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

I upgraded from the Zenith 3 to the Pulsar and am enjoying a very significant jump in sonic performance. A close friend did the same with the exact same result. The improvement was across the board on all important sonic parameters. Improved dynamics, resolution, purity of tone, imaging, improved sense of ease and control and more bass slam and articulation.

If your system is well sorted out and highly resolving, then I can’t image not both hearing and appreciating the improved sonics. I suppose system synergy, level of room treatments and other factors not mentioned will play a role.

I did the same upgrade, with the same results.  A noticeable improvement in all areas.

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.

Interesting @johnboston, so did your Zenith NG come with a drive to rip CDs or are you using it purely as a streamer? I see that you can buy it configured as a server or streamer? Can you give some insights to Sense 3? Are there differentiating user features or behavior or are the changes under the covers? Did you demo this at a dealer or did you buy it on blind faith? Thanks!

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