Op congrats on the Statement you ain't heard anything yet.
The Statement use tons of Mundorf caps which really don't come alive unitl you have hit 300 plus hours. We are one of Innous's top dealers and we have heard a very noticable improvement with our demo unit after 300 hours passed.
The soundstage just opens up even more.
Also put a set of Critical Mass center stage footers under the Statement and prepare to have you expectations of what a music server can sound like blown. the footers dramaitcally improve the focus and macro dyanamics even more.
Hopefully you are also using a good power cord, the Statement will show you everything that you do with your setup.
Please keep on playing your Statement you will see it open up in a very noticable way.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Innous Statement dealers |
Great report, we have tested the Statement vs a few other expensive servers and the Statment usually beats the competition hands down.
We have moved from the Stillpoints to the Critical Mass Centerstage footers and the difference was quite audible.
The centerstage footers act as both an isolator and an absorber if you want to try an interesting experiment replace the Stillpoints with the Critical Mass footers and then relisten to your system.
We have found the Centerstages lower the noise floor and increase macro dynamics, both devices create a more three dimensional soundstage the Centerstage combines the quietness of the HRS with the speed and detail of the Stillpoints.
Thanks for the update we were thinking you would be really impressed after the 300 hour mark or so.
Are you using high end ethernet cables as well? We are using the Wireworld Platinum starlight and they also made an nice improvement.
You may also want to experiment with different USB cables we tried four the AQ, Wireworld, Light Harminic and the Enklekin David which just blew them all away.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Innous dealers |
Interesting point Lalik but wrong, the Innuous Statement has two high performance digital outputs"
1: USB digital output with a special ultra high performance usb card
2: Ethernet which is a filtered, repacketed and cleaned up high performance digital output for streaming dacs
The reality is that more digital inputs create the possibility of more noise flowing into the product.
The other part of the equation is if you are buying an expensive server to play and store music having older legacy inputs, that you will never use, that can not support DSD, MQA, or high resolution PCM is of dubious utility.
Innuous cares about making the best sounding servers, that people will use with modern high end dacs, in the case of a modern high performance dac, personally, we can’t remember a single time when we wanted to use a toslink or spdif connection.
Other than playing a legacy CD from a CD transport most people are storing their digital which is why they are purchasing the unit in the first place.
The Innuos products allow for an easy and convienient digital rip, as all of the Innuous servers have a CD ripper built right in the front of the machine. The entire purpose of the Statement is to be a fantastic high quality CD library, Roon Core and Tidal streamer and CD ripper so why would you want to play anything else on it?
The Statement does that job extremely well and sounds insanly good.
As per Antipodes vs the Statement we have spoken to dealers who have previously sold the Antipodes they have moved over to the Statement.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Innuos Dealers |
To Lalik and a few others lets frame this discussion, that for 99.9% of the market that is looking for a Statement or other serious state of the art music servers, most people are going to be actually using either USB or Ethernet connections.
The other interesting point we would differ on from Lalik is his viewpoint that most dacs are optomized for 16/44k really?
Most of the worlds top digital manufacutures are all producing dacs that can handle very high data rates, other than older dacs with chipsets or inputs that can't handle the higher resolution files this is the case.
Look at DCS, Esoteric, EMM Labs, Light Harmonic, T+A, Rokna, Aqua Hifi. MSB, and many others, they all have access to be able to play high resolution files. Does that mean that an older dac that can't play those files isn't good of course not, but we live in a world of 4k TV doesn't it make sense if you are purchasing a brand new state of the art TV to purchase one which can access those files even if true 4k content is limited?
Then you have the ability for many TV's or projectors to upconvert an image to a 4k standard even when feeding the TV or projector a 2k image, if it looks better to you do you care that the image isn't native?
The reason that many modern dacs only offer ethernet or usb is really simple: asyncronous data transmission and ethernet packeted data are the best ways of miminimizing jitter going from a server to a dac.
Spdif, Aes/Ebu and Toslink are really not up to the task beyond conventional data rates.
With Ethernet and Usb you have the advantages:
You have the option of accessing: Naitve DSD files, MQA files
Also you have the additonal option of being able to upconvert 16bit 44k pcm to higher data rates 24bit 192k, 384k and above depending on the server and dac.
Many Dacs that we sell actually do seem to sound better with upconverted data files even if the standard files started out in 16/44.
If you consider that Innous specifically built the Statement to provide the best sounding data from Ethernet and USB and they spent considerable money on making sure those pathways are the best sounding and optomized it makes sense.
We sell multiple brands of severs, and dacs because one size does not fit all. If you are adament about having more or different digital outputs then USB and Ethernet then you are free to purchase a unit which has those features.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Innous dealers
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Inshore, you sound like you base your observations on looking at a unit or breakdowns of the guts as seen on line.
The fact that the Innous Zenith is a remarkable sounding digital server that is extremely well designed.
The case is heavy and well shielded
The Motherboard is a custom built unit
The Zenith use a very expensive extremely well regulated power supply chock full of Mundorf caps
The Zenith has an incomming noise filter
The Zenith has an outgoing noise filter
The Zenith's hard drive is ultra low noise SSD and is shock mounted
Innous use custom software
We have compared Innous products to other servers, modified Mac Minis, Laptops etc the sonic difference is very audible.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Innous dealers
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Inshore then you should go into business and make one.
We are sure you have the same opinïons on cables right?
A $800 tire for a Porsche 911 probably has a $100 worth of materials.
Try makïng your own.
In the case of the innous products many owners have came forward to debunk the over priced i can build my own disscussion. We had an Sotm computer Sotm sound card external power supply the difference was very audibile.
The Zenith was vastly audibily superior.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Innous dealers |
Gee Lalik, aren’t you Mr. Aurender? Seems like you are constantly shilling that brand.
No In shore, many of the people here such as Grannyring, David Ten and many many others are not our clients they are very happy with both the build quality and sound quality of the brand, so independent verification means that they are all coming to the same conclusion.
They came to the same conclusions after testing Innous against the competition as well as standard and modified PC’s.
In terms of the case it is extremely well made and based on the sound quality provided one of the best sounding products in the world of digital streamers.
We have tested many devices against the Innous servers that is the reason we work with them, we have yet to find server line which outperforms them.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Innnous dealers
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Mr Stewart look we totally agree, the issue with this poster is like Mike Powell he bashes a product that he has only seen in pictures, without ever testing ,or listening to the product, or makes ridiculous claims about costs and pricing.
Look we all have opinions but most people will have the good taste to only talk negatively about a product if they have direct personal experience directly with said product, that is the point we are trying to make.
The other thing is this exact same bit has been done before, and it sickens us that a product that we sell, we own, and know to be excellent is besmirched by such foolish comments by the DIY crowd who haven’t had one of these to listen to.
This is our last word on the subject in regards to in shore.
We are delighted with the performance of the Statement and are really happy that you are enjoying yours. We just did a shootout against a mythic $20k server with some very unique digital processing software, and the Statement was totally different sounding, the fascinating thing is how different digital can sound through different servers.
To quote Stan Lee, nuff said.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ
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Biketony, congratulations, on your digital journey and welcome to the Innous family.
We did a fascinating demo the other day of the Innous Statement via USB playing the same file vs a $20k server that perfers to use AES/EBU.
So it was titan vs titan with each playing the same file and the only thing needed to demo each was to turn the input on the dac.
The two presentations were quite different it was easy to discern just how much a difference there was between the two machines.
For those people who doubt the sonic difference between two really fantastic servers would have been totally shocked that there can be such a discernable difference in how each server brings out different things.
Server A was warm with a big soundstage,
Server B through a much more defined soundstage, with greater front to back depth, greater dynamic attack and a more focused soundstage.
Just as you witnessed there is a marked difference between the Zenith and the Statement.
We have been testing computers vs servers, servers vs servers for quite a number of years now.
So there is much more going on then just bits is bits mentality that many people here expouse.
Personally we cringe when we see at shows a Laptop with a generic usb cable going to dac at a show and wonder why the sound wasn’t as good as it could be.
For the other gentleman’s questions:
1: The server won’t play a disc only, the second you put a disc into the loader, the machine rips it and then ejects the disc.
2: The USB vs any other input is a dac specific thing, certain companies pefer USB others prefer SPDIF, other dacs ethernet input and for others is it USB.
Only ethernet and USB allow for DSD and higher resolutions of both PCM and DSD files, most AES and SPDIF inputs will only do a maximum 24 bit 192k vs USB and Ethenet which may allow up to PCM 768 and DSD up to 512k the new T+A SD 3100 dac allows for native DSD 1024 files which don’t exisit but which can be created via a fast server and HQ player.
3: As per optical disc spinning via reading the same disc via a high end server, in our tests the server is picked over the spinning disc in almost every demo. The only difference can be the input board which sometimes isn’t as good as it can be leading to the spinning disc to still sounding better but it depends on the machine.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Innous dealers
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It really depends on the player, and or dac.
We had the T+A PDP 3000 which is one of the most remarkable disc players ever made, the sound on both SACD and Redbook is postitively captivating, giagantic soundstage, tonally smooth with great detail, in all of our years of digital testing the best sound ever from CDs.
The PDP 3000 is also an excellent dac, but the sound out of the USB input was very good, just not equal to the magnificent, jaw dropping optical playback.
The PDP 3000 was replaced with the newer MP 3100 so that player might have an even better USB input.
The Aqua Hifi Dacs have excellent USB input cards, so they sound marvelous via USB.
DCS and MSB should also have excellent USB inputs.
In our expereince most of the more modern dac designs absolutuly favor usb and perhaps ethernet, for many of today’s dacs the highest samping rates are still only USB based inputs.
Older Dacs that favor AES or Spdif are like the Jeff Rowland Aeris which was designed by Holm audio of Denmark close to 10 years ago.which was designed long before USB really took off.
Other holdouts from the infancy of USB are pro companies like Bekley audio, (Pacific Macrosonics, the HD audio disc guys,) there products were designed by engineers for recording studios where AES/EBU is the standard.
USB is really a consumer audio connection, due to the flimseyness of the conection, however, the USB cable can carry a ton of data fast. The issues with USB cables have a lot to do with the 5V power that rides on some of the cables as well as noise intrusion from the computer.
Hence the evolution of galvanic isolation, separate 5v power lines, power distruptors, very high resolution USB cards with extensive noise filtering, better power supplies and lower noise chips, better audio designed mother boards, and isolation of the components to filter out EMI and RFI couple these devices innovations and you have Innous and Aurender Servers to name a few.
Most dac companies use some sort of commercially available USB input chip from XMOS or a few others companies, sometimes with a lot of custom tweeks and sometimes not.
What is fascinating is how the USB input card issues are being addressed, our new T+A SDV 3100 HV is one of the world’s best dacs, and the product uses a 100% in house designed ultra high speed USB card. designed to allow a massive amount of data to flow into the machine up to DSD 1024 from an external source.
USB and Ethernet in our opinion are really the only ways to get to true high resolution digital and many of today’s best dacs may sound way better to you via upsampled PCM or transcoded DSD.
Dave and Troy’
Audio Doctor NJ Innous dealers
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Hehhaw, we have to comment on your statement as some of what you posted needs clarification. First the Innuous Zenith MK II is a vastly inferior product to the current MK III version, sonically the MK III is much more liquid and sounds way better in every way. In what way is Antipodes work and technology better? Over the last five years Innuous has continued to grow with products which use all bespoke parts, the Statement uses a custom designed USB reclocker, as well as an Ethernet reclocker, all units use custom motherboards, custom cases, sophisticated power supplies, vibration reduction, incoming Ethernet noise filters, and outgoing Ethernet filters. Add to that a great custom built setup software that makes the entire out of the box to a fully running product a five min chore. Innuous is even working on their own Roon like operating software. For all of these reasons we see Innuous continuing to grow. In looking at verifying that claim Antipodes own website is very mum on what they actually put in their boxes, there is no mention of custom motherboards, power supply design, how the USB and Ethernet outputs are derived, clocking is accomplished,or how noise is eliminated. Even the pictures of the current Ex in Positive Feedback doesn't show much other than a copper heat pipe on the processor. and an Rcore transformer with a few smoothing filtering caps. VS Innuous Zenith which you can see an incoming ethernet filter, a large sophisticated mutli rail power supply with Mundorf caps and a huge amount of voltage regulators https://positive-feedback.com/audio-discourse/antipodes-cx/https:compare this to the entry level Zen model https://hifi-ifas.de/test-innuos-zen-mk-iii-high-end-musikserver-highlight-sylvesterknallerThe higher end Zenith ups the anti with a three rail power supply, adds Mundorf capacitors, an SSD drive. Then to the Statement http://www.the-ear.net/how-to/power-supply-design-innuos-statementDave and TroyAudio Doctor NJ Innuous dealers |
No Hehaw, the MK II and the MK III products are vastly different.
As per your comment on technology, using one part of the board vs another part of the board does not seem like anything unique in terms of reducing noise.
The Statement uses 100% all custom parts and removes noise due to a state of the art USB and Ethernet reclockers, and a massive custom designed eight rail power supply, custom software, a custom casework, and anti vibration feet.
As per sound quality, the Statement has been considered to be the best sounding server on the market along with the Sound Galleries of Monaco and the Laufer Technik Memory player both of these players are way more expensive than the Statement.
As per the sound quality of the Innuous products all of their products are extremely highly rated.
As per sound quality, the Antipodes are very fine products which sounds better will depend on how you are using the product and the matching dac.
We have a trade in Laufer Technik Memory player and the sound is vastly softer than the Statement, we could see that someone with a very digital sounding dac could prefer the warmer sound of the Laufer product which by the way also uses a noise reduction technique that actually works with the packeted data which is processed in memory to reorient the data to eliminate distortions which occur in the reading process of the bit packet.
Dave and TroyAudio Doctor NJ Innous dealer
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We have right now in the shop three of the top computer music servers:
1: The Innuous Statement
2: The Baetis Reference
3: The Laufer Technik Memory Player
The Baetis isn't the current version as Baetis has made some improvements, the Laufer is nearly current with a bit of software upgrades would be completely current.
In our findings the three or four best are in no particular order
Innuous Statement,
Taiko,
Laufer Memory Player
Antipodes
In terms of the Antipodes vs the Statement, aside from Hewhaw, we have a lot of difficulty understanding what Antiopdes is doing via hardware, ( the open shots of the chassis shows a nicely designed and built product but where are the normal parts of the super server secret sauce which are massive custom power supplies with extensive regulation, hardware reclocking and noise reduction assemblies, and we don't see an advantage of seperating the renderer from the Roon core, which should acutally genearte more noise as you are transmitting from the Core over ethernet to the renderer even if the two boxes are in the same rack that is one more external connection versus a much shorter internal connection. If you design your product carefully there should be no noise added by putting both pieces into one chasis.
The claim that Antipodes is doing something really unique in software is a dubious claim, as Laufer's piece has a patent on data manipulation to clean up the stored packets before transmission, and Innuous has built their own processing engine as well.
Which of these units sounds better to you will depend on the sonics that you prefer.
As per the Taiko it does seem extremely well built and well designed is it worth that much over the Antipodes, and the Innuous pieces that to me is a hard call.
We continue to explore these products as it is our belief that a good dac or a good dac/streamer with a server represents both the present and future of musical reproduction.
We have found that with the right dac, cabling and servers, high end digital can easily compete with the best of analog.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Computer Audio Specialists
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Hehhaw, no you missed our points entirely and we have read all the Antipodes website, please point to their "white paper" on their noise reduction techniques we would love to read it.
The elimination of "noise via digital manupulation of software is not the same thing or by splitting up tasks your "bandwidth" concept on the motherboard seems to make sense to us compared to designing a sophisticated, very stable state of the art and very quiet power supply design, coupled to a state of the art Ethernet and USB reclocker, instead it is a way for you to justify the high cost of the Antipodes which in terms of design and build quality we see as lacking somewhat to the all out approach that Innuous uses.
Also Nuno has tested al lot of different techniques to make one of the worlds best servers and there is not a lot that they haven’t looked at.
As per noise, again any external ethernet connection with or without an SOTM filter is an additional pathway to gain noise, and requires another cable, we do not see any advantages of seperating the the Roon Core vs the Renderer.
Hewhaw, glad you love your Antipodes, many people are finding the Statement to be the best overall server on the market.
Lets see the trajectory of the two companies in a few years, Innuous is the hotest server maker in the industry, wonder why?
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Innuous dealers
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Hewhaw why would a two piece with a separate power supply that sits directly underneath the CPU/Drive section be any more strange than a two piece Core and Renderer?
With the Statement you have a massive power supply that sits directly under the main chassis forming essentially one unit, the two power supply umbilical cords are included and therefore you only need one external high quality power cord vs requiring two with the Antipodes.
As per noise with the burner most people are not listening while burning and even if you do we would doubt you would notice and gee isn't it nice to have one built in to the unit?
As per HD swaps most people can store a massive amount on either the 2tb or 4tb unit. and yes that is an advantage with the Antipodes.
The reality is that once you go above 4tb you are going to be looking at a NAS drive anyway.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Innous dealers
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