I will call this another music streamer which is partially true. Innous is brand came about around year 2009. Not so old brand for hi-fi. For the last decade streaming platforms have pop up all over the world like mushrooms. I am not just talking about music streaming but any kind of streaming services is like a must have this days. For hi-fi there is no escape from this as well.
Coming back to Innous, is a brand born out from Portugal. When it first came about was not just streaming but also design to be a music server, CD ripper and local digital playback. The Zen series is the early days of Innous which made the brand to be quickly came to fame with many high end audio. As the brand gained recognition for its versatile playback and the software of Innous was greatly improved over the years which makes it one nice player to enjoy. I have been over the years searching for the holy grail of digital playback. Have tried dozens and dozens of players. I am sure most who knows me, I did a marathon of testing on digital streamers / players end of last year. Pretty much obsessed to my quest for the most perfect player available in the market. I was kind of itchy to try out the Innous which I have already own the USB reclocker known as Innous Phoenix. Came Jan this year, was in Singapore and decided to visit Adelphi mall for trying out the Innous Pulse which is pretty new line of product from Innous. Is kind of strip down version of Zen series. The pulse is pure player without internal storage or CD drive. No internal DAC as well , just with bunch of different digital output like USD, optical, AES and Coaxial.
The internal part of Pulse is pretty simple too with the main board and power supply with separate power for the digital controller. As usual, Innous is a little fancier with the Mundorf capacitors. With its simple design which is good to have the components not to crap into a small space which is true for many hardware manucturers to save space which save cost too. Most of the internal components are design by Innous and not just any OEM or third party components. I think it speak a lot for the manufacturer.
For the past 5 months of using the Pulse with the Phoenix is quite reasonable I will say for the outcome. Nothing to shout about but is pretty much what I have already in my own setup with my Asus Tinkerboard. The Pulse playback on the Tidal, I will say is quite a surprise to me as the quality is quite up to par to some of CD being ripped into the hard disk. The local file playback do still has its edge over streaming like it or not. I am not a fan of Tidal because of the price and interface. For the sake of trying out the Pulse, I have signed out for free trial. I have to say the quality it provided does better than native Apple Music. Is also quite unfortunate not many player is able to run native Apple Music. Can’t really make a side by side comparison. Hopefully Innous will decide to add Apple Music to its arsenal. 😁
The Pulse was originally designed only for streaming purposes but after some good feedback from users that Innous decided to enable local playback with USB drive and NAS support. This was added on early Feb this year. This is one point that gotten me to jump into it. I am quite hopeful that it can be a good replacement player for the aging Asus Tinkerboard. By now the Asus is been with me for 7 years. The setup for the NAS and USB is as easy as using any computer at home. Nothing fancy, just plug in the USB drive and the NAS just have to add in the path for the drive. Once is recognized the files will pop up in the apps and just press to play. That is the easy part, the unfortunate part is the files being supported is pretty limited. Only wav, flac and DSD are mainly supported. Like ape, ISO files are are not recognized by the Pulse. The storage part to load up the playlist is quite slow compared to the Asus. 10,000 files took about 3 mins for Asus to load and it took the pulse almost 30 mins to complete. Just to make a comparison on the overall sound quality is pretty much the same as Asus with Volumio. Definitely this wins over the like of Eversolo, Fiio and Lumin which I have recently tested. One thing that cannot be beaten is the mirror function of Eversolo and Fiio. That is superbly good function to have. Every player should have it. The casing of the Pulse ivery well build and what is outstanding is the power button is hidden below the player. This makes the player doesn’t emit light which can be annoying in low dim lighted room.
Just to sum things up for me is this player does lives up to its expectations. The downside is this player is definitely not for me. It’s great as music streamer and the standard support on Roon would be nice for many. The lack of files supported is a deal breaker. What I also miss is the Volumio ability to display on TV or any display with HDMI. Is so much better than any player which has its own screen big or small. I guess this is one fail experiment for me. Hopefully Innous will continue to improve its software as its hardware already quite top notch. Not sure if the price tag of RM15k is justificable for me. For those still hunting, happy hunting. After this pretty much end of journey for me. I just pray the Asus don’t die on me after such long year of service.
