Streamer creates a Wow experience

I just wanted to do a separate post for those who may want to stream Qobuz through the iFi Zen as Qobuz as of yet cannot stream direct to the Zen. At first I thought maybe I made a horrible mistake getting the Zen as my sole source for streaming is Qobuz. I had visions of wrestling with third-party apps trying to get everything to work together — it seemed like a nightmare for sure headed my way, especially because I’m just awful at dealing with anything computer related.

Long story short, I needn’t have worried, and this is one of those VERY rare instances where everything just worked. To get Qobuz to work with the Zen you need to download the mconnect app. This made me nervous as the app only had like a 3-star rating, which had me really worried this was going to be a bad experience with glitches galore. Anyway, to minimize potential issues I plunked down the $5.99 for the mconnectHD version, which I can’t recommend highly enough. Once you have your Zen hooked into your WiFi, you just go into the app, choose Qobuz and sign into your Qobuz account when prompted, and that’s it — you’re done. Even I couldn’t screw it up, and that’s seriously saying something because I’m a pro at finding problems where there are none.

Here’s the best part — once these steps were completed, everything just worked! Imagine that. Qobuz popped up in the mconnect app, and all my playlists, favorites, etc. were there. It takes a few minutes to find the search function because the layout is a bit different from the Qobuz site, but it’s all there and it all works just as it should. I couldn’t believe when I hit play, the green light lit up on the Zen, and music started playing. Not only did music start playing, but it sounded absolutely glorious — much better than playing CDs at least in my system (admittedly I’m just using an Oppo through SPDIF as a transport, so take this for what it’s worth).

Sorry for being so long winded, but I just wanted to assure anyone who may be considering this route that it’s really easy to implement and the results are incredible. Hope this helps.

pdreher

I know many here like Aurender, but found it to be very buggy and had connectivity issues that I was unable to resolve, despite numerous exchanges with Aurender customer support ... I just couldn’t get it to work consistently and had to move on.

My experience was similar. I bought my Aurender new from an authorized dealer and it really never worked properly. Support wasn’t very helpful and because audio is a hobby and supposed to be fun, I dumped it and moved on.

To be fair, it sounded pretty good when it worked.

Innuos is another manufacturer that should be on everyone’s radar. It made a positive change in my system. Their Sense 2.0 software is amazing and SQ-wise it’s better than Roon. However, you also have the option to run it not only as a Roon endpoint but also as a Roon server. Plus you get a built-in CD ripper and local storage to save CDs and DSD files. 

If I had the budget I would’ve jumped on an Innuos Zen Mk3 not only for the streaming quality but also because I could just load the rest of my CDs not available for streaming and have everything all in one place.  Alas, for now I’m still quite impressed with the sound I’m getting out of the Zen Stream.  Sigh. 

@soix hey that’s awesome you’re in love with your new set up! Enjoy it!! 
When are you getting a DDC? Keep the thoughts flowing…update us here on how that changed the sound.