Media Server Reviews

Waiting for a review of the Innuos Phoenix USB Reclocker by JVS :-) ..........

Here's to hoping no one accuses JVS of trying to spread plague by having his sister-in-law over or "waving his middle finger" at those of us who can't afford the server.

Other than that, nice review.

I have written a follow-up review of the Innuos server for the May issue, comparing it with the Roon Nucleus+.

John Atkinson
Technical Editor, Stereophile

The measurements are at a level of -130 to -145db; so any noise or differences are inaudible in any case, aren't they?
Would seem to belie the descriptions in the review.

In addition, the results with the Mytek would indicate that with any well engineered audiophile DAC the Statement makes no difference. The Dragonfly DACs aren't really audiophile, and the Cobalt actually measures worse than it's $100 cheaper brother.

JVS: you have the Roon facts a bit wrong here. The experimental feature is when using Statement as Roon Core with SqueezeLite Player. I wish I could post a screen grab here to show you that setting on my Statement. There is nothing experimental here when using Statement as “regular” Roon Core only, or Roon Core + Player.

Here is the description on the experimental feature:

****(Experimental) New option in Roon Settings to allow using our internal player with Roon, enabling RAM playback. Please see setup instructions below.***

Also, I was shocked to hear you liked Nucleus more than Statement as a Roon Core. To me, Statement when used as Core + Roon Endpoint is significantly better than when used as a Player only with Roon Nucleus as the Core. Even the Zenith MK3 I used to own before the Statement is better that way. I suggest you give it another shot, and ask Innuos folks for help with the set up, as something must have been terribly wrong with the way you had configured stuff.

My endpoint system buffers entire tracks. How does this server help vs my QNAP?

Perhaps the measurements would be more revealing if they were made using the Max Hold function in the analyzer. That would capture peaks in the noise spectra over a period of time. Averaging tends to, well, average incoherent or faux-coherent disturbances into almost nothingness. That's the reason for using averaging.

Many sources of noise and interference only appear every few samples. So, they'd get averaged out or only appear as a modest bump in the noise floor. In the communications system biz, engineers figured this out some time back. You can lose a couple symbols out of a thousand, and it only shows as a couple hundredths of a dB in averaged degradation. Yet, those bits are entirely corrupted.

People tend to listen to a continuum of samples - how silly! - which means that averaging isn't representative of how something might sound. A noise burst that only appears once every hundred samples might be pretty loud for those samples, but the average would only show a slight perturbation.

I'm not sure whether the most recent Audio Precision products have this function. Older units certainly did, and AP is not a company that skimps on useful design features.

This might be a trip down the rabbit hole in regard to audio. It only takes a couple mouse clicks and a small amount of time to see if there's anything there. (Easy for me to say - I'm not the guy doing the work!)

The best streamers seem to jump in price from entry level ones.
I just want something with good features, an attractive looking chassis, and a price tag that makes sense for me. Doesn't seem like one exists that checks all these boxes... perhaps I will just make do running my computer into my DAC until I'm close to retirement age...

I am currently using the supplied wall wart.
Be interested to learn of your experiences with External LPS for this device.

Thanks JVS.
Good article.
I will investigate LPS alternatives.
Cheers
James

I don’t have the Statement but am very very happy with its smaller brother Zen Mk3. Software being the same, I never encountered the software problems JVS described. And sonically the Zen Mk3 delivers in my system, in spades. I don’t say this easily but over the years I learned reading between the lines and found Serinus’ review overall wrong and also unfair. I had a few servers and streamers before buying the Mk3 and never looked back. The Zen doesn’t cost a fortune, sounds much better and the software is very intuitive and also very reliable. I was almost upset reading JVS’ review. Thank to John Atkinson for a more balanced follow up review. Greetings from a Stereophile subscriber since more than 25 years.