New member wanting advice

[Peter]

I have been talking to a couple of well respected hifi friends, who know their hifi. Anyway I use a decent system consisting of PS Audio SGCD and a pair of M700 mono amps and Amphion 7LS speakers with quality interconnects and Audiomica speaker cable. My front end is currently use a Pentium NUC PC, but have been told it is the weak link in the system, so an Innuos server has been highly suggested, but what model. I want a 2TB SSD and not a streamer/dac, as if I want a music steamer for music like Qobuz etc, I will get one, so a server ONLY.
Thanks for any help

 

[luca.pelliccioli]

Hi Peter and welcome to the forum.

I’d say ZENith MK 3 should check your boxes. Having said that you can configure many Innuos devices to act ONLY as server, for instance the Statement Next Gem that I own and I suppose the new ZEN NG and ZENith NG as well. Is it overkill?

 

[Peter]

I noticed that my fairly recent purchase of the Audio Matrix SPDIF along with an AQ Carbon HDMI will be redundant. Also I have used the Audirvana app for about 5 years, will that also be redundant

 

[luca.pelliccioli]

Knowing very well PS Audio brand (I owned DAC MK I and II and a lot of their products) I suppose you want to go I2S. I remember with DAC MK II Ted made a great work improving the USB input that I found as good as I2S. Don’t know if SAGD is the same though.
In any case the new Innuos NGs can be equipped with the output you prefer. So you need a streamer/server able to be connected to the SGCD via I2S (HDMI) and/or USB, if I’m correct you can go for the ZEN NG or ZENith NG and you’ll never look back.

 

[Peter]

As much as I would love to go the way of the NG Statement, I have to stick to a budget, due to being retired on health grounds, where Ihave to watch the monetary resources, so m the Zenith MK3 is at my limit.
Thanks for the welcome, there will be more questions asked in the coming days

 

[Peter]

Another question... I have been using the Audirvana app as my music player for the past few years (I bought version 3.5 5 years ago) can I still use it or do I have to give it up for the "Sense" app.

 

[luca.pelliccioli]

Can’t answer but I’m pretty sure once you try Sense you’ll never look back.

 

[guardajoias]

Can’t answer but I’m pretty sure once you try Sense you’ll never look back.

Definitely. Audirvana is great on a computer as it provides much better sound quality than Apple Music/iTunes etc, and I loved it for that. However Sense on Innuos hardware not only goes beyond that in sound quality, But the interface and library management capabilities are generally so much more intuitive and powerful (with a few exceptions for now such as management of conductors or works , but I trust this will come soon too...)