New Head-Fi user here, thought I would give my experience of the new iFi Neo Stream which I received a few days ago. I have used the original iFi Zen Stream since it was launched last year, and am quite impressed with the sound quality of that device. Would the new Neo be even better ?
Just a few words about the rest of my system. I usually use the USB Audio Out of either streamer, put it through a Denafrips IRIS DDC and feed via AES into a miniDSP SHD Studio all-digital room correction box employing full range Dirac Live 3. This is a great box and makes a big difference to the room sound, lots of digital input options possible. The room corrected coaxial output from this box then drives the DAC used in these tests, namely the RME ADI-2 FS with an MCRU LPS as power supply. Compared to the standard SMPS supplied with the DAC, the sound is bigger with more dynamics and even detail, quite noticeable improvement. The analog out over XLR balanced cable then feeds a pre/power combo from Denafrips, the Hestia/Hyperion. Speakers are the Wharfedale EVO 4.3 floorstanders. With this system, the original iFi Zen Stream as source sounds very good indeed.
First impressions on the Neo Stream as a device : quite compact elegant device with a dinky colour screen which shows artwork not just from local FLAC library (my usual source) but also when using Spotify Connect. Rear panel bristles with lots of inputs and outputs, the new Optical SC fiberoptic LAN connection fed from the supplied Optibox Transceiver works very well. Just remember to remove the plastic covers from the fiberoptic ends and orient correctly before insertion. Connection feels solid especially compared with the TOSLINK style connectors. The supplied SMPS power supply was the iPowerX 9V 2.5A. So I used the USBA connections on the rear to connect my FLAC library (top port, 1Tb Sandisk SSD), lower port is the USB AUDIO OUT. There is also a front panel USBC bidirectional port but I have not tried this yet. The Neo has 3 main operational modes : Analog (using inbuilt Burr Brown DAC), Digital, USB Audio. You select these on the unit itself by pressing the settings button then the volume knob to select and activate an option. You can also switch between these options inside the control software (app or direct into Web page method), the interface is the well known Volumio identical to that for controlling the Zen Stream. The supplied software version was 2.15.8, but see below. One thing that became obvious quite quickly was that the device ran quite warm. Also occasionally the art work would not load to the screen, but more worryingly some stutter occurred on music playback. Worse still this then developed into the device randomly rebooting, the problems seemed to mount as time progressed. I have never seen any such issues with the older Zen Stream.
So wondering about the temperature of the unit, I decided to switch out the supplied SMPS for an iPowerX rated for 15V 1.5A, this was previously powering up my Zen Stream. This certainly resulted in cooler unit operation. Unfortunately the random rebooting issues did not dissappear. After a soft factory reset (inside Volumio not the rear panel hard button), no change unfortunately. At this stage I tried the SPDIF coaxial digital out rather than USB, this straight into SHD Studio with no intervening DDC, this sounded a little bit sharper but still the random reboots continued randomly during playback. Next step was to raise a support ticket with iFi Audio. They replied promptly and informed me that a new software version was just available that day (yesterday v2.15.13). So I updated to the new version in the usual System page manner in Volumio and voila all the rebooting issues vanished entirely. No issues at all now, artwork loads correctly, no stutters or reboots, been working flawlessly since yesterday afternoon. So if you get the Neo, remember to update the software version before anything else!
How does it sound? Well it sounds very good indeed to my ear but the Zen Stream was also very good it has to be remembered. Overall I would say the overall feeling is that the two streamers sound quite similar maybe identical. However after listening for a while, I got the feeling that there were some subtle improvements in overall clarity with the Neo over the Zen. When listening via Spotify Connect, this felt even stronger, I am a bit amazed that Spotify sounds this good really. So quite close between the two streamers, with the Neo having a possible uptick in overall clarity would be my summary.
So small apparent differences, could be placebo as I want to hear a difference given the cost? I think I will proceed to listen to the two streamers side by side and arrange a more A/B comparison with as short as possible switching time between sources. Overall I like the new streamer a lot in overall design and features. Slightly disappointed that the Volumio software interface has not been altered or improved, but as long as it works OK then we should not complain too much. Hope these first impressions help others with their purchasing decision.