Always plugged in using Ethernet.
On start up would never play straight away, always needed to select 1 or 2 different albums/tracks to initiate music.
Squeezebox touch plugged in plays straightaway , no issues whatsoever.
Bonkers because I so want the IFI to work, it does sound great, it’s not particularly expensive but it’s done me in.
That is bad news, I would be very frustrated like you probably are if that happened to me.
So in AIO mode are you able to run everything besides playing music?
And is this from Roon?
Does it look like it starts and nothing plays?
Lets see if anyone can help you with some advice
It was working great on Roon exclusive and then it disappeared.
I changed the unit to AIO setting and it showed as apple airplay in the Roon audio devices page but would not play. (Roon is also nolonger available on my iPad).
I unplug it it , plug in the nearly 20 year old squeezebox touch and the bloody music comes gloriously flowing out.
So have you updated it to get it to Roon Ready release?
just a thought, you might want to check that out
Man that sucks, and I have no doubt you’ve troubleshooted the hell out of this. But four blown units honestly makes me worry about your wall AC—have you perchance tried a multimeter or fault detector to make sure you’re not getting spikes?
On a different subject, did anyone else notice that the ZS is for sale in the Roon Store, and it’s the only network streamer they offer? Looks like iFi has forged quite a partnership with Roon…
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No I had not seen that, but we were talking about how being Roon Ready could give a boost at that low cost of entry, so clearly it was not just us having this conversation.
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Sounds about right. Just out of curiosity, do you have a Nucleus? I’m trying to figure out how it would connect to my DAC if the ZS is occupying the USB slot…
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No I have a Nuc running Rock, but in the early Days I was using the Roon Core NUC to drive my DAC over USB via a a USB suppressor and a high quality USB cable.
I have to say it sounded great. I only swapped it out due to not wanting the fan noise in my living room and as I read up on the Roon recommendations. Now I have a NUC in a silent case I would have no issue going back to that if I needed to.
Not sure if that is your use case or not
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I’m just wondering how I would use the Nucleus and the ZS with the same DAC. The Nuc has two USB ports, one of which I assume can be connected to the DAC. But my USB port on my DAC is occupied by the ZS and the Nuc doesn’t have a coaxial output, only HDMI. I have an IIS input on my DAC but surely the HDMI out on the Nuc has a different pinout. Was hoping there would be some way to daisy chain the three, but it sounds doubtful 
The USB ports on Nucleus are not optimized for audio use. You will be disappointed with the sound. Those ports are to attach an external hard drive or CD-ROM drive for ripping.
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Thanks David—what’s the optimal port to get the audio then? I’m not sure I get this thing. Can it act as a Roon server that I could stream to the ZS? How’s that different from just attaching a large SSD to my Roon Core computer?
At first, I am sorry for my grammar, I am not a native speaker of English :).
I had a chance to make some tests with the ZS and the Digione Sig, however I think I have spent more time on the setup and connection issues than enjoy the music :).
In short, both streamers play great with tightness, details and superb stage separation, but found the ZS has a better blacker background making listening the music even more enjoyable. I played the ZS both via Spdif and USB and in my feeling they sound very similar in my system (m2ech young DAC > Teac AI 3000 > Vandersteen 2CE).
I would be happy to stay with the ZS, but I am struggling with a few issues:
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My NAS library loading just stops at one point, less than 1/3 of my collection. I cannot load all my music into the ZS. I have decided for the Roon trial and from there everything went smooth. All my music can be played :).
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While playing via Roon my DAC shows the right resolution, but the ZS has green led all the time even if I change between 44, 48,88, 96, 192 music quality.
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The biggest issue: After I plugged the ZS and went through all the setting my DAC was recognised and played well both via USB and Spdif. Once I am updating the ZS to the latest firmware I can still see Young DAC at the USB choice, but there is no response from the DAC and nothing is played. The Roon cannot see the USB Young DAC as well. I have tried a number of re-connections, power on/off, plugging the DAC after firmware update etc. Still same problem. Spdif is recognised and playing fine.
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Hi Thomasz
A lot of reviewers have picked that same comment up as well and I think most of us now take it for granted.
Is this on the Zen itself, as I am not sure it has the performance required for a large library, but they offer the fuctionality and it should work. I only use it as a streaming endpoint, but maybe someone else has and can offer some advice.
Check the signal path in Roon to see what is outputting, on mine I get different colours when playing MQA from Tidal to everything else as I upscale the rest to DSD128, you might be doing the same and the signal path will tell you.
To change between SPDIF (the default) and USB you go to Settings->Audio and click on the Device Info button (if in Roon Only mode) or go to the Web Page (http://ifi.local) if you are in AIO mode. The Roon Ready version can only have one active output and you just need to swap it over
Hopefully this helps a bit.
Thanks for the update @Tomasz_Ryniecki. It sounds as though the two units are a close call with the lower background noise you’re noticing for the ZS swinging it for you. That said, the teething issues you’re having with setup/updates aren’t altogether encouraging.
Thanks, will try your suggestions
That is unfortunately the truth, will play with setting for another few days…
This has been the bane of the Zen Stream product since it’s launch.
11 months later it would be good if they were gone, but many of us have commented that it was released a year too early, and that pretty much holds true.
Hopefully something for iFi to learn from for the future, but based on what we see with so many Streamers and Streaming amps, it looks to be very hard. It seems only that Lumin and Matrix Audio get it right early enough in the Roon world.
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I meant the ZS…although the differences were subtle…my power amp (NAD C298) doesnt allow for PSU changes. You seem to have a bits are bits kind of opinion, which i totally respect but going from a USB ASIO/ WASAPI from my PC to the ZS made a huge difference. Now unless the CPU noise was somehow embedded into the 44.1K samples somehow, it shouldnt have made a difference and my experience in that case was that bits were not bits. Jitter also not being a factor as i used USB for both my PC as well as the ZS…to each their own!
Why would you want to connect both a Nucleus and the ZS both to your DAC? What is it you want to do in terms of sending music from the server that you can’t do by sending the music via the ZS?
Roon’s recommended method for optimum sound quality is to stream over the network from your PC/Nucleus/NUC to a (low-power) network streamer (such as ZS) or a network enabled DAC.
The thinking is that going from USB on the PC/server direct to the DAC can cause the transmission of electrical noise and sub-optimal sound. Hence the specially designed “quiet” USB port on the ZS.
You will note that Michael above said “was using the Roon Core NUC to drive my DAC over USB via a a USB suppressor and a high quality USB cable.I have to say it sounded great.” and David said “. You will be disappointed with the sound.” [as] “The USB ports on Nucleus are not optimized for audio use”. So you mileage will vary depending on the server and DAC. I also have no idea if the Nucleus supports the connection of USB DACs as it’s a “turnkey solution” where the operating system is locked-down (I think).