A/B Comparison On A Pair Of Moderately Priced Streamers

The Innuos Sense App is fantastic. 

When I heard that, I stopped watching.  I don't have an easy or elegant way to feed an Ethernet cable into my listening room, so a solid wireless connection is paramount to me.

@cwatters0 ​​​​@moonwatcher A way to both get around the Wi-Fi issues with the Zen Stream and having to run a long Ethernet cable is to use a Wi-Fi extender, and an added bonus is you’ll get better sound than using Wi-Fi.  FYI I bought this one but there are many others available…

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MR90E3A/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Just plug this into an outlet and run an Ethernet cable from it to the Zen Stream and you’re done.  I haven’t been able to set mine up yet, but I’ve heard from several people that this solves the Wi-Fi issues.  Hope this helps. 

@soix Thanks. I might consider that Wi-Fi extender (especially one that can do 2600 Mbps). Appreciate it. I hope it works well for you and eliminates aggravation.

Would be best though if iFi would update their devices to work better on Wi-Fi in the first place, since that functionality is part of their marketing to consumers. 

I have posted this before and will do it again. I a/b’d the Bluesound Node2 against an Aurender N100 through the same DAC (at the time the Hegel 190).. I wanted to like the Aurender better because I could get a great deal. After two hours of patient listening I could detect NO difference. And the cheaper Node has a far better user interface that you don’t have to pay for. Of course I still wonder because we are all searching for the holy grail of sound, but so far all I hear is conflicting gobbledegook about which four figure streamer sounds better. I have since upgraded my DAC and that did make a difference as did the upgraded LPS. Adjusting the time clock on the Node was a nice tweak. All of this being said my perception is that higher end streamers do not seem to make any difference. Folks need to do an apples to apples a/b and send out their results 

Would be best though if iFi would update their devices to work better on Wi-Fi in the first place, since that functionality is part of their marketing to consumers

@moonwatcher   Amen brother, I’m right there with ya.  And I’ll add their complete lack of customer service is downright unforgivable.  But, at $399 and the sound quality/$ I was willing to do a workaround rather than punting it off my roof in anger and disgust.  But if it gives me any trouble with the extender I’m hitting the roof immediately.