Roon and Innuos Zen Mini MKII

Audio Gear Talk
1

Hi Guys,
As many of you I am discovering Roon.
I have an Advance Acoustics X-Pre pre amp and MAA-706 monoblocks.
My Innuos Zen Mini MKII is connected through usb to the X-pre. In the Innuos i die configuration for Tidal as well as Qobuz and I am planning to use this Innuos as storage and roon player.
I want to use a mac mini (Need to purchase) or my apple macbook pro (already in possession)as my Roon Core. With this set up I want to use Qobuz and Tidal.
As controller I want to use my Iphone and Ipad.

  • Will this set up work?
  • Are there better options using my gear?
  • Can it be better with limited budget?
    Hope to hear from you expert-guys for the best advice.
    Greetings
    Robert
2

All sounds good. You can use the Zen mini as a core but having just as endpoint falls more in to Roons recommend way of setting up having streamer and Roon core seperate. But in this mix using the Innuos as storage and player is adding more network hops for local playback. As all files go through the core, so it’s pulling from the Innuos storage to only send it back to its streaming section. If this has an impact it’s hard to say but to me seems to be at odds.

If it where me I would keep the Innuos as just the Roon core as it can run it but only if your not planning on using heavy DSP or have many zones and add a different streamer to the mix this would be the same price as buying a mac to run the core and still keep the core away from the music generating parts.

3

Thanks Simon.
If I understand you correctly you would use the innuos as core. If i do that I can’t use the innuos as player. What do you advise I use as player? I need to hook it up to the pre (because of the dac inside) and that’s an usb connection. Now i have the innuos usb connected to the pre (dac)
Then the iphone and ipad is used for remote?

4

Whatever you do make sure to use LAN wired connection for the CORE machine, so if you use the MBP you will probably need to get a USB-A/Cor DOCK style Ethernet adapter.

5

You can use it as a player as well, but others report that this has an effect on the sq. Roon is a heavy duty application that puts strain on the cpu as it does all the processing which in turn can produce unwanted electrical noise. This you don’t want in your audio chain. USB interface is not always the best for rejecting this unwanted noise either and is very DAC dependant. This is why Roon recommend to have the core seperate connnected via network to another device to stream the music to the hifi.

This can be a dedicated streamer, there are many and all depends on how much you want to spend? You can also use a small SBC computer like the Raspberry pi, Allo usb bridge, SOTM SMS 200, Sonore MicroRendu. These don’t do any heavy processing so can result in better sq.

However this said I would try the Innuos as both core and endpoint and see how you feel about it. It can do both and only you can decide if its worth pursuing seperating them at later date. Everyone hears differently and has different components that interact differently so it’s your ears that count not what anyone else tells you. I am just giving advice from my experience and what Roon recommend as best practice to maximize sound quality.

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