Innuos Zenith SE MkII

[JFHSQT]

I'm using the Roon/LMS experimental option full-time. Every time I go back and switch to Roon Core to try and fool myself, I do notice the decline in sound quality from the Roon/LMS config. I'm upsampling everything to DSD 64 and using no other DSP... I find as long as I don't skip ahead songs or screw around with DSP stuff mid-song I really have no problems with stuttering. Just need to remember to pause the currently playing song before skipping to the next song or changing any settings. 

 

ONE THING I have noticed with the 1.6 update and Roon radio - it does give me a warning message saying that Roon Radio playback is limited to my own library. I don't know if this is a limitation of the LMS setting or what.

[JFHSQT]

I updated last night with my Zen MK III in Experimental mode. I have always used Experimental mode and rarely have issues as long as I don't skip ahead in tracks or jump around on my queue too much. Occasionally (on previous builds) I'll select a "cold" track and it will queue it up to play then nothing happens. But once I get music going I rarely have problems.

 

So I did update last night and experienced no issues with Experimental mode. Every track I selected went ahead and played the first time, no jumped tracks in my queue. Best of all, when I go ahead and "skip" tracks (jump forward to another track) in the queue, they load right up and play without error at all. Before when I did this, it would struggle to play and then drop out many times. Just hit the "skip" button 6 times and jumped ahead 6 tracks in the queue and the next track played flawlessly - this was a track in my library, not Quobuz or Tidal.  

Roon overall seemed zippier loading Artists and Album directories, etc. I think the suggested albums feature is a great addition. 

 

It seems this is a top notch, stable release. I'd be interested in hearing what others experience with Experimental mode. 

[JFHSQT]

I will say I may have been premature in my assessment of the Exp feature's stability in 1.7. It is true that it was amazingly stable on Friday when I first posted that update. However over the weekend I began experiencing worse errors than I have ever experienced (prior to updating to 1.7). Many tracks only were playing 20-50% then jumping ahead to the next track. 

 

Looking at the Roon Community over the weekend, it seemed this was an issue many were having regardless of Innuos or the Squeezebox emulation, so I attributed it to overall instability of the 1.7 build and not to the Innuos. 

 

Since Sunday evening it seems that things have gotten back to normal without the skips and stops (for me) so it could have been a glitch over the weekend.