[Mr BubbaHyde]

Mine is working fine with the beta in AIO mode too, just not with the exclusive mode on the ZS. And with the beta my bridge is no longer visible on the Roon “About” page, although it still shows as active in the signal chain—which suggests to me that it is still installed in some fashion in the ZS.

The ongoing bugs I’m seeing are:

1. When I identify my device in the audio settings as the ZS, it shows up twice in the signal chain—once as a bridge and once as an endpoint. If I just leave my Topping unidentified, the ZS only shows up as a bridge in the signal chain, with my unidentified Topping as the endpoint

2. With “Roon Exclusive” mode on the ZS, I’m limited to S/PDIF setting limitations

3. The DSD settings still show 512 as an option, along with a new setting called “error”

4. In the audio settings, it’s now allowing me to select 2 channel, 5.1 and 7.1.

In the newest Beta I can't use USB to my Denafrips, only in AIO mode as well, Coax is fine.

I'll the first to admit that I'm not a fan of Rips in the posting and downloading of files area, some will know why. Not saying I never have listened to one, just for me buying is the only option. Home use different animal.

And, I now know why some of my friends want my old PS3!! LMAO!

AIO mode just allows access to all to me, I never really used Roon exclusive mode, so I will now pay more attention to it in the future, I guess because somewhere inside I always believed it was the same when other processes are shut down.

Cheers!!

 

[rocky500]

In my previous post here https://www.head-fi.org/threads/ifi...evated-to-a-higher-plane.958391/post-16902323

I thought it was a firmware update that created a issue but I also had just copied more music tracks into a folder on my USB drive too. The folder now had well over 500 music files in that one folder.
I recently made another folder and moved half the files into that folder. Now only half in each.
No more problems playing continuously music with each folder.

Could there be a limit to how many music tracks you can have per folder with the Ifi zen and USB external drives and have continuous successful playback?

I was loosing playback after about an hour. As in the right light on the front would go out and no music was heard playing.

 

[srkbear]

In the newest Beta I can't use USB to my Denafrips, only in AIO mode as well, Coax is fine.

I'll the first to admit that I'm not a fan of Rips in the posting and downloading of files area, some will know why. Not saying I never have listened to one, just for me buying is the only option. Home use different animal.

And, I now know why some of my friends want my old PS3!! LMAO!

AIO mode just allows access to all to me, I never really used Roon exclusive mode, so I will now pay more attention to it in the future, I guess because somewhere inside I always believed it was the same when other processes are shut down.

Cheers!!

I am still awaiting some demonstrable evidence that the exclusive modes do anything to reduce jitter that wouldn’t be achieved by leaving that extra circuit out of the design to begin with. I remain a little confused about why jitter is even an issue with the tech iFi claims to have built into the USB jack in the first place! But since they included the exclusive mode feature, I think it’s best for consumer confidence that they make it work. Let’s see what they come up with

 

[801evan]

Exclusive mode is a god-send. Big improvements.

 

[Mark200]

Exclusive mode is a god-send. Big improvements.

You can shut down the unneeded connections via the Zen Stream Settings online, in addition to doing it with the hardware dial. According to iFi support the results are basically the same whether done via the Settings or the hardware dial. By shutting down the unneeded connections, the system probably just shuts down those daemons (software processes) not being used, which makes the Zen Stream run cooler and gives more CPU time available with lower latency to whatever you are using.

 

[Zaurux]

The product is very good, even if it had a bit of a rough start.
Its Swiss Army knife goals are ambitious and it's hard to be perfect when you want to tick so many boxes.
However, it seems that iFi audio is getting things back on track a bit with transparency.

The fact remains that Zen is still running under a Debian Jessie version, whereas we are under Bullseye and the competing distributions have made a quantum leap with kernels (5.10/15/16) allowing to push the quality to a higher level for the OS (GentooPLayer, NAA image, piCorePlayer, etc).
With programs that have evolved since (e.g. networkaudiod 3.40 >> 4.20).

In its current version, it can be pushed to the max, as I've already posted, by further reducing the exclusive mode to the minimum and spreading the load over the 4 cores (NAA player for HQP in my case)... but this is still tinkering and not programming.

@ iFi :
Still with transparency :

• do you think you can switch the ZenStream to Bullseye and does the hardware allow to upgrade the kernel ? and to go beyond PCM 384 and DSD256 (Dop 128) > 768/DSD512 Dop256.
• Another possibility : would the "exclusive" modes allow to mount specific images (ex: NAA image by Jussi or piCorePlayer or DietPi -> DietPi_ROCK64-ARMv8-Bullseye exists).

My Naa mode :

volumio@ifi:~$ cset shield  -v -v
cset: --> shielding system active with
cset: "system" cpuset of CPUSPEC(0-2) with 6 tasks running
   USER       PID  PPID SPPr TASK NAME
   -------- ----- ----- ---- ---------
   root         1     0 Soth [systemd]
   root       794     1 Soth [sshd]
   root      1128   794 Soth [sshd]
   volumio   1130  1128 Soth [sshd]
   volumio   1131  1130 Soth -bash
   volumio   1140  1131 Roth /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/cset shield -v -v
cset: "user" cpuset of CPUSPEC(3) with 2 tasks running
   USER       PID  PPID SPPr TASK NAME
   -------- ----- ----- ---- ---------
   root       891     1 Rr98 [networkaudiod]
   root      1065     1 Sf_1 [networkaudiod]

 

[applesnowleo]

When I read the product is good, it makes me think.

A product is the whole experience, the zen stream has appealing hardware, but a good product is the one I do not need to constantly post on a forum asking for help or having bigger or little constant issues.

The Zen stream is a product, not that good. A good experience is something that works as expected always, and the months are going and still waiting to consider it good. Is a product that works and sometimes gives issues that is not a good product.

If your car was constantly giving you issues did you consider it a good product?

The zen streamer is not the only streamer I have fortunately but is the only one I have issues since my initial purchase, is not a good product, is a good idea of a product that gives users the idea of a good product.

It sounds good for the price.

 

[801evan]

Yet it effortlessly beats a 15k usd streamer...

 

[applesnowleo]

Yet it effortlessly beats a 15k usd streamer...

Not even a 1000 euro streamer, it’s musical and has good points, and it’s a good start point, unfortunately it is what it is and everyone is free to believe in what they want to believe.

 

[smutnyjoe]

New iFi Zen Stream user here. Has anyone tried to use it with Curious Cables? My unit seems not to work with curious cables at all. It shows that it's playing, but there is no music. Connecting the cable directly to Macbook or using any other cable with the streamer does the job.

 

[Brubacca]

New iFi Zen Stream user here. Has anyone tried to use it with Curious Cables? My unit seems not to work with curious cables at all. It shows that it's playing, but there is no music. Connecting the cable directly to Macbook or using any other cable with the streamer does the job.

I have had problems using Raspberry Pi 4 with USB Curious Cable. I don't have a Zen Stream, but that cable is not universal.

 

[Mark200]

When I read the product is good, it makes me think.

A product is the whole experience, the zen stream has appealing hardware, but a good product is the one I do not need to constantly post on a forum asking for help or having bigger or little constant issues.

The Zen stream is a product, not that good. A good experience is something that works as expected always, and the months are going and still waiting to consider it good. Is a product that works and sometimes gives issues that is not a good product.

If your car was constantly giving you issues did you consider it a good product?

The zen streamer is not the only streamer I have fortunately but is the only one I have issues since my initial purchase, is not a good product, is a good idea of a product that gives users the idea of a good product.

It sounds good for the price.

Zen Stream is unlike most audio and video products that are basically hardware. But the ZS is basically a generic computer that relies on software to handle streaming from various sources with various digital formats, and both of them are evolving as we comment on this thread. Most of the sources have their own software protocol that the ZS must interface with, which are also evolving over time. Like most all software, the ZS and the sources (Tidal, etc) have bugs. That seems to be the nature of the beast at the moment.

However, I do agree that iFi needs to improve their software implementation process, because it appears to me (based on experience with my ZS and comments from others on this forum) that some things that used to work on old releases of ZS firmware no longer work when the firmware is upgraded (and I am talking about production releases, not beta firmware).

 

[Mark200]

New iFi Zen Stream user here. Has anyone tried to use it with Curious Cables? My unit seems not to work with curious cables at all. It shows that it's playing, but there is no music. Connecting the cable directly to Macbook or using any other cable with the streamer does the job.

I have never heard of Curious cables, but I was curious so I went to their website and looked around. Looks to me like their USB cables are USB 2.0 and the ZS has USB 3.0 connectors (although I am not sure if ZS requires USB 3.0). I don't know if that could be the problem. I have ZS and Zen DAC Signature V2 and one of them came with a USB 3.0 cable (I don't recall which one) and works fine for me.

 

[applesnowleo]

All streamers are some sort of computer, and the internal software needs to work as expected. I could understand a streaming platform that updates their api the need for the device to receive a software update to work with that specific new protocol.

What is not for me at least acceptable is a device that constantly remembers me that there is a bug, this now does not work, now other thing is not working and so and so and so.

My Naim also have a crash from time to time, a restart makes it work as new, received some software updates and never one day did let me down, the sms200 and sms200 ultra, stable since it entered the system, even bluesound node 2i and node have bugs like this, they are stable products that never disappoint and never let me down.

The Zen Stream has been a ride since the beginning of his life.

Regarding sound, is better than a Bluesound worse than an SoTM. I hope IFi comes out with a stable firmware that make this unit an experience and not a beta experience.

 

[Mark200]

All streamers are some sort of computer, and the internal software needs to work as expected.

The ZS isn't just "some sort of computer, it is a very generic computer just like many PC's or Mac's except that it is running a scaled-down version of Linux called Volumio that is specifically designed for only audio streaming. Like other Linux versions, Volumio is open-source, which means it is "community" maintained by people who do it for free, so not surprising there are a lot software bugs. But as I noted above, I agree that iFi needs to do a better job testing their firmware updates (which aren't really firmware, but just software updates to the ZS). Technically, firmware would be something like the bios, and I doubt that is updated very often if at all.

This is different than something like a DAC, where most of logic is in the DAC chips used in the devices. These DAC chips are proprietary computer chips purchased by the DAC manufacturer that contain the logic to do the digital to analog conversion.