Innuos Statement Review


I first heard the Innuos Statement music server at AXPONA 2019. I listened to a demonstration directly comparing the Statement to the Innuos' Zen MkII. After the demonstration, it was clear to me that the Statement was a large step forward in the Innuos product line. I recently purchased the Innuos Statement and took delivery (after a six week wait). I immediately plugged it in, set it up, (super easy) and downloaded .5 TB of WAV files overnight. After burning in the Statement for approximately 100 hours, I compared the Statement's performance to the Antipodes DX3 music server. In order to have as close a comparison as possible (in relative real time) I connected both servers to my Jeff Rowland (JR)  Aeris DAC+PSU using the same brand of cables (Stealth). However, because the Aeris DAC has only one USB input and both the Statement and the Antipodes DX 3 only have USB output, I first ran the Statement through a Berkeley USB Alpha converter and connected the Alpha converter to the Aeris DAC using Stealth's Vardig Sextet V16-T BNC/BNC cable. The Stealth USB Select-T cable connected the Statement to the Aeris DAC. The rest of the system consisted of a JR Corus Preamp (connected to the aforementioned PSU), JR M925 mono amplifiers, Joseph Audio Pearl 3 speakers and a three REL subwoofer "swarm" configuration. Cardas Clear Beyond power cords, balanced ICs, and speaker cables were used throughout the system. Both servers were used as Roon Cores for the comparison/review. I own all the equipment; I don't work for any audio company. (I also don't pump my stuff to dump it later.)
I focused on music selections I know well across the genres of rock/pop, jazz, classical, soul/R&B, and classical. I used a "non-blind" method playing a 1 minute 30 second to 2 minute section of a recording before switching from one server to the other and then repeating the same recording for an immediate comparison. I did the comparison over a two hour period, taking periodic listening breaks. Before providing my overall impressions of the Antipodes Statement, I note that I immediately compared the Statement to the Antipodes DX3 without burning the Statement in. The Antipodes DX3 had been thoroughly burned in before the comparison (more than 500 hours of use). Without burn in, the Statement and the Antipodes DX 3 sounded very similar to one another. I'm confident that I would have been guessing which was which if I was blindfolded and had to name the server I was hearing on any given recording. I repeated this exercise after the Statement had burned in for one hour. At this point it seemed the Statement's soundstage had gotten a little wider and only slightly deeper. It also seemed the vocals on the Statement had become slightly clearer than on the Antipodes DX3. I did no further comparisons until now. The following are my subjective impressions of the Statement after four days of burn in compared to the Antipodes DX 3 server in my system.
The Statement threw a slightly wider soundstage than the Antipodes DX3.
The Statement had a significantly deeper soundstage than the Antipodes DX3. 
The Statement and the Antipodes DX3 had the same soundstage height.
The Statement resolved moderately more than the Antipodes DX3. By this I mean it provided more recording details than the Antipodes DX 3. It was not a night and day difference. It was apparent on most, but not all, recordings I considered.
Vocals presented clearer/crisper (better "enunciation" if you will) via the Statement than the Antipodes DX3.
The Statement provided superior bass differentiation in the lowest and mid bass regions. With the Statement, the bass drum performance did not cloud either a stand up bass or electric bass performance--provided the recording/mastering engineers sufficiently separated the performances on the recording. The Antipodes DX3 is a very good bass performer. But it slightly trailed the Statement.
The Statement placed more air between the instruments and performers than the Antipodes DX3.
The Statement excelled at acoustical instrument presentation. A reeded instrument sounded convincingly "real." The Antipodes DX3 does this well too...just not as well. Percussion instruments also benefit from this attribute. The Statement allowed me to hear more definition in the wood block, the guiro, shakers, all cymbals I heard, chimes, a gong. Again, the Antipodes DX3 was very good at percussive instrument representation. The Statement was simply better.
Both the Statement and the Antipodes DX3 provided high quality believable piano reproduction in all genres. The only significant difference I heard between the two servers on piano performance was found in Alfredo Rodriguez's rendition of "Chan Chan." There, the Statement seemed to handle the quick staccato notes and the unique decay issues of this piece more believably than the Antipodes DX3. But the difference was not night and day.
My overall impression of the Statement is that it provided superior high quality, believable digital music reproduction regardless of genre. I consider it an across the board upgrade in musical reproduction in my system over the Antipodes DX3. My impression of the Antipodes DX3 is that it is a high value product that held up very well in comparison to the Statement. The Statement retails for twice as much as the DX3's retail price when it was in production. If the Statement's performance after four days of burn in was rated as a 100 I would rate the Antipodes DX3 completely burned in as a 75. I will be keeping both these music servers. Hopefully this review helps those in the market for a music server.     
Ag insider logo xs@2xastewart8944

Thanks for the interesting review and discussion. I have a Zenith Mk 2, all that was available when I bought it. I agree there is a clear improvement in performance to the Zenith SE and then to the Statement, when I compared at a show. I won't be changing, being very pleased with the Zenith and I can't afford the Statement, now I'm retired, anyway.

 To emphasise the ease of use, that's partly why I bought it. A child of 5 could rip CDs with a few minutes of instruction.

 I will mention again, the soon to be available plug in Re Clocker from the Statement, which can be used with the Zenith, to bring it nearer to the former's performance. It has been promised for over two years by the company and I have been nagging them about it. I understand it is ready, when it will be for sale, should be later this year. It won't be cheap, about £2000, only a little less than the Zenith Mk 2 purchase price, but I will be giving it a home audition.

@david12 Thanks for the post. If you end up with the Re-Clocker please post your impressions of it here. I agree with you that the Statement is super simple to use. The ripper works great, and quiet mode is actually quiet. 
Guys, was there any comparisons made with a fairly high end transport, i guess it should be at least in the 5 figure bracket if compared with a $10k to 20k server?

A comparision if the Innous Statement or any any other server and how does it fair against a cd.

How different does the USB fair compared to tranditional spdif or Aes spinning a cd?

Does it or not, trump cd's before stating how great a server setup sounds, ultimately.

A reference might be good as a baseline between the different brand servers and connections before we say say which is best or great.

Can the Innous play cd's or just rip them?
Biketony, congratulations, on your digital journey and welcome to the Innous family.

We did a fascinating demo the other day of the Innous Statement via USB playing the same file vs a $20k server that perfers to use AES/EBU.

So it was titan vs titan with each playing the same file and the only thing needed to demo each was to turn the input on the dac.

The two presentations were quite different it was easy to discern just how much a difference there was between the two machines.

For those people who doubt the sonic difference between two really fantastic servers would have been totally shocked that there can be such a discernable difference in how each server brings out different things.

Server A was warm with a big soundstage,

Server B through a much more defined soundstage, with greater front to back depth, greater dynamic attack and a more focused soundstage.

Just as you witnessed there is a marked difference between the Zenith and the Statement.

We have been testing computers vs servers, servers vs servers for quite a number of years now.

So there is much more going on then just bits is bits mentality that many people here expouse.

Personally we cringe when we see at shows a Laptop with a generic usb cable going to dac at a show and wonder why the sound wasn’t as good as it could be.

For the other gentleman’s questions:

1: The server won’t play a disc only, the second you put a disc into the loader, the machine rips it and then ejects the disc.

2: The USB vs any other input is a dac specific thing, certain companies pefer USB others prefer SPDIF, other dacs ethernet input and for others is it USB.

Only ethernet and USB allow for DSD and higher resolutions of both PCM and DSD files, most AES and SPDIF inputs will only do a maximum 24 bit 192k vs USB and Ethenet which may allow up to PCM 768 and DSD up to 512k the new T+A SD 3100 dac allows for native DSD 1024 files which don’t exisit but which can be created via a fast server and HQ player.

3: As per optical disc spinning via reading the same disc via a high end server, in our tests the server is picked over the spinning disc in almost every demo. The only difference can be the input board which sometimes isn’t as good as it can be leading to the spinning disc to still sounding better but it depends on the machine.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Innous dealers