at source that the SE was conceived of to eliminate? Not if you isolate properly with bridging, shunting and reclocking in the switches like I do. Quote Unless your upstream box is a cracker (good custom build or Antipodes DX etc) you're risking introducing noise that even the SE can only do so much to tame. Nope, my upstream box is as vanilla as it gets - a Dell desktop with no tuning, other than AO and Process Lasso. 3 hours ago, BigAlMc said: My point was that the SE is a Server Not really. Quoting myself above, "the Zenith is a bespoke, ultra high-quality computer that can deliver exceptional signal integrity on the USB port to the DAC." From a HW perspective, that's it. Whether you run server or renderer software on it, or both, is a matter of choice. My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted February 18, 2018 Share Posted February 18, 2018 1 hour ago, BigAlMc said: So it's less that four months since I took the decision to simplify and remove all the spaghetti from my system in favour of a simpler kick-ass server direct to kick-ass DAC approach. My SU-1, my MicroRendu and all that wonderful stuff was banished! And I'm very happy with that decision as my Zenith SE is sounding terrific. On top of that is the benefit that the cables behind my rack are now reduced to what one could charitably describe as ridiculous. But that's a big improvement on completely ridiculous But there has been a fly in the ointment. And it's one that's come into clearer focus now that I have the LMS player working reasonably well because now USB has a clear sonic edge vs ethernet into my DAC. On Roon the two formats are evenly tied and I couldn't discern an audible difference. Well the LMS player as commented by Austinpop in his review is very well implemented in the SE and plays from cache memory. This USB only output has a clear edge on the SQ from Roon. And as a Roon lover this is a proper dilemma. The great Roon UX vs better sound quality. Sigh... Anyway the fly in the ointment is all the comments I've read from respected 'ears' including AustinPop, Liminscate and Romaz who all attest that the SoTM TX-USB-Ultra lifts the USB output from the Zenith SE to new heights. I figured that at some point I needed to find out for myself but now that USB has a clear edge (and is usable courtesy of Nuno's playlist workaround) well that itch was needing scratched. Just pulled the trigger on a TX-USBultra on Ebay. The chap is selling it practically new (reckons it has 20 hours burn-in so far) for just under £900 and they are £1200 new here in the UK. So my thinking is that if it doesn't add anything to the SQ I can sell it for pretty much what I paid for it. But based on the reviews I fear I won't be selling it any time soon Of course the addition of one new noodle, the TX-USBultra, means that I need to dust down one of the LPS-1s I was planning on selling any day now. And luckily I still have a spare decent USB cable (though I'm now regretting selling my Curious cable - doh!). And I'm going to close my eyes/ears/mind completely to thoughts of reference clocks like the Cybershaft, Ref10 or new SoTM one for now..... Am standing at the top of what looks like a slippery slope! Cheers, Alan the pasta chef! Congrats, we’ll look forward to your review! As for the slippery slope, anyone who’s still following this thread is already sliding down, where a delicious bowl of pasta awaits. All we’ve been able to do is control the portion size. My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted February 20, 2018 Share Posted February 20, 2018 4 hours ago, str-1 said: Some Tidal and DSD issues now addressed in firmware update 1.3.3. Don’t know precisely what they are. Just learned about it talking with Innuos. The DSD issue - or at least a DSD issue - is the one I experienced and reported with the 1.3.2 update. The confusingly-named "Native DSD" setting, which actually turns on DoP, stopped working. As a result, all DSD content was being transcoded to 352.8 kHz. This is with the internal player. Roon was not affected. I just installed 1.3.3, and indeed, the DoP problem appears to be fixed. It would be nice to get a full changelog for each release. My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted February 20, 2018 Share Posted February 20, 2018 Release notes for the 1.3.3. release are here: http://www.innuos.com/en/go/release-1-3-3 Note the pane on the left which has links to all the release notes. My Audio Setup Link to comment
Popular Post austinpop Posted February 24, 2018 Popular Post Share Posted February 24, 2018 4 hours ago, BigAlMc said: Fair point but as the supposedly uber-endpoint it'd be interesting to see a Sonore Signature Rendu with ordinary source vs the SE, as well as SSR with great source vs SE. There are probably many winning combos to consider. Personality I think (or perhaps that's hope) that my SE means I don't need an endpoint. But then Romaz seemed to enjoy pairing the SE with the DCS network bridge based on his Head-fi review. I'm currently trialling a TX-USBultra because of all the reviews but am doing so to my great annoyance given the cash splurged on the SE. Eric you share the blame for this as you were one of the wise men advocating how the TX-USBultra lifted the SE further. Early burn. In stages so too soon to tell. Cheers, Alan Hi Alan, I know you reject my POV on this, but I will say say this again. There are no axioms, or self-evident truths, in computer audio. If there's one thing I've learned, it is that! We have gone through so many cycles of "direct attach is best," "no, endpoints are best," "no, upsampling to DSD512 is best" that I would assert that you have to keep an absolutely open mind, adapt, and adopt the results of new advancements in the state of the art as they occur. There is also a tendency to consider that devices that are computers - i.e. running an OS, with controllers for Ethernet, USB, etc - are particularly evil in terms of noise, so any more than one in your chain is a recipe for disaster. In my experience, that is simply not true. There are some chains - my current one happens to be one - where a single computer (the Zenith SE) can sound magnificent. However, I would not presume to say that other chains that feature an endpoint - hence 2 computers, server and endpoint - are inherently, or always going to be worse. I still think my previous SOtM trifecta, fed by PSUs of the same quality as the Sean Jacobs supplies in the SE, or a PH SR-7 may equal, perhaps even surpass the SE. We will be able to test this in 2-3 months when @limniscate's SR-7 shows up. If the trifecta pulls ahead, c'est la vie. Finally, I have asserted this before, and will do so again - just because the Zenith SE is marketed as a music server/player does not mean that it cannot also run software that implements endpoint functionality. The main benefit of the device comes from the physical hardware design of the box. The beauty of software is that you don't need to limit yourself. I strongly urge anyone who is pursuing excellence in this area of computer audio to abandon these zero-sum game thought patterns that require there to be "winners' and "losers" between direct-attach servers vs. distributed topologies with endpoints. The reality is far more complex and fluid, and you would be well served to remain agnostic. rickca, gstew and mozes 2 1 My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted February 24, 2018 Share Posted February 24, 2018 29 minutes ago, ElviaCaprice said: Best, find something your quite pleased with and just check out for awhile from any further upgrades or experiments. Sound advice! Too bad most of us regulars here are singularly bad at following it. My Audio Setup Link to comment
austinpop Posted February 24, 2018 Share Posted February 24, 2018 7 hours ago, BigAlMc said: How dare you sir! I demand my honour. Pick your weapon, dagger or pistol, and we shall dual to an honourable death at ten paces! Rajiv - I'm sure you know that I respect your opinion and that you're one of my go-to experts when I have questions. I don't "reject your POV" here and on the posts you are referring to I simply meant that for Innuos and most of the SE customer base I would imagine that they are spending such a hefty amount of cash in the hope that they are done. Done in terms of a top notch server that doesn't need an end point to mitigate its weaknesses or an external server to reduce its role to that of NAA. That was certainly the attraction in my case. Innuos in turn market it as a "source". Do I accept that it could be further enhanced to support more of an NAA role. Yes of course. And for those with deep enough pockets to wish to do so then fair play. Do I accept there are no absolutes and many ways to achieve sonic nirvana. Yup. Absolutely! Personally, if I were wedded to the endpoint model I'd buy the MKII for 2.3 grand and spend the change on a Sonore SSR or a DCS network bridge. I saw that Roy experimented with great results on precisely this combo. But it's a bit rich for my pockets. I agree that there are no self evident truths or absolutes in this game. And I am very open to changing direction and experimentation. As you know I recently added a TX-USBultra to my arsenal based on user feedback including your review. But there are more obvious use-cases and business models. If Innuos wish to add further NAA support then I'll be happy with that. But it's their perogative as it's probably a niche use-case. Your post seemed like you felt Nuno was being inflexible re your NAA suggestions. I simply meant I see his perspective and tend to agree with it. Cheers, Alan No worries, Alan. I regret my choice of words. Here's what's interesting to me. Based on my experiments running Roon locally vs. on my Windows 10 box, this is how I would assign the benefit realized by the Zenith SE: due to the HW as audio USB source: 85% due to the optimized SW renderer - i.e. squeezelite: 10% due to the local music server (LMS or Roon Core): 5% I find that the bulk of the benefit of the SE comes from its HW design and its position in the chain as the music USB source. Whether the server software happens to run on the same box vs. a remote one seems to be of relatively small importance. Caveat: this is with properly shunted and reclocked switches before the SE and the tX-USBultra after the SE. So I take your point that from Innuos's perspective, given that they are going for a simple technophobe-friendly experience, it is much easier to market the device as a music server. 7 hours ago, BigAlMc said: Streaming Tidal via ordinary consumer router, an Aqvox SE switch (so excellent clocking there) and Roon or LMS on the Zenith SE seems to be sounding like it has more timbre or something. Not that FLAC is sounding bad. Far from it. Am just loving the Tidal. Need to do some critical listening to see if I am imagining this or not. This does not surprise me, given you have a switch with an excellent clock, as this has been my experience as well. With this level of network quality, replace "Tidal" with "NAS," or one step further, remote Roon Core, and you'll see where I'm coming from. Now as regards NAA specifically. I've had further discussions with Nuno. He is happy to let me have a private build with NAA to try out. He's not opposed to the renderer function in abstract. The main issue for him is support. And I completely understand his position. NAA at least is a singular implementation, and well supported by Signalyst. My failed experiment with A+ and UPnP renderer plugin of LMS illustrates the fact that UPnP renderers in particular are rather fussy, and he doesn't want to take on the support nightmare. The other area he is leery is native DSD support. I gather this is a fraught issue, with Linux drivers in particular. From what I gather, if you want to run HQPlayer upsampled to DSD512, your best option is a Windows direct attach or a WIndows NAA. For someone reading this who doesn't know my system, I do not need NAA and massive upsampling in my system. If I did, the SE would not be the right choice for me. Like Alan, I see the SE as quite an expensive investment, and so I am thinking ahead to what I might need in the future. What if my next candidate DAC does benefit from DSD512 upsampling? My Audio Setup Link to comment
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