![]() ![]() I just thought Roon was deep undercover, doing things I’d never understand. I have a Roon account, I thought, downloaded a couple of years ago and unfortunately not maintained. Some suggested that I use Roon with the Innuos because they worked gloriously well together. I had one glitch, and it involved my Roon account, or my apparent lack of one. It’s compact and simple enough, and once I downloaded the app onto my iPhone I was off to the races. 3 seemed to be the exact product I would search out if I suddenly had to go out and choose a new music server for my needs-and maybe my budget. It could be an entry point, or it could be a endpoint. I wanted something that was easy to use and sounded great. While my current system, supplemented by the constant parade of swanky review gear, has reached a somewhat lofty level of performance, I didn’t want to start off at the top and get overwhelmed. When I first started investigating DACs and music servers for review, I saw a lot of big numbers when it came to price. That’s not bad at all, especially considering Innuos’ reputation for being at the vanguard of music servers. The LPSU external power supply costs another $799 (plus $50 off when you buy the two as a package). Was I ready to play with the Innuos Zen Mini Mk.3? After playing around with DACs and streaming services and other seemingly random facets of digital audio over the last couple of years, I decided that yes, I was. Some time passed after the show, and a couple of months ago I received an email from Amanda Castro of Innuos. That’s when I was led back to the Innuos Zen Mini with the optional external LPSU. When it came time to discuss which one was right for me, I kept stressing my need for simplicity, for working with something that was going to operate effortlessly and not hold me up with one technical glitch after another. Though I liked the sound from each unit, it was clear that the sonic benefits grew as you moved on up. 3 with and without the external power supply all the way up to the flagship Innuos Statement ($18,000!). I moved through the line, the Innuos Zen Mini Mk. Before I knew it I had made an appointment to visit their room, where I listened to every single music server and device manufactured by this Portuguese company, all through headphones. My interest in music servers was resurrected at the 2019 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, however, when I met the Innuos crew at the bar and adjacent outdoor patio at the Gaylord. It took me a long time before I could even say the words “music server” out loud. The deal fell through, but not before my CD collection was plundered, with crushed jewel boxes everywhere and scratched up discs and, of course, all of the truly rare and valuable titles missing. The second music server incident involved me making a deal with someone-my entire CD collection for a music server, with all those titles of mine already ripped and stored. Besides, all the files were MP3, and I quickly lost interest and chucked/deleted the whole thing. My first one was software-based and wound up stealing all of the memory in my laptop. When it comes to music servers, I’ve had a troubled history. I wish I had my Fitbit back then, or better yet something like the Innuos Zen Mini Mk. ![]() No wonder my feet hurt so badly at the end of the day. I was always the guy who had to float near the front of the room, next to the system and yet somehow out of the sound field to avoid distraction, swapping out CDs and LPs after nearly every track. It goes back to my days as an import and distributor, when I’d see other exhibitors running the entire show from a seat in a corner in the back of the room. There is something incredibly appealing about putting my entire collection of digital music on a hard drive and accessing everything through an app on my iPhone. The CD collection is starting to lose its charm because it has doubled or even tripled in size over the last few years thanks to my chores as a jazz reviewer. I have large CD and LP collections, and I’ve envisioned keeping them until the day I die-at least the LPs, anyway. I’m still pretty old school when it comes to physical media. Do I really need a music server like the Innuos Zen Mini Mk.
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