Hello, I recently purchased iFi Zen Stream streamer and after successful set-up noticed the streamer regularly freezes and needs to be unplugged / plugged-in to restore life to it. When device suddenly freezes it loses connection to router/interent (checked in router settings) and on/off switch on ZS is non-responsive.
ZS has wired connection and otherwise runs flawlessly on usb output via tidal connect or dlna output settings.
Can this sudden freezing of ZS in anybody’s experience be contributed to stock IFI power supply (haven’t had on hand any other PS to try) or is it possibly device’s fault and should be returned?
Hi, thank you for your response. Yes, I immediately upon purchase upgraded the firmware to latest version, but not the beta version which I have not tried. The factory pre-installed firmware was dated August 2021.
So If I understand correctly other ZS users reported faulty stock PS being the culprit for ZS randomly freezing and required unplugging the unit from electricity to restore its functionality?
There were a number of people who returned them due to problems early on.
But no one has reported anything like this, at least that I can remember for the last year.
Many of them did not ship with the high quality iFi power supply as there was no stock.
I would look to return it for a replacement myself.
While I have never had any serious issues with my Stream which I bought in the first week, there were many that did, and sometimes replacing the power made a big difference, but you should not have to spend that money just to make it work.
Sorry, to answer the ROON part, I have tried the Roon output mode on ZS, but established in the end the freezing of the unit was not output mode dependant since it worked flawlessly in all output modes unitl the unit freezes and issue cannot be resolved unless it is unplugged from AC.
Thank you ,Harris. You’ve been a huge help. It appears the newer units are indeed shipped with better PS and I stumbled upon old stock. Will return the unit as advised.
Good luck Andy, it’s well worth it and I have always been very happy with mine.
Currently running it in Roon only mode and does it’s job very well.
We have a thread specifically for the iFi Stream if you have questions that need answering with more users like myself who have had it since the beginning.
Hi Ali I use it with almost exclusively with Ethernet and for Roon purposes (almost 100% of my use at the moment) has been an almost perfect little Streamer.
I have tested WiFi and it worked fine, but I have read other comments that WiFi has not been as reliable as Ethernet.
I feed it into an original Zen DAC through USB, but I have used some other DACS as well using SPDIF and in All in one mode that was perfect up to 24/96 (24/192 was a bit choppy but was fine in Roon only mode).
Some people have had issues with devices but most of it is down to broken updates or changes in the way things worked.
My setup is fairly simple. Today, I use my MacBook Pro as my source, using its USB port and going into the Chord M Scaler>>>Chord Hugo TT2>>>Audeze LCD-5. And, I use Roon exclusively in this setup.
I don’t know whether I [need] or even a streamer is a good idea, but thinking that it should be better than using USB output from the MacBook. I don’t know!
I prefer WiFi for the convenience, but if need be, I can put one of my access points from my mesh system next to the Zen Stream, to use its Ethernet port.
It’s hard to say if your setup would benefit, but I think it would be marginal improvement at best. A Pi would probably do as well TBH.
I felt it was better than my Pi plus USB silencer and good USB cable, but going into your equipment a Pi might well be as good
