InnuOs ZENith SE MKII

[Peder]

InnuOs ZENith SE MKII

Where does the above stand in relation to today's InnuOs streamers.?
Only 100 of the above were reportedly built.

Is it better than,.for example, InnuO's ZENith mk3,.or is it between the ZENith mk3 and the ZEN mk3.?
@NVitorino
@Stephen Healy
@DanCollier

 

[Stephen Healy]

InnuOs ZENith SE MKII

Where does the above stand in relation to today's InnuOs streamers.?
Only 100 of the above were reportedly built.

Is it better than,.for example, InnuO's ZENith mk3,.or is it between the ZENith mk3 and the ZEN mk3.?
@NVitorino
@Stephen Healy
@DanCollier

The ZENith MkII SE is, roughly speaking, more akin to the ZENith Mk3. The ZENith Mk3 took a lot of design ideas from the SE but distilled them into a slightly more efficient build process, so does not have quite the same quality of hand-woven transformer and point to point soldering etc. This did, however, mean that at the time we could offer the ZENith Mk3 for a significantly lower RRP than the SE, whilst still enjoying a lot of SE benefits like the triple-linear Mundorf LPSU, chassis design etc. And in fact the Mk3 used generally better mainboards that ran a bit faster and had better USB compatibility.

Fast-forward to today and the SE does have a 'collectors' factor to it, and in a head-to-head might sound a little bit better. But it is an older device, and the ZENith Mk3 still has years of feature updates ahead of it thanks to the Sense 3 platform.
So, if you want something a bit more left-field and unique that sounds great and can get one for a very good price, then the SE might be a consideration, especially if you are coming from a lower MkII model. But a ZENith Mk3 is probably the more sensible choice for 'real-world' usage.