![]() Unfortunately when the update finally arrived i was frustrated as for a reason I would love to know why, could not stream MQA. At this point I was very excited as my set up sounds good already and could sound even better listening to my music at its best quality. Then I found out that tidal connect was coming through a firmware update this year and was led to believe through pr that tidal connect could allow you to stream master quality music straight to your streamer. At this point I was very disappointed as I pay a premium for the best quality music which I therefore would love to stream through your uniti range. After research I found out that the Naim app doesn’t decode MQA for some reason, although the Atom is quite capable of streaming MQA. And that kind of handholding is priceless for newcomers to the world of hi-fi streaming.I bought my HiFi set up in January with the idea that I could stream my tidal master music through my Uniti Atom. With the ZEN Stream, everything is done for us. We don#t have to ask ourselves if our chosen Raspberry Pi OS offers wi-fi support. We don’t have to assemble the unit, put it in a case or write an operating system to a microSD card. And whilst the iFi press release correctly asserts that the Pi itself has not been optimised for digital audio streaming, many add-on HAT boards have to make them bona fide ZEN Stream rivals.Ĭuriously not mentioned in the iFi press release is the ZEN Stream’s more obvious advantage over the world of Pi: the iFi box is plug n’ play and Pi-based streamers are not. Moreover, this is where Raspberry Pi-based streamers dominate. Priced at £399/US$399/€399, the ZEN Stream lands at the entry-level end of the market where margins are low enough to see tech support costs eat them whole. Furthermore, the S/PDIF output incorporates iFi’s iPurifier technology (reviewed here). All USB ports support SuperSpeed USB3.0 and come loaded with iFi’s ANC II active noise cancellation that the British manufacturer asserts will remove distortion from the audio signal. The ZEN Stream’s board also incorporates iFi’s Femto-precision GMT (Global Master Timing) clock circuitry that promises to eradicate jitter from the digital signal. Regulators with high PSRR (Power Supply Rejection Ratio), low idle current and low dropout voltage are used, together with a synchronous 1.5MHz high-speed power supply controller, further contributing to the ZEN Stream’s pure, distortion-free performance.” “Discrete surface-mounted devices such as TDK C0G multilayer ceramic capacitors and inductors from Taiyo Yuden and Murata. We return to the press release for the specifics: According to the press release, these are “individual settings that deliver fully optimised performance by focusing operation on one particular mode of use”.Īround the ZEN Stream’s multi-faceted music streaming core, iFi has built a hardware platform that pays closer attention to audiophile sensitivities. IFi also gives us the ability to select between something they call ‘exclusive modes’. ![]() Hi-res enthusiasts take note, this new iFi streamer supports PCM up to 32bit/384kHz and DSD up to 11.2MHz (DSD256). It supports an impressive feature set: Roon Bridge, Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, AirPlay, Google Chromecast Built-in (coming later via a software update), UPnP (including directly attached USB storage devices) and NAA (for use with HQPlayer). Connecting input to output is a streaming platform built around a quad-core ARM Cortex microprocessor running a Linux operating system. That’s the basic premise of the new ZEN Stream, iFi Audio’s first network streamer. Ethernet or Wifi in, asynchronous USB or coaxial S/PDIF out.
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