Media Server Reviews

Setup and software challenges
I placed the Absolute Stream on the top shelf of my Grand Prix Monza double rack, on the same Wilson Audio Pedestals I use under my reference streamer. Streaming data was delivered to the Absolute Stream from a Small Green Computer/Sonore opticalModule Deluxe via the Innuos PhoenixNet reclocking network switch. Output from the Absolute Stream was delivered to the dCS Vivaldi Upsampler Plus via the Absolute Stream's USB audio output.

The Absolute Stream has two USB outputs intended for audio, one of which supplies 5V to the receiving device and one that doesn't. I started with what I considered the obvious choice for use with the dCS Vivaldi system, the one without 5V, but with that choice, the connection dropped repeatedly. After consultation and some experimentation, I ended up using the 5V output. With this output, the connection remained stable.

It took me all of 30 seconds to conclude that Ideon's software yielded sound that was more transparent, color-saturated, and involving than the sound produced with the Absolute Stream running Roon. Roon may allow me to stream Tidal and Qobuz and to search more efficiently and expeditiously, but this audiophile/critic chose better sonics over convenience and bid Roon and Tidal a temporary adieu.

Ideon's software has numerous idiosyncrasies. Its interface is in the visual style widely known as Utilitarian Clunky, and it lacks the aesthetic appeal and navigational ease of other systems, especially Roon. It also greatly prefers FLAC files over WAV, presumably due to the former's metadata-storage capabilities.

I receive much music in for review in WAV format. The Ideon often choked on WAV files; it did much better with FLAC. For WAV to display properly, the "Album Artist" and "Album" tags must be stipulated in a prescribed, consistent manner, on all album tracks. Ermidis proposed I use the metadata capabilities of either mp3Tag or Foobar to enter the required metadata by hand. That's doable if the number of such albums is relatively small, or if you have a great deal of time on your hands.

As a test, I sent prerelease WAV files for Rodgers & Hammerstein's two-disc album Carousel and an enticing single-disc Stravinsky compilation to Ermidis for metadata massage; neither was listed yet in MusicBrainz, etc. When Ermidis returned the files, he assured me they would display correctly, but in the context of my system the Ideon software broke Carousel into perhaps 20 folders, none displaying cover art, and the Stravinsky into three; all three Stravinsky folders displayed the correct cover art. I don't know why WAV fields that displayed perfectly in Greece would not pass the sniff test in Port Townsend. In any case, when I used XLD to convert these files to FLAC—I also renamed the cover art "Cover.jpg" and the booklet "booklet.jpg"—the albums displayed perfectly (footnote 7).

Thankfully, Ideon's software offers an alternative to the standard view: You can view your library using the "File System" method, which lists all tracks within a folder, even when they're WAV. There was however one glitch: For reasons unknown, the WAV files on the Isotek break-in disc I customarily play at the start of listening sessions—files ripped from CD eons ago—would not play at all.

Ideon's software lacks an app, relying instead on a web-based tool. On my iMac, I opened my browser and typed "Ideon.local." When I used Qobuz, Ideon's album display did not indicate the resolution of Qobuz albums. To find that out, I had to open folders one at a time, click on a track, and examine the readout—hardly user-friendly.

Liner notes had to be in pdf format and labeled "booklet.pdf "; otherwise, they would not display. If booklets display in Qobuz, I could not find them. Covers displayed only if named "Cover.jpg". (Vamos said other names work including cover, folder, Folder, Front, and front.)

Ideon software only allows you to add one volume of a multi-volume NAS, and it will not pass MQA. I was eager to hear Peter McGrath's MQA-encoded files of his live recording of Emanuel Ax playing Beethoven and Schönberg, which, through a CH Precision and Wilson system at High End Munich 2024, delivered the most convincing reproduction of a grand piano's timbres I'd ever heard. I couldn't play those files with the Ideon server/streamer.

Like some other server manufacturers, Ideon has some software work to do. It wasn't as antediluvian as other proprietary software I've tried, on a server I refused to review. Yet its interface pales before Roon and some others. I stuck with it for one reason: With the Ideon Absolute Stream meta edition (2024), Ideon's software provided the best sound.

The good stuff
Software limitations aside, the Ideon Absolute Stream meta edition (2024), running its own software, delivered clearer, more involving sound than any other music server or streamer I've heard in my reference system. Especially with vocals and acoustic instruments, it let me hear emphases, nuances, shading, and spatial information that previously had remained hidden. Time and time again, I sat spellbound, mesmerized by the depth of musical genius it shared.

The Absolute Stream delivered sound that was transparent, fresh, and alive. I began listening with a recording I soon chose to review for the October issue, Mozart Symphonies Nos.29 & 33; Clarinet Concerto, performed by Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and their bass clarinetist, Ernst Schlader, under concertmaster Bernhard Forck (24/96 FLAC download, Pentatone). I loved how the Absolute Stream meta edition (2024) showcased period instrument timbres, and how its superb depiction of depth drew me deep into the glories of Mozart's music.

The midrange and bass were warm and full, more than I'd ever heard through a music server. Timbres were more fully fleshed out, and the bottom line of the music—its foundation, from which all else springs alive and free—was clearer and firmer. As I marveled at every sound Forck produced from his period authentic basset clarinet, I discovered the Clarinet Concerto's Adagio so beautiful, heartfelt, and limpidly rendered that I could not stop listening.

Soprano Jodie Devos was in her mid-30s when she died from breast cancer. As many times as I've listened to her very personal rendition of Freddie Mercury's "You Take My Breath Away," the last track on her 2021 solo recital, And Love Said (24/96 FLAC download, Alpha), it had never seemed as personal and intimate as it did through the Ideon Absolute Stream. When I switched gears and cued up Rafael Payare and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal's recording of Mahler's Symphony No.5 (24/96 FLAC download, Pentatone), I realized it had never sounded as full and rich as it did through the Ideon Absolute Stream. The only disruptions to my musical bliss were software-related.

In Roon, I could easily conduct a Qobuz search to meet a friend's request to hear, of all things, Rudy Vallee's famed recording of "Winchester Cathedral." No such luck with Ideon's own software despite various search strategies; Ideon's search function seems to replicate the weakness of Qobuz's own. On another occasion, I tried to find a live recital by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf on Qobuz; Ideon's software provided some 15 Schwarzkopf folders to search inside. Some contained a single album, and some were empty.

I never found the recital, which displayed immediately when I searched for "Elisabeth Schwarzkopf" in Roon.

Absolute Stream + Alpha Wave = excellence
No matter how many times the Ideon folks told me that the Alpha Wave was optional, their clear conviction that USB in as well as out of the Absolute Stream would provide the best sound compelled me to try it. I also knew that if I used it instead of the Innuos PhoenixNet, I'd be able to send signal to the Absolute Stream at the 1GB speed it seemed to prefer (footnote 8).

With the Alpha Wave outputting USB, Devos's voice seemed more present—more realistically reproduced, with utmost clarity and focus of line. It felt more like I was present in the recording venue, listening in real time, and less like I was listening to a recording. As trite as it may sound, her performance really did take my breath away. The excitement with which she opened the song, the convincing depiction of voice and piano in space, and the deeper impact of the silences between notes held me in rapt attention. When Devos sang, "I could give up all my life for just one kiss," the Absolute Stream + Alpha Wave's reproduction of the midrange core of her voice transported me to that too rarely encountered sacred place where heart, sound, and truth meld as one. I could hear how, in some phrases, she intentionally opened into this midrange core, while in others she emphasized the higher overtones of her clear instrument. Each choice of emphasis corresponded to what music and words expressed in that moment. What a privilege to hear and feel artistry like this, and to move so close to it.

What, I wondered, would Elisabeth Schwarzkopf's justly celebrated performance of "Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit" ("You who are now sorrowful, grieve not"), the soprano solo from Brahms's A German Requiem on the celebrated recording by Otto Klemperer and the Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus (24/192 FLAC download, Warner), sound like through the Absolute Stream and Alpha Wave? Within the first few bars, I felt as though I'd moved so close to her that I was listening through the aural equivalent of a magnifying glass. I'd always considered Schwarzkopf 's performance a model of control, but now the seeming absence of electronically erected barriers rendered her performance even more inspiring. Schwarzkopf's absolute ease as she transitioned between registers without the slightest break, and the supreme mastery with which she voiced vowels with a technique that allowed the vocal line to flow unimpeded, were allied to a unity of emotion that conveyed the essence of consolation. What a marvelous performance! I am still searching for another recording of "Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit" that seems as ideal as hers.

Just as some people follow rock stars around the globe or line up days in advance for tickets to their favorite artists on tour, so am I one of those opera queens who would metaphorically prostrate themselves before the feet of great vocalists. In such a spirit did I turn to Julia Bullock's award-winning 2022 recital with Christian Reif, Walking in the Dark (24/192 download, Nonesuch), and play her sparsely accompanied performance of Oscar Brown Jr.'s "Brown Baby." From the soulful profundity of her lower range, I transitioned to "Memorial de Tlatelolco," from John Adams's El Niño, and listened to her sing out full over multiple octaves. Days later, I continue to hear this music in my head as I write these words. The impact of the opening orchestral exclamation and Bullock's subsequent octave leaps courses on repeat through my brain and body (footnote 9).

I recall specifically how special Isabelle Faust's violin and the orchestra supporting it sounded in Britten's Violin Concerto (24/96 WAV, Harmonia Mundi). Ditto for every solo on the jazz recordings I played. But when I look at my notes, time and again I find myself marveling at what I wrote about the Ideon pairing's way with the human voice. "Never before have I understood how deep Maggie Teyte went when, in her 1936 recording of Debussy's Trois Chansons de Bilitis (16/44.1 FLAC, rip from a Naxos CD), she opened the chilling core of her lower voice to imitate the voice of her male lover declaring, matter of factly, "The satyrs are dead. The satyrs and the nymphs as well. For thirty years there has not been so harsh a winter." If you want to hear an intentionally hollowed-out voice chillingly express finality, listen to this recording through the Absolute Stream + Alpha Wave.

Would you like to hear how different Alexander Melnikov's seven different historic pianos sound on his landmark recording, Fantasie: Seven Composers, Seven Keyboards (24/96 FLAC download, Harmonia Mundi), or how magnificently John Atkinson captured the Portland State Chamber Choir's warm bath of sound on Translations (24/96 FLAC, Naxos/Qobuz), their recording of choral music by Eriks Ešenvalds? If you want to groove like never before to the delightful sounds of Yusef Lateef most likely singing "doo, doo, doo" into his flute on "The Plum Blossom," the opening track on his wonderful album, Eastern Sounds (24/192 FLAC, Craft Recordings/Qobuz, remastered in 2023), you now know which server may serve you best.

Summing up
Never before have I reviewed a stand-alone streamer/server so accomplished in the hardware department, yet so behind the best in software implementation. True, my review collection has been limited to five or six server/streamers from Innuos, Aurender, Antipodes, and Roon, many of whose initial software releases also cried out for improvement. But as the years have progressed, each of those companies has made great strides in software design while also upgrading their hardware.

Nonetheless, as much as Ideon has some catching up to do software-wise, some other companies could learn a thing or two from Ideon's technological achievements. I fully believe you will hear the music you love to listen to via file playback or streaming better and sink deeper into its power and mystery if you listen through the Ideon Absolute Stream meta edition (2024). Your satisfaction will increase if you feed the Absolute Stream with a network switch that reclocks data and outputs via LAN (Ethernet). Your joy will increase even more if you feed it with the Ideon Alpha Wave, which reclocks data and outputs via USB. In fact, you may love this combo's sound so much that you'll stick with FLAC files, which the Absolute Stream's proprietary software processes very well, or embrace the Absolute Stream's easy-peasy option of Roon playback.

One way or another, you've got to give Ideon's Absolute Stream meta edition (2024) and Alpha Wave a spin. It won't take long for you to hear why I love their sound so much. The more revealing your system, the more you'll appreciate Ideon's excellence.

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Footnote 7: There are many apps, including some that are excellent and free, that allow you to bulk-convert WAV files to FLAC. If you are concerned about paying a sonic penalty—opinions differ on this—you can choose FLAC compression level 0. Even those who insist that different lossless digital files can sound different (presumably due to different levels of electronic noise generated during decompression) generally agree that FLAC 0 is indistinguishable from WAV.—Jim Austin

Footnote 8: I recall Ermidis telling me during one of our WhatsApp sessions that while 100Mbps will work with PCM, it may not be fast enough to transmit DSD512 files.

Footnote 9: Heartfelt thanks to Irv Gross of Constellation Audio, who played this exact sequence for me on CD at High End Munich.