ZEN Mini S vs. Small Green Computer Sonic Transporter i5 music server/Ultra Rendu Streamer

both will work very well

if you’re using roon the sonic transporter will handle the ripping via a cd drive plugged in... easy peasy (i never worry about thrid party ripping programs)

nice that the drive can then be unplugged with not being used

innuos is also fine, you are paying a bit more for the prettier box and integration and brand name -- innuos is also good at the upselling game, you will read soon why your zen mini needs a better power supply, but even then its still not as good as zen or zenith -- before you know it you feel your stuff is inadequate if you don't buy a $6000 box from them LOL

hdd's have certainly improved in reliability over the years but i believe most tech experts see sdd as still significantly better (not to mention having faster access times and saving physical space)

@drlou77

i think you have your choice on this subject, and associated tradeoffs, well understood and well articulated - good job on that!

i signed up for roon lifetime early on, so am bought into it... i enjoy it immensely as an interface, but also realize that in the meanwhile the better streamer hardware companies like innuos aurender auralic and so on have continually improved their software and the user experiences they provide

for me, i enjoyed trying the value oriented piece-part options, doing it more ’a la carte’, if for no reason other than to allow me carefully learn each piece part and their associated impact on the sound quality

for this reason, i have an i7 equivalent roon core machine (from esteemed a-gon member @elberoth in poland), installed my own internal ssd for stored music, have an outboard cd drive to rip when needed (and detach when not using), then i bought an optical rendu from sgc as well as an ether-regen and na muon to do lan and usb filtering to feed whatever dac or dac streamer i am using at any time

op

if you are truly ripping 3,000 cd’s maybe the innuos with built in/integral cd slot is more convenient

optical rendu >> ultrarendu for network noise suppression - if you go in this direction i suggest you wait for the optical rendu (search youtube for andrew gillis’ explanation of how/why it works, and works better than the lesser micro and ultra rendus) -- important point here is the rendus all take a home network lan feed and give you a cleansed usb output to drive a dac (like a qutest, or any other modern dac with usb input)

you can also search for ’uptone audio ether regen’ here or on the web, much is written... it is a lan signal cleanser - gives you a purified ethernet feed (lan, not usb) -- this is useful if using some streamer/dac combo unit as front end (i.e. a cambridge audio cxn v2), which take a lan input directly -- so then you want a clean lan feed

network acoustics (eno or muon) - their two models, they do the same thing, same thing as the ether-regen - but do it passively -- much written about these here and elsewhere too, just search

you don’t need all three (i have them all as i am off the deep end, like to have every option to feed different dacs, some with, some without streamers)... what you want is one form of well cleansed digital feed compatible with your chosen dac, so you use the properly chosen filter device to deliver that