The Innuos server is the “brain” of your home entertainment network. Your media is stored digitally on a low-power, always-on device ready for you to play whenever, wherever you like. Music and movies can be streamed to wireless speakers, media streamers, Smart TVs, tablets and more without the need for a computer.
Innuos specialise in dedicated music / media servers and have moved quite rapidly from the small-format-PC-in-a-box with adequate third party software to something neat, fast, slick and incredibly well-considered.
With products like these the operating software is a hugely important aspect and running their own ‘InnuOs’ software really seem to have it licked.
Add in the fact that they are very well priced, sound pretty damned good and have some of the best sorted control software that we’ve seen and you have something worth considering very seriously indeed. We carry Zen Mini, Zen and Zenith on demonstration.
These units are particularly effective when used through the USB output into a asynchronous USB equipped DAC. Most modern DACs from the Likes of Arcam, Chord, Rega, even Naim with the DAC V1, are suitable to be used in this way.
From an audio perspective, there are three quality levels. All share the same, very impressive, operating software.
As I have mentioned very frequently, Innuos have developed an incredibly easy way to access and control their servers.
Here’s how it works: From a web browser on just about any PC, Mac, iOS or Android device, simply type ‘my.innuos’ into the address bar and it will show any Innuos devices located on your network.
If there is more than one, as in this example, you can simply select the one that you want to control.
Impressed, we most certainly are.
Here is the basic music control menu, where you can select artist, genre, etc.
Via the menu, you can select the file format for CD ripping and, as of 3rd October 2016, this includes the ability to rip and store in WAV format.
The speed with which system updates have been coming through has been impressive and applying them is a simple process, again, accessed via the web interface.
Oh, were it always this straightforward!
