Munich 2024

Less than two weeks before the start of Munich High End 2024, I spent several days in Faro, Portugal (footnote 1), touring the modern 1000-square-meter headquarters and manufacturing facility of digital-audio company Innuos. My hosts were Amelia Santos, chief executive officer, and Nuno Vitorino, chief technology officer.

Amid late-night meals, sumptuous lunches, tours of 8th-century castles and 13th-century churches, and a romp on Cacela Velha beach, we focused on a company that, 15 years on from its founding by Vitorino and Santos, makes music servers and streamers, network switches, and related digital-audio products, sold in 47 countries via a network of between 350 and 400 worldwide dealers including 50 in the US. In addition to the Portugal home office, Innuos has also an office in Warwick, UK.

According to Santos, Innuos has managed this growth without becoming too reliant on a particular global region. "We're equally careful about who we partner with." Innuos partners "need to have a solid digital understanding and the ability to service customers efficiently."

Innuos got started in 2009. "I was working for Tesco in the online non-food leadership team, in a development program for the director, and Nuno was a senior manager at Deloitte, managing big ERP [enterprise resource planning] implementation projects all over Europe," Santos told Stereophile. On the side, Vitorino started assembling music servers from off-the-shelf parts and customizing server and player software for friends. This informal server business took off, and Santos and Vitorino (who had married during college) quit their jobs, returned to Portugal, and began designing their own hardware and software. It was another five years before they hired an employee. Today they have nearly 50 employees worldwide, 34 of them based in Faro.

Two years after hiring that first employee, in 2014, the company took a name—Innuos is short for Innovation throUgh Open Systems—and introduced its first product, the ZENith, a music server/streamer. In 2018, ZENith was upgraded to Mk.III status and Innuos launched its flagship server/streamer, the Statement.

Statement power system rectification stage.

A convenient feature of the Statement is a built-in CD ripper, which makes ripping CDs trivial. However, "in creating the Statement, adding the capacity to rip CDs wasn't our main impetus," Vitorino explained. "Our main focus was on sound quality and ease of use." Later came the PhoenixNET, an audiophile-grade network switch/reclocker (2021), which, like the Statement, features an OCXO clock, the PhoenixUSB reclocker (also 2021), and the PULSE series of streamers (2022). Also in 2024, the Statement was upgraded to NG (Next-Gen) status. The company's latest release, the ZENith NG, was auditioned in Munich; look for a review in these pages soon.

Innuos's products focus on fine details: reducing and isolating electronic noise and vibration; proprietary feet featuring vibration-absorbing elastomers, tuned to the best resonant frequencies. Innuos's attention to detail goes beyond software, hardware, and cabinet design, etc—all Vitorino's focus. Their huge exhibit space at Munich High End, which included sound-isolated greeting and meeting areas and a huge listening space, was simulated in 3D so that every employee fully understood and felt comfortable with the flow of the room. Photography is handled by another Nuno, Nuno Veloso, who formerly made his living photographing pop icons including Alicia Keys, Paris Hilton, and David Beckham.

Employee Ion Borozan at work.

As Vitorino explains in the video conversation that accompanies this report, Innuos designs all its own electronics, power supplies, and software. Since 2018, it has manufactured all its circuit boards, including USB and other output interfaces. Nothing is off-the-shelf. Every component is measured and evaluated for EMI emissions, and everything that's not essential for audio is removed. Special attention is paid to how power is distributed on the main board. To cite but one example of the company's fine-tuning, the PhoenixNet switch only outputs data at 100Mbps because "1Gb is a lot noisier." Innuos eschews the otherwise ubiquitous green and yellow LEDs on the switch's RJ45 ports to further reduce noise.

Recently, Innuos has manufactured 3000-4000 units per year and expects to build close to 5000 in 2024. Sales of lower-level (lower cost) products fuel research and development of new flagship products whose technology then trickles down to lower-level products—such as the forthcoming ZENith NG.

Innuos factory entryway display

The ESD Lab
We spent several hours in Innuos's carefully controlled ESD (electrostatic discharge) manufacturing lab. Outfitted with special coats and static discharge tabs on our shoes and socks, we submitted to electrostatic discharge tests before entering and departing a lab where static affects the longevity of the majority of components, including RAM, SSDs, capacitors, and main boards.

"Electrostatic charges are a silent killer over time," Vitorino explained. "We invested close to a million dollars in building this 300-square-meter area within our larger facility. Seventy percent of the equipment you see here is more expensive than it would be if we did not pay attention to ESD. We allow no cardboard or plastic inside, and we control temperature and humidity. Each station is ionizer-equipped."

As we moved from station to station, I learned that Innuos controls vibration around each independent Ethernet port and equips them with the "highest grade" isolation transformers. Airflow in servers and streamers is controlled to prevent temperature changes in clocks, to ensure timing stability. EMI paper is employed to isolate and absorb internal EMI emissions. Screw torque is carefully adjusted to maintain quality, and the chassis are laser-cut to achieve tight tolerances.

Nuno, Jason, David, and Amelia in suits.

Vitorino loves the sound of Mundorf, Nichicon, and AudioNote Kaisei caps—all three used in higher level Innuos products. Every part is labeled to ensure traceability. "We know all serial numbers within a given unit," Santos explained. If defective components or RAM are detected, fast turnaround isolates damage before too many other units are compromised. The company has a goal of eventually assembling all chips and boards in-house to ensure better quality control and faster turnaround. Because all boards are burned in for two weeks before testing, Innuos experiences "very few" product returns.

A key to Innuos's engineering—and presumably to the company's success—is understanding that despite prevailing views in bits-is-bits circles, details matter. "RAM boards sound different," Vitorino said. "They can also affect soundstage dimensions. We choose whatever sounds best. We test every system we produce."

Innuos develops 90% of its products using KEF LS50 Wireless speakers. "They're the first speakers that enabled me to hear all the differences between components," Vitorino said. Kii 3 speakers are also used, for nearfield listening.

Nuno in doorway at the factory.

"We want people to feel the presence of music—the musicians and instruments—so they can fully meld with whatever music they love," Vitorino said. "To that end, we make easy-to-use our products and software easy to use so that nothing gets in the way of deep listening."

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Footnote 1: Faro is in the Algarve region of Portugal, 5kms from part of the country's famed Golden Triangle. Lisbon is 2.5 hours away by car, and Spain a mere 40 minutes away.