last week I decided that I would take a punt on the iFi Zen Stream.
First impressions are good. It is far from a luxury hifi item, but considering it's price point it seem to be very solidly built, it is quite heavy for a small device, and it actually looks and feels a lot nicer than it looks in photographs. It also runs "slightly warm", which is a nice change from stuff like the microRendu that I used to have that would almost burn your fingers if you touched it.
It is by far the simplest NAA type device that I have used with HQPlayer, I connected it up, loaded HQPlayer on my PC, I could see the iFi in the HQPlayer settings, selected the iFi, hit play, got music. No additional software needed on the PC, no messing about with IP addresses or similar, it just worked.
I spent some time at the weekend comparing it with my SOtM sMS-200ultra and tX-USBultra. This was interesting. Both devices were feeding my Mutec MC3+USB, the SOtM kit via USB, the iFi by S/PDIF. What surprised me was just how similar the two sounded, I had great difficulty discerning any difference between the two. It look a few seconds to swap between the two, a case of changing the input settings on the Mutec and the device settings in HQPlayer. With much swapping between the two, there were times I felt that the iFi was a little better, maybe a touch better sound stage, a bit better bass definition. There were other times when maybe I though the SOtM kit was better, a fractionally better mid range. But to be honest, the margins of difference were small, and with much switching one way or the other I started to wonder if they did actually sound pretty much identical and that any perceived differences were imagined.
I started with a simple plan, try the iFi, if I did not like it, send it back. If I preferred the iFi to the SOtM kit, then the SOtM kit could be sold.
I am now not sure what to do, so in the short term I will keep both, try a few things, then make up my mind. I have a few ideas of things that I want to try and I would rather take my time rather than rush things and maybe make the wrong decision. If nothing else, I'd like to run the iFi for more long term listening in my system and see how I get on with it, rather than messing about with A/B testing.
I have to say that I am very impressed with the iFi, it seems to work perfectly (in my set up at least), and it sounds great.
I am also beginning to suspect that it does actually sound a fraction better than the SOtM kit, and when you consider that the iFi is a fraction of the cost of the SOtM kit, that is rather impressive.
When trying a few things at the weekend, I wondered if would work connected directly to the Devialet via S/PDIF and running DSD64. I gave this a quick try, and it does indeed work. This was just a quick try to check it worked though, I haven't spend any time listening to it in this configuration yet.
First impressions are good. It is far from a luxury hifi item, but considering it's price point it seem to be very solidly built, it is quite heavy for a small device, and it actually looks and feels a lot nicer than it looks in photographs. It also runs "slightly warm", which is a nice change from stuff like the microRendu that I used to have that would almost burn your fingers if you touched it.
It is by far the simplest NAA type device that I have used with HQPlayer, I connected it up, loaded HQPlayer on my PC, I could see the iFi in the HQPlayer settings, selected the iFi, hit play, got music. No additional software needed on the PC, no messing about with IP addresses or similar, it just worked.
I spent some time at the weekend comparing it with my SOtM sMS-200ultra and tX-USBultra. This was interesting. Both devices were feeding my Mutec MC3+USB, the SOtM kit via USB, the iFi by S/PDIF. What surprised me was just how similar the two sounded, I had great difficulty discerning any difference between the two. It look a few seconds to swap between the two, a case of changing the input settings on the Mutec and the device settings in HQPlayer. With much swapping between the two, there were times I felt that the iFi was a little better, maybe a touch better sound stage, a bit better bass definition. There were other times when maybe I though the SOtM kit was better, a fractionally better mid range. But to be honest, the margins of difference were small, and with much switching one way or the other I started to wonder if they did actually sound pretty much identical and that any perceived differences were imagined.
I started with a simple plan, try the iFi, if I did not like it, send it back. If I preferred the iFi to the SOtM kit, then the SOtM kit could be sold.
I am now not sure what to do, so in the short term I will keep both, try a few things, then make up my mind. I have a few ideas of things that I want to try and I would rather take my time rather than rush things and maybe make the wrong decision. If nothing else, I'd like to run the iFi for more long term listening in my system and see how I get on with it, rather than messing about with A/B testing.
I have to say that I am very impressed with the iFi, it seems to work perfectly (in my set up at least), and it sounds great.
I am also beginning to suspect that it does actually sound a fraction better than the SOtM kit, and when you consider that the iFi is a fraction of the cost of the SOtM kit, that is rather impressive.
When trying a few things at the weekend, I wondered if would work connected directly to the Devialet via S/PDIF and running DSD64. I gave this a quick try, and it does indeed work. This was just a quick try to check it worked though, I haven't spend any time listening to it in this configuration yet.
1000 Pro - KEF Blade - iFi Zen Stream - Mutec REF10 - MC3+USB - Pro-Ject Signature 12
