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Innuos Zen next-gen vs. Pulsar for streaming...?

Hi all,

The question is, has anyone had a chance to listen to both of these units and evaluate them on their streaming performance.  I've heard the Innuos Pulsar but haven't had the chance to hear the Zen next-gen streaming Qobuz or Tidal.  The Zen has additional capabilities (so it's not apples to apples) but I'm wondering if the big jump in price of the Zen next-gen improves the streaming performance over the Pulsar?

For the sake of the discussion only comments and opinions on these two units would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance, Rick 

128x128rick_n

Showing 2 responses by johnboston

johnboston
5 posts
 

Not exactly what you are looking for but I recently went from Pulsar to Zenith Next Gen (so one step up from the Zen Next Gen).  Not night and day, but definite audible improvement in sound.  A little more presence and detail, but not fatiguing.  I would guess the Zen might have at least somewhat similar (if maybe a bit less significant) improvements, but without having heard it, I, of course, can’t really know.  I also wanted the built in server function to eliminate an external box and that works well.  Between trade up deal they were running a few months ago and trade on my prior server, I ended up with a reasonable (if still expensive) price.  I’m happy overall with the change.

johnboston
5 posts
 

None of the NG machines come with a cd drive built in.  You can easily add one to one of the USB ports in the back.  I have ripped most of my music on CD already — so ripping isn’t a high priority for me.  I did buy a cheap LG dvd ripper (model number GP65NS60) that I used to rerip a couple of cds and it worked fine.  Follow the directions on Innuos’ website to get it set up — very easy.

You can configure the Zenith NG with built in SSD storage from Innuos or you can add it yourself later.  I got a 4TB drive pre-installed — more space than I’ll ever likely need, but it’s also easy to add a second drive if you want.  I had used a separate music server with the Pulsar and wanted to eliminate one box by combining the server/streaming function into a single box.

So, I both stream Tidal/Qobuz and play locally stored music through the Zenith.  No real differences in Sense 3 between the Zenith and the Pulsar in terms of functionality as far as I know other than the lack of ability to have internal music storage on the Pulsar.

No demo for me.  I did buy from a place I could have returned it, but I wasn’t expecting that to be the case.  I’ve been using Innuos machines for close to 10 years and each time I’ve upgraded I got better sound and good functionality.  And this is again the case with the Zenith NG.

Hope this helps

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