When I bought my Innuos Zen Mk3, I considered the possibility of getting the Zen Mini instead. My dealer told me that he thought the sound quality of the Zen was a significant upgrade over the Mini and that the cost increase wasn't very large once the added cost of the external power supply for the Mini was figured in. He also mentioned that paying for the DAC built into the Mini was a wasted expense if you were planning to use a better external DAC anyway.
Innuos Zen MK3 vs Aurender N100
Thinking of celebrating my 50th with an upgrade to my system. Currently, using an old mac mini (so old can't upgrade the OS anymore) to MHDT Atlantis, Melody EL34 amp and Zu Druid V speakers. I have read some great things about the Zen and heard it running through an Ideon Ayazi dac and DeVore speakers which was amazing, sounded like the band was in the room, but have also read that some people are having issues with the Sense app. The aurrender also gets good reviews but concerned, whether this is warranted I am not sure, that its technology is getting a little dated as it was released quite a few years ago. Any thoughts?
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Innuos website does a good job comparing them side by side with easy to understand features: https://innuos.com/zen-mk3-series/ (scroll down a bit on that page). Basically ZEN adds to the Mini built in Dual-Linear PSU with mains filter, and ZENith is another considerable step above the ZEN due to the Triple-Linear PSU with Mundorf Capacitors, but also SSD instead of HDD in the lower two models.
IMHO the sweet spot in the lineup price/value wise is ZEN. I currently own and use in daily basis the ZENITH. I have owned in various times the ZEN and the Statement |
Will you hear a difference moving from a Mac Min? Yes, absolutely huge. The difference between a Zen Mini with LPS and the Zen is still noticeable and, as already stated, if you aren’t going to use the DAC in the Mini then you don’t need a Mini. I absolutely agree though that the Zen is the sweet spot in the range. Roon is a waste of time with Innuos products unless there is something in the functionality you absolutely can’t live without. The sound quality with Sense is obviously superior. I own a Zenith and love it. Anything you have heard about Sense relates to the first version which had a connection issue which took a while to resolve. Since then it has been absolutely rock solid. Never crashes and gets better with each version. The Qobuz integration is rather great and I’m beta testing the Tidal integration and can confirm it’s all you would want it to be. |
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