Trade-up from Pulsar to Zen/Zenith NG?

[Simon W]

I have some practical questions about how to migrate from Pulsar to Zen/Zenith NG.

With the Pulsar, the favorites and playlists are stored in the pulsar, but my music files are stored in a nas. How would I migrate all that to a Zen/Zenith NG?
(1) If I use make a backup on the pulsar, will the backup contain only the favorites and playlists, or will it include the music files as well? (The answer to this will determine the size of usb/nas drive I need to store the backup.) And then, when I restore the backup onto the NG, will the music files be copied into the storage on the NG?
(2) If I use the import tool, it should be easy to transfer the music files directly from my nas to the NG. How do I get the favorites and playlists off the Pulsar?
Basically, I would like the music files to be copied from the nas onto the NG, and the favorites and playlists transferred to the NG. But after the transfer, the favorites should be referring to the copies of music files on the NG, not those on the nas. Then I can unplug the nas. Is that possible?

BTW, has anybody traded up your Pulsar for a Zen/Zenith NG? How much better is the NG?

 

[Stephen Healy]

Hi Simon,

When restoring the backup from the PULSAR into another Innuos device, it will not bring NAS files with it, but it will retain the playlists and favourites etc that you currently have. Externally stored music is not factored into Sense file backups.
The bad news is that if you were to then copy those files on the NAS into internal storage on a ZEN/ZENith, Sense will not know that these are the same original files belonging to your restored playlists or favourites - they could all be totally new as far as Sense is concerned. That means all the playlist paths and favourites become invalidated, and you would have to start again on this front. So with this in mind, there might not be much point restoring a backup into a new ZEN/ZENith, unless you kept the files exactly where they are on the NAS.

Nonetheless, the motives of why you would consider migrating the NAS files into ZEN/ZENith internal storage would be;
- better sound due to lower latency, lower network traffic noise, RAM buffering etc
- much faster processes and operation when it comes to making edits, deletions, library rescanning etc.
- backups made by Sense will now also incorporate all your music files, meaning you do not have to manually manage that yourself separately.

In terms of PULSAR versus ZEN Next-Gen, you will likely have seen my Mk3 vs Next-Gen post outlining comparisons. If we look at PULSAR and ZEN Next-Gen specifically, the ZEN Next-Gen is still better performing even just as a streamer due to:
- significantly better PreciseAudio mainboard
- Gallium Nitride power regulation
- The AudioCore and Real-Time Kernel benefits

These benefits i would say do outweigh the ARC6 and larger toroidal in the PULSAR, and indeed if you moved up to ZENith Next-Gen (which can be done as an upgrade on a ZEN Next-Gen) then you get these benefits back anyway. Hopefully someone who has upgraded from PULSAR can comment on experienced differences, but i think most people were moving up from ZENith Mk3. From my own point of view, I'd say you would expect just even greater transparency, realism and soundstaging.

 

[Stephen Healy]

As a follow up to this, i should add that if the files are saved internally in an Innuos device, and are then moved around into different directories within the the Innuos storage, the playlists are actually quite robust and will amend themselves to still work even though some of the filepath destinations may have changed.
This feature does not extend to external storage with a NAS yet, so perhaps this is something we can consider for our future development.