- Ifi zen stream tidal connect full#
- Ifi zen stream tidal connect software#
- Ifi zen stream tidal connect free#
Ifi zen stream tidal connect full#
For reasons of power efficiency the CPU can down clock to a minimum of 408mHz when its full power is not required.
Ifi zen stream tidal connect free#
It has 1GB of RAM, of which roughly 700MB is free when the system is idling in its ‘all-in-1 mode with all services enabled. Spec wise the ZEN is powered by a 64-bit, quad-core ARM SOC (system on a chip) running at 1.4gHz, essentially the same device as you’d find in most streamers and popular single-board computers like the Raspberry Pi.
You can’t doubt the build quality though, and the design is distinctive and not something that deserves to be hidden away, even if the front branding is rather unsubtle. You can’t change the function of the hotspot button to something more useful day-to-day (play / pause for example), nor is there a front-mounted USB port which would have been nice. The front branding is rather unsubtle, made mores by the lack of physical controls bar the power and hotspot activation buttons. Bold claims indeed, so I reached out to Ifi who kindly loaned a sample unit to test.
Ifi zen stream tidal connect software#
And ‘exclusive’ modes are said to improve sound quality by enabling only the required software and services for a given streaming task, reducing what Ifi calls ‘software jitter’. Ifi make a big deal of their ‘Active Noise Cancellation II’ and ‘iPurifier’ technologies on the USB and coax outputs respectively. It supports AirPlay, Tidal Connect, Spotify Connect, DLNA / PUNP and NAA and is Roon ready. Intended to be paired with the ZEN DAC, but at home in any system with a USB or coaxial input, the ZEN Stream (the ZEN hereafter) is a tiny, curvaceous unibody stuffed with clever tech to clean up the digital signal, output by a powerful 64-bit computer running a heavily customised version of the open-source Volumio operating system. ‘Sensible’ options include the Pro-Ject StreamBox S2 Ultra, the recently announced Musical Fidelity MX Stream ( review Here) and this, the Ifi ZEN Stream. There are a few network bridges on the market that range from sensibly affordable (relatively speaking of course) to laughably overpriced. Such a device has no DAC of its own, instead outputting to a DAC of choice usually via the USB interface, which supports audio of a greater resolution than any of the other common digital inputs besides I2S. It seemed a streaming transport, sometimes known as a ‘network bridge’ would be the logical choice.
And the D90LE only has 1 coax input, which I wanted to use in preference to an optical connection for the Cambridge CXC CD transport which I will retain. But that setup didn’t give me the ability to stream PCM at maximum possible resolution, nor DSD, and the new Stream Magic control app has some accessibility issues that make it quite frustrating to use. I’ve been using a Cambridge CXN V2 since late 2019, feeding the Musical Fidelity M6S DAC via coax. I recently found myself looking into replacements for my current streamer of choice, to take better advantage of my new Topping D90LE DAC. This entry was posted in Everything Else Streamers and tagged Ifi Streamer on Octoby Ashley (updated on October 25, 2022)
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