advertisement


Innuos - best CD ripping solution

M

markharro

pfm Member
My Naim CDX now fails to play a good number of CDs and, having checked, this issue is not repairable. I have ripped CDs on my PC but more out of interest to compare how the FLAC rip sounds compared to the CD via the CDX - answer - very similar.
I have now stumbled upon the Innuos ZEN Mini Mk3 which is low cost and seems to be a really good way to easily rip my CDs and then play them rendering the CDX redundant. It seems to be pretty unique in its functionality. Is anyone using one? Are there any similar products to compare? Would you recommend?
 
A good question & one I was going to be asking in the near future, you beat me to it. The Bluesound Vault looks to have similar functionality to the Innous Zen & I think there are various Nova Fidelity/Cocktail Audio products that rip CDs & stream as well. I would be interested in users experiences of these products myself.
TS
 
Took delivery of a Zen Mk3 a couple of months back and could not be happier. Set up is straight forward, so very convenient for me, as tech is not my strong point. My CD collection is now on the Zen hard drive, and everything works from my phone, so no mucking about looking for this and that CD.

I cannot hear any difference between using my CD player as transport through my DAC, when comparing it with the Zen hard drive. You will need a separate DAC when using the Zen, whereas the Zen mini has a built in DAC

The Zen is also a streamer and Tidal works perfectly. In this regard I had some teething problems, but Innuos customer support was first class and everything was sorted. I have no difficulty in highly recommending this product.

A shout out to Fanthorpes HI FI who were excellent to deal with.
 
I too have a Zen mini mk3; had it about a year. Very happy with it, and as leroyd above says, the customer support has been excellent when I've needed it (most recently with the TIDAL authentication issue). In the interest of fairness I will give a shoutout to Lee at Strictly Stereo who was also excellent to deal with.
 
Thanks for the feedback. A couple more questions. Does the music sound better when played from the FLAC file that has been ripped from the CD in peoples' experience? When commenting can you mention which version of the Innuous player you have and which generation etc and which CD player you are comparing with.
And how do the various Innuos players compare SQ wise to other perhaps better know digital sources? Thanks
 
Can't help you with most of the above I'm afraid. Most of my digital files were ripped from CD to an old laptop and/or and early mac mini many years ago, and then imported to the Zen Mini III from a portable HDD. I've ripped a few CDs direct to the Zen, but I haven't done any comparison with other formats or, for example, between one of my rips and a TIDAL hifi stream. I didn't do any comparative listening before buying the Zen Mini. It just ticked more of the features/functionality/ease of use boxes for my needs and was well reviewed. I think from memory I discounted the Bluesound Vault because I didn't need 2TB, the Innuous was £200 cheaper, and also gave the option of a linear power supply upgrade in future (I haven't yet felt the need to scratch that particular itch).
 
I own the Zenith MKIII and have a high end CDP in the Electrocompaniet EMC1UP, only ever use the CDP to spin the CD when first bought, then ripped to the Innuous... a brilliant product and as others have said, customer service is excellent.
Mac
 
I own the Zenith MKIII too. Hell of a streamer. Works perfectly with the InnuOS Software and IPeng (IPhone) for using it. Had the Zen MK3 before and was fascinated about the Quality of Rips, the Software and the Innuos Support in case of questions or problems. Thought also about a Mini MKIII in the beginning but decided for a Zen because of Possibilty to expand the Zen to a Zenith with some oncost. I could really recommend the Zen but also the Zenith. Never missed my Rega Isis!
 
I think @leroyd has pretty much nailed it.
I use a Innuos Zen Mk2 and am very happy with it - before that I had a Bluesound Vault 2 which soundwise imo is significantly inferior to the Zen (don't know how it would compare to the Zen Mini).
My next move would be to either upgrade to a Zenith Mk3 or alternatively try a Innuos Phoenix with my existing Zen Mk2.
As others have said on here support from Innuos is 1st class.
 
markharro said:
Thanks for these observations. Is there a sweet spot between the Zen Mini, the Zen and the Zenith?
Click to expand...
That's an interesting question - to which I don't personally have the answer.
What I can tell you is that I have been advised by a few people (inc. Stephen Healy at Innuos) that the addition of the Phoenix to my existing Zen Mk2 would outperform the Zenith Mk3.
 
markharro said:
Thanks for these observations. Is there a sweet spot between the Zen Mini, the Zen and the Zenith?
Click to expand...

If we are talking about the Mk3 models then the Zen is arguably the sweet spot. It uses the same main board and as power supply design as the Zenith, but uses one hard disk storage, one less power supply rail and some slightly cheaper parts in the remaining rails.

markharro said:
Thanks for the feedback. A couple more questions. Does the music sound better when played from the FLAC file that has been ripped from the CD in peoples' experience? When commenting can you mention which version of the Innuous player you have and which generation etc and which CD player you are comparing with.
And how do the various Innuos players compare SQ wise to other perhaps better know digital sources? Thanks
Click to expand...

Whether it sounds better or not is going to depend on which music server and CD player you are comparing, as well as any partnering equipment and your own personal tastes and preferences.

I do think that hard disk and solid state disk-based players like the Innuos range have an inherent advantage over CD players though. The CD player has a very small window in which to either read the data off the disc correctly or deal with the error. It has a buffer, but this is normally quite small, so essentially it has to read the contents of the CD in near realtime. The hard disk-based (or solid state disk) player can look much further ahead. Some of them will even read an entire track into memory before playing it. Any issues with the original disc will be either corrected or flagged during the ripping process. Once ripped to the hard disk or solid state drive, the integrity of the file and underlying filesystem can be checked regularly and again any issues will be corrected where possible or otherwise flagged.
 
I use a 4TB Zen Mark III which was kindly supplied by Lee at @Strictly Stereo. It replaced an ancient 2TB Vortexbox. I stream via a Lumin D1 that feeds zeros and ones to an Aestethix Pandora DAC. The CD rips are far superior to my CD player (a Naim CD3.5/FlatCap combo) which I put down largely to the DAC. I've not compared rips to a transport feeding the DAC as my CDP has no digital out and life is too short. FWIW, the CD3.5 is mainly used to played visitors CDs which means that it has seen almost zero use in 2020.

I have had no issues with the Innous machine in terms of reliability. Any issues were strictly related to Windows updates on my old PC which Lee showed massive patience (dealing with my IT ineptitude) while fixing things in short order. It has been flawless this year.
 
Spiderous said:
Can't help you with most of the above I'm afraid. Most of my digital files were ripped from CD to an old laptop and/or and early mac mini many years ago, and then imported to the Zen Mini III from a portable HDD. I've ripped a few CDs direct to the Zen, but I haven't done any comparison with other formats or, for example, between one of my rips and a TIDAL hifi stream. I didn't do any comparative listening before buying the Zen Mini. It just ticked more of the features/functionality/ease of use boxes for my needs and was well reviewed. I think from memory I discounted the Bluesound Vault because I didn't need 2TB, the Innuous was £200 cheaper, and also gave the option of a linear power supply upgrade in future (I haven't yet felt the need to scratch that particular itch).
Click to expand...

OK to scratch your itch, I have a Zen Mini mk2 and got the Innuos LPSU off eBay seller at a good price. Its really makes a difference in my system so happy man.
 
In answer to Mark, As I said in the above Mk2 Zen mini plus Innous LPSU. Lovely sound, both from CD's ripped on it and those I imported in Flac from my hard drive. Don't really hear a difference. Ripped CD's sound as good as played on my CD5 + Hi Cap and my vinyl on LP12 Ittok and AT OC9Xsh. Yes different presentation on the vinyl but the SQ is comparable so I am happy with solution. I use my Innous through a Rega Mk 1 DAC into my Naim 102 and i use it a lot now, I stream from Tidal and spotify as well. Still got the /CD as Tidal and Quobusz which i trialled as well do not have some CD's in their libraries. Quobuz is gapped for classical and Jazz from what I could see but some rock, house and soul were missing,. Tidal has more of the music I listen to so I went with that.

Like some of the others said the customer support is excellent and they helped me get up and running even though I got it all second hand, I expect they are hoping to keep me in the club when I upgrade sometime in the future. The Bluesound is a definite option as it fully supports Tidal's MQA format for Hi Res and decodes it fully, my Rega does not. It also has Tidal Connect built in, which I hope Innous take up, though they keep saying they have their own App coming soon. At present as I use Apple products to control it I had to download the iPeng app which cost around £11 I think, it is a bit clunky but serves it's purpose.

So I recommend it as well, I'm very happy with it, easy to use, ripping CD's are easy and transferring from another source is easy using the import function.
 
Del monaco said:
Vortexbox software or an Audiostore Nova will be just as accomplished.
Click to expand...

The Innous software is Linux based and a Squeezbox server like the Vortexbox , I have a old Vortexbox server with early software level but the processor is not really suitable for the later software levels such as 2.4 or 2.5. This gave me issues as it would not update Plex server to a newer level and lost Bliss as well. So when it had problems I was absolutely lost as I don't do Linux. the Innous software just works without any hiccups, in fact it has ripped CD's that the Vortex box or another external CD drive and dBpoweramp would not, it may be down though to the TEAC CD drive in the Innous. I know enough about computers to get myself into trouble and so prefer to have a solution that is easy to use. The vortex box is fine for ripping movies but again I really do need the later software.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top