That’s what happens when the engineers have a veto on the design. Other businesses might set a design objective - for example, a high quality streamer and DAC in one box, possibly also a pre-amp, with a high quality power supply and each section isolated - and tell the engineers to get on and solve the problems. Design led products, full of good engineering, maybe even requiring innovation to solve new demands.
You mean like the dCS Rossini Apex Player?
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That wheel already exists and dominated by the likes of Lumin and Aurender. No reason to go down that road if you don’t have the engineering expertise to do both including software that works as intended. Instead you do what you know how to do. For example your much talked about streaming favorite stays out of the all in one business as they don’t do DACs and have no interest. Instead they stick to what they know.
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Interesting that DCS have gone for a DLNA streamer (DLNA only?) built in to the DAC - most other streamers (internal or external) support something else (including the AL with roon endpoint firmware).
Beside the Roon Bridge via Ethernet, here’s the various connections you can make to the Bartók.
Here’s the inputs:
Note, these screenshots are from the very simple but very usable dCS Mosaic app.
You can see at the bottom the Roon integration where there’s simple transport controls and what’s currently playing.
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Ah there’s a few more options then 
I guess uPnP/DLNA endpoint can be just as good as anything else (in terms of usability), it’s all down to the control app’s quality (or lack of) if the hardware is implemented well
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The DLNA is nice for apps like Audirvana.
Here’s another view of the Roon integration.
What you see on the right follows along with all of the various screens, you don’t have to go looking for it. Not that I use it much. It is handy when streaming Qobuz, but even then, I do that from Roon.
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Aye it’s all in the integration and implementation
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You have to click on the link to see the full text…
“The AirLens too is built around a newer Converse module.”
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I’m no expert, but as far as I understood, galvanic isolation needs complete reclocking and isolation of the output, too, which isn’t achievable with USB more or less generally (which is why the Airlens won’t offer USB out).
Innuos has the usual transformer isolated LAN (input and if used only as a server only, also output, but this isn’t what we speak about, as our topic is the galvanic isolation of the streamer) and it has “ultra low noise USB output (no mention of isolation transformers I can read there by the way, just “ultra low noise”)”, but it has no galvanic isolation for the output. So as I mentioned before, Inuous strategy is ultra low noise vs. galvanic isolation and their strategy is also, to mainly offer servers, not streamers. They just built in a limited streamer to offer a full package, but they say, if one wants more isolation or whatever from the streamer module, one should use a dedicated separate streamer with the Inuous units.
At the time I had my calls, they thought about offering a dedicated streamer, but they also didn’t plan to fully galvanically isolate this design (as their whole product line, which you’d need then, builds on avoiding noise as good as possible from start)
Just in case someone with a Holo Red is on this thread and not on the Holo Red thread… I just posted over there:
“I would be very curious if someone with a Holo Red could test it in DDC mode… maybe fed via USB from a ROCK… to send I2S over HDMI to a PSA DS DAC (esp. if a MK2)… versus using an SMSL PO100 Pro DDC. If you are located near Germany, I could post you an SMSL unit for test. It is only 65 clams to buy anyway.“
My base plan still is to wait for an AirLens. But the Innuos Pulse looks very good to me. Just not sure if I want to use USB. I kinda like the AirLens over-the-network concept plus I2S over HDMI plus Tidal Connect. The Holo Red would do this too though at half the price…
Actually PS Audio did go down this road. The PWD DAC Mk2 had an optional Bridge streaming card (I had that DAC but not the streaming card), it was apparently Roon Ready, and that was 10 years ago. Plenty of people still use the Bridge2 in the DSD DAC Mk2. They then announced an Octave Server development and I was holding on for that, but then bought an Innuos as I wanted to use Roon. Then the server was cancelled and became a streamer, software was developed, then scrapped. Plus the PS Audio objective in recent years has been to do everything from the recording to speaker output.
I’m no expert either, but galvanic isolation has nothing to do with reclocking. It’s only to do with eliminating any issues when sending information between two electrical devices that may have different ground potential.
The guy you probably spoke to was Richard Coleman. He was sales and technical manager based in the UK, although he left last year. I think he went to Naim. I spoke to him quite a few times over the years, firstly it was him who convinced to buy their product in the first place, secondly there were a lot of embedded functions in LMS that you cannot access through the web interface, like uPnP and the ability to use the Sense app through the RF45 output, so he guided how to activate them. He also advised me on the best way to upgrade.
PS Audio talks about galvanic isolation as the only answer and if you don’t have it your device is broken. It’s like some religious cult.
The Innuos Statement does complete reclocking of usb, is optimised for usb and is pretty much regarded as the industry reference server, measured by the frequency that you see them in demos of high-end systems. For $15,000 it should be. In their new range the top-of-the-line product is also a reclocking streamer optimised for usb.
The massive advantage of usb is that it is “universal”, can be used with or without the source clock and has no practical data limitations. Innuos focus on usb because of this universality, USB is a hugely popular format and in their latest devices they will do up to DSD512.
The last conversation I had with Richard Coleman was what was the point of adding a Phoenix usb relcocker when the receiving device has a high quality clock, so why not just use asynchronous usb and let the receiving device do its business? I then emailed to the chief engineer of Devialet and he said there was no point in reclocking the signal to the Devialet Core Infinity card. The CI card is very similar in principle to the Conversdigital card in the AirLens, except it is proprietary and has all Devialet’s own software, so they can change or add to it as they want.
Actually, the complete opposite is true. Their Sense streamer is brilliant and, like me, many Innuos owners use it in preference to Roon. Its performance is so good that their new Pulse range are pure streamers based around Sense, not servers. The top model reclocks, the other don’t.
Of course the regret is that so few audio companies besides Sonore use fibre-optics for isolation, although I’m one of many who now use fibre into my server/streamer. the ethernet converter is isolated by powering it from a 9v battery.
In a sense, Innuos have achieved what PSA failed to do, producing a streaming platform that is a challenge to Roon. Their advantage is that their hardware platform is much better than Roon Nucleus and you don’t have to pay by subscription.
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Seems like it might be, but who knows if @tedsmith has plans to get it to go to DSD512?
Maybe, as we’re both no experts, we reached our limit in this discussion 
. I just cited Paul here: “The AirLens has a complete reclocking system as part of its galvanically isolated output stage. ”
Paul certainly uses galvanic isolation as a marketing argument and possibly has a unique selling point, at least seemingly a unique feature in how consequent he leaves out USB as a major noise source, but calling it a religious cult might be a bit steep
I think I have to stand by my initial statement, based on my conversations with Innuos. Yes, indeed with the Pulse HW (based on Sense SW) they now offer 2 streamers besides their wider portfolio of (in their main function) servers and network components, but independent of if they sound good and you enjoy them, Innuos’ concept seems to stay “low noise” opposed to “strongly focused efforts in terms of galvanic isolation”. I don’t want to suggest which is better, I’m just sure that their’s just really works in their way with all their products used (incl. the costly network components).
As good as their platform might be (they are not alone among some HW manufacturers offering one), imo PSA made the right decision (just too late maybe or shouldn’t have decided so from start), as SW development is a completely different kind of fish than the so far basic business in most every possible aspect and I think a few preconditions in the character and focus of PSA were not optimal for this in their own way.
I wouldn’t count on any manufacturer of such SW long term, who’s not making his main business out of it and is at least so big and the SW so competitive, that he would be able to sell it in case he gives up.
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I think we (me with the help of wikipedia) both know that galvanic isolation applies to any type of electrical circuit involving information transfer. It is not specific to audio and reclocking audio is really specific to audio signals. Every DAC has a clock, some streamers have clocks and some don’t.
I owned both the Auralic Aries Mini and the Auralic Aries. The latter had its own clock, the former didn’t. They were both galvanically isolated, because I used them wirelessly (most of the time). Wireless is foolproof 100% no grounding issues, but for some reason some people dislike it.
If PS Audio had invested in usb for their streamer, which they did 10 years ago with their pre-DSD DACs (they were optimised for usb with the Digital Lens), they would like it more. There are “pro” and “anti” usb camps, but the hard reality is that is does not have practical data limitations and there is barely a digital hifi component that does not have a usb input.
Innuos released their Sense streamer software almost out of the blue. I wondered how on earth that they could spend 4 years and probably a big pile of money developing it and then give it away for free. Innuos are popular because besides being good products (PS Audio own two), they are probably the best alternative to Roon Nucleus. They are not Roon certified because the Intel NC4200 chips are, according to Roon, underpowered. Innuos use them because they are quieter and generate less heat than Intel i3, Roon’s minimum specification. Richard Coleman told me that for high-power DSP, multi-room, etc Roon use, buy an i7 Nucleus+.
It is possible that Innuos feared that Roon would try and make Roon non-functional on Innuos machines.
I suspect that Innuos had a long-term plan to do streamers, did the software first, waited for the response (it was good), then developed the Pulse range of streamers. At the same time Sense has been much improved, with uPnP and multi-room. They released it earlier than they wanted, but they said they wanted to get it out there and get some feedback.
Paul said he wanted to create a Roon-killer. It didn’t work out. Sense is a good Roon alternative, especially with no annual fees. It wasn’t intended a Roon-killer, but for standalone systems it makes more Sense!
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Just side commentary, as a Roon alternative with multi-endpoint capability and their own app, I am enjoying Euphony Stylus. Their hardware is pricier than the likes of the Innuos Pulse. But my build is in my own ASRock 4x4 AMD-chipped NUC-alternative. The price difference to the Innuos Pulse can fund 15 years of Stylus software subscriptions. But, yeah, I do not get any sort of optimized USB. But it is unclear to me if this is needed with the MK2.
PS: I expect Innuos is simply dropping CD-rippers at this point as being no longer so relevant, as well as that they add cost and complexity. Not so sure it was a grand plan from way back.
Richard Coleman at Innuos explained to me that they left the CD ripper in the Mk3 because there was so little cost involved and people were still ripping CD libraries, that it made sense to leave it. I think he said they would have had to retool the Mk2 case to remove the slot. I think they will now be running both ranges.
I’ve been through a few streamers since I started in 2009 with Linn Accurate DS and an Iomega network drive. Since the Innuos Zen Mk3 in Feb 2019 not looked at anything else. Just does the job.
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Makes sense. They cannot, em, rip the ripper out of the model that has it already. Let’s them move customers into the future gradually. Plus the existing platform case is tooled for it already. I take it their software is still common and supports attaching an external drive to the new Pulse range… but would have to rip to an external drive. It is not clear from their website and I am not finding much in the way of manuals. At least not for the new models.
I’m also using two of these. One for EtherRegen and one for Roon core on an intel NUC. Love them.
Also using the Sonore SigRendu Se