Innuos Zenith mk3 and Nucleus

Audio Gear Talk Innuos
1

Hi all,
I wanted to know if anyone has experience of running both the Zenith and the Nucleus together - the former as the endpoint and the Nucleus as the core? How are they best connected, assuming usb from the Zenith into the Dac?

Is there any sense it is preferable to running just the Zenith as an endpoint and core?

Or is this combination overkill?

Thanks

2

Welcome to the community, @Rupert_Thomas!

Absolutely, yes. Both are music servers and both run Roon Core. If you already have the Nucleus add a Roon Ready network player suitable for your DAC … which is?

3

Thanks Martin - so overkill? I already have a Zenith into a Luxman Dac - but some seem to say there are advantages to running the core on the Nucleus, with the Zenith as the endpoint?

4

If you have the Zenith, use this as your Roon Core and consider adding a network Bridge although this isn’t necessary.

The endpoint that runs Roon Bridge is usually a low powered computer with passive cooling and no disk. Many use the Raspberry Pi for this purpose, but commercial products will often use a single board computer in their network streamers.

5

If you intend to use much DSP in Roon, I wouldn’t use the Zenith alone. The primary Roon mode in Innuos has the least good SQ of the three Innuos players (Roon, Roon experimental, and Squeezelite), and using DSP in the Roon core will make it worse. This is what Innuos says too. For DSP, you are best off using a separated Roon core and player.