anybody ever heard of the Innuos ZENtih music server?

Well, I attended the show and the three models were there to compare through Oppo headphones and Chord headphone amp/DACs. As I expected, the bottom unit, the ZEN Mini was well outclassed, but the Zen and Zenith were close, to be frank. The Zenith definitely had more detail and air, it sounded more open, so I will be going for that. It wasn't a massive difference however.

 A point of interest, the company will upgrade the storage at cost, so I will go for the 1TB unit and then for an extra TB if necessary, later. The Innuos rep on the stand was very helpful. He suggested 1500 Cds/TB with WAV and just over 2000 with Flac. It may not be possible to add to storage without returning the unit to the UK. You would need to check that with the US distributor.

I'm very interested to, they are doing a presentation of a Zen Mini, Zen and Zenith Server at the Bristol show in February, here in the UK. Hopefully they will be side by side, playing through headphones. I am attending and will report back.

 I like the idea of  including a CD slot for direct ripping and that they offer HDD, or SDS storage. The latter pretty much doubles the price, so I would like to go for the cheaper HDD version. That is why a demo comparing the two, would be very useful.

 As you may know, the magazine HIFi Plus in the UK, really liked the Zenith and made it the Streaming/Server, product of the year in 2016. Yes, I know it's a commercial magazine, but it's the only one I have any confidence tin, at all.

 Another plus for me, is that it is said to be easy to use, a big plus for me. It supports some Internet Radio and Tidal, not, QuBuz