Innuos Zen alternative?

garn63

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HiFi Trade?
  1. No
While the UI of Spotify is/was top of the heap for a long time, Tidal, using Tidal connect, has copied it to a certain extent and caught up significantly. For my interest in music, Spotify's inferior sound quality is a deal breaker no matter the cost. (maybe they've gone CD quality?)

Qobuz desktop app is decent. My few, brief moments with the Innuos app seemed to show it's superiority to BluOS which I'm now realizing is garbage for Qobuz. I have to work back and forth with BluOS. Search and save on Qobuz desktop and then play from BluOS. A Pain in the...

Mind you, my Innuos experience was with an over sized tablet. Nice. I don't normally use tablets or phones for control as the screens are smaller and not to my liking. So my comparisons are all using a laptop with desktop apps.
The Innuos sense app has really moved on. It's nice to use. Think the last update brought a lift in s/q. Spotty,Qobuz, & Deezer UI's are not the same in regular use. ime
Using a large tablet solely as a controller is good & used sideways makes it plenty large enough to see. My eyes are terrible. :)
Deezer will be integrated soon as well as Qobuz & Tidal. All I need really.
Think maybe the fact that they hire top software developers really helps. M.
* If you want to chat with them it seem folks are helpful throughout the company.
 
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StingRay

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The last update I read was in March and suggests otherwise:

https://www.whathifi.com/news/spotify-hifi-is-coming-at-some-point-says-company-co-president

Have you seen something more recent which changes this?
Had not seen that but they said that over 2 years ago. All the others are doing cd level for similar price or less. Im using Deezer for £5.99 a month, similar to Spotify but cd level. Even Qobuz is less than £11pm. Tidal is £10pm. Amazon is £10 or £8 if you have Prime?
 
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bencat

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HiFi Trade?
  1. No
Given the Spotify announcements in the past and the fact that they seem to need to monetise any upgrade which will take them to a much higher cost than the competition I think it is becoming more and more unlikely that this will happen unless the commercial market changes . The majority of Spotify users are perfectly happy with the sound quality of what they are getting now and it is not likely that they would pay double the current cost for better quality . Spotify seem to need or possibly just want that extra revenue to cover the cost of new agreements with labels for the higher quality streams . Reading the article it would seem the software is already in place and they have access to the higher quality files , it is just the need to monetise this which is holding it back .
 
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Cable Monkey

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HiFi Trade?
  1. No
Spotify are able to stream lossless if they need to and have prepared the ground to do so if required. However it is unlikely to be introduced unless they begin to hemorrhage clients to their competition. In the strictest sense their competition is not Tidal and Qobuz though. It is Apple Music and Amazon.
 

Nestor Turton

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HiFi Trade?
  1. No
The user interface you enjoy using is very much a personal choice. I didn't like Roon, but I'm not one for searching for new music, nor am I interested in suggestions or journalists' reviews. I use JRiver Media Centre on a Mac mini and it feeds both my Linn and Chord (fronted with JRiver Id) systems. I have customised it to look like an old record shop and have no problem finding music I want to play. I disable quite a few of its features such as video. I have ended up with this

https://www.hifiwigwam.com/threads/nas-on-ng-kdsm.113568/page-3#post-2324557

I'm sure it would not suit everybody (anybody else?), but it works for me.I have heard products from Innuos and I know other folk really enjoy them, but I couldn't hear any improvements so decided to spend the money where I could hear them such as the Chord mScaler and my speakers.

@Ceko - if you're interested in this approach then I'd suggest looking at https://www.jriver.com/Id/ - it may do what you want, but it may not.

I do not use any Internet streaming services as I have my own music library - in fact I block Spotify with my home firewall so guests cannot use it when visiting as I don't like the way it works as explained here: https://www.hifiwigwam.com/threads/spotify-beware.112412/

Guests are always welcome to bring their own records or CDs if they want to hear What's Going On, Brothers in Arms, Rumours or Hotel California as they are not ones I have, which I'm told is a bit weird. but ... I do have a copy of Medicine Head's 1972 LP "Dark Side of the Moon".

When I tried the Innuos products, it was before the release of Sense so have not seen how this works. I guess I'm content with what I have so have not looked further.
 
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Man in a van

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HiFi Trade?
  1. No
No, definitely not. This was a deal for previous users. It was around last November. It was not on the Deezer site. Had an email about it.
Ah! as a previous user (both free and paid) I'll swing by and check my registrations :);)

Thanks for the info (y)

ronnie
 

ChemMan

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HiFi Trade?
  1. No
I don't understand your comment about Qobuz and BluOs at all, it is very similar to using Deezer and Tidal. Desktop?
I only use my laptop, but I don't like how BluOS handles Qobuz. The search is slow, the list dodgy and small. It's much easier to use the Qobuz desktop app provided by Qobuz and search and save there and use recommendations etc. After that I'm obliged to return to the BluOS app to play what I was hunting for on Qobuz because there is no such thing as Qobuz connect s far as I know.
 
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