Innuos Zenith ripper/streamer

[petrik]

Nuno - It is excellent to see manufacturers contributing on forums such as this, I wish it happened more often to be honest.  Good stuff!  That said, I have seen some manufacturers forced off other forums due to very opinionated fanatics, troll like behaviour and so on.  It can be dangerous territory, but Devialet Chat is generally a civilised place to visit.

That said, I can think of some counter arguments to what you have said above, some network end points and products like the Mutec MC3+USB are designed specifically to eliminate the 'upstream' noise, so the idea is that you can indeed have a 'noisy NAS' and then rely on the down-steam kit to eliminate any noise that has crept in.  So different approaches.  As I have never listened to a Zenith I have no grounds to argue which approach wins on a 'bang for buck' basis.  To me it looks like a big part of the Zenith design philosophy is not to have the noise in the first place, and I have no argument with that being a fundamentally good idea.

From a very specific Devialet point of view (this is after all a Devialet forum), one problem I see with the Zenith is that it outputs via USB.  Not an issue in itself, but all things being equal it is generally considered that the Devialet Expert sounds best when fed via it's AES/EBU input.  An interesting point to consider here is the new Devialet OS Intelligence Core Infamy board that is soon to be installed in the latest 'Pro' models.  This board has an upgraded USB input for our beloved amps.  Time will tell as to just how good this new USB input will prove to be, but maybe future investigations will reveal that the best input for a Devialet Expert Pro is in fact USB.  Time will tell.  I also note that there are two dealers that list Innuos products located less than an hour's drive from my house.  Maybe I'll get to hear one soon, listening to stuff is far more fun than debating design philosophies, I just need that new board with it's USB input, I believe it might be available soon?

I would love to hear your comments how the Innuos sounds when compared to your other hardware

Innuos Zenith mkII and the SE versions look particularly interesting.