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Innous Zenith MKII and Roon DSP

I purchased an Innous Zenith MKII about 6 months and configured it to use Logitech Media Server.  I had used LMS for whole house stereo for many, many years.  I finally decided to use Roon instead, and while Roon doesn't meet all of my whole house stereo needs, the interface and music management capabilities are far superior to LMS, IMHO. 

Before enabling Roon, I reached out to Innuos tech support about the fact that Roon does not list the MKII as a recommend device.  From Innous tech support, " The MkII can run Roon very well, the only reason they suggest such a high system spec is for performing DSD upsampling which is by far the most intensive process Roon has. For normal usage and bitperfect playback, the MkII can easily run Roon, no problems there."

I'm not doing any DSD upsampling.  I am trying to use Roon's DSP capabilities, but I've experienced dropouts when I do.  Other than this problem, I'm quite OK using Room with the MKII when playing DSD, FLAC, and WAV files through a MyTek Liberty DAC, as well as, streaming Tidal MQA directly to my NAD M12 BluOS module.

I want to take advantage of Roon DSP capabilities and keep the MKII.  I leaning towards buying an Intel i7 NUC to run Roon Core and strictly use the MKII as my network media player/NAS.  Thoughts anyone?
128x128oldschool1948
david_ten
5,480 posts
 
@oldschool1948  You are welcome.

I chose not to add memory to my SGC unit. You do not need to as well, since you have memory capability/capacity on the Innuos. 

For superior results, as an example, Antipodes separates Roon Core from Roon Rendering/Endpoint (Player) functionality. You will get much better results by separating the Core and Player functionality, whichever product you choose to go with.
jsqt's avatar
jsqt
117 posts
 
FWIW:

I'm using a Zen MK III and the new firmware has a beta feature where you can use the Zen as an LMS within the Roon interface (Squeezelite emulation). 

This is not a supported configuration, but I have been able to run the Zen in this configuration and upsample to DSD 64 using Roon DSP with few issues. Typically the processing speed is between 2-3x. 

The few issues are stuttering/crashing if I skip ahead a track on a song without first stopping the song I'm listening to. I'm ok to live with that as the SQ is quite an improvement to my ears, but it could be a dealbreaker for some.

I can run the LMS within Roon/SqueezeLite WITHOUT DSD upsampling (disabling DSP) and have no issues whatsoever on the MK III. 

I'm not sure what you are using DSP for if you are not doing upsampling, but it is true that DSD upsampling is the most memory-intensive operation. EQ and headroom probably would not cause as many issues as the upsampling to DSD 64.
oldschool1948's avatar
oldschool1948 OP
502 posts
 
@david_ten Thanks for the advice.  My MKII has a 2TB SSD, so I ordered a unit without music storage.   I'll keep you posted.


david_ten
5,480 posts
 
@oldschool1948  That's terrific. Looking forward to hearing how it works out for you and within your system.

Should it meet or exceed your expectations and you decide to keep the unit, reach out. Happy to suggest ways to enhance additional performance gains.
oldschool1948's avatar
oldschool1948 OP
502 posts
 
Thanks for the offer.  I will certainly do that.  Did you experience any loss of SQ running Core on the sonicTransporter?
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