I bought Zen stream 10 days back. Right from beginning I am running latest firmware so not sure how the earlier firmware was. What I found was its quite buggy. I have similar problem with both spotify and airplay. After connecting there is no line out (even though there is green led indicator on right is on). Its also frustrating to know chromecast support is not there yet. i dont use tidal but support for MQA (was accidentally added earlier) removed as well in latest firmware update
If you have not seen this may be check for a solution in this thread
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/ifi-audio-zen-stream-streaming-elevated-to-a-higher-plane.958391/
Received my Zen Stream today and updated it to firmware 2.29.9 and sadly I have this problem too.
To be honest I do not intend to spend a whole lot of time playing beta tester for iFi or waiting very long for a fix - hardware seems fine, but the software seems buggy in other parts too and at this price point I expect things to just work and stay that way.
Which is actually one of the only reasons I purchased it in the first place: Simply to get a stable product and get rid of the DIY part of this component in my audio chain as I have spent quite some time with Raspberry and various DAC products and software stacks on that to experiment and make informed choices.
Guess not...
I did a factory reset on the Zen and it bumped back to firmware 2.25 from December 4, 2021. Default settings.
It works and it seems stable now.
Firmware 2.29.9 seemingly brings a fix for Tidal Connect and a DAC auto detect issue and then introduces a new (or old - who knows) Spotify Connect issue. Which of these 3 is the root problem I don't know. To be frank I don't care either - their product, their problem.
Sigh...
This a witness of a broken QA process in the company's dev department.
Testing can and should be 100% automated at e.g. these levels
- unit test level (i.e. the software component responsible for the connection free from external dependencies)
- integration test level (i.e. with external dependencies "attached" to the software component)
- system test level (i.e. the box with dummy or no down-stream attachments - stress test weird "gorilla" behavior here)
- end-to-end system test levels (well the entire box + what ever it can be connected to - multiple test benches...).
The fact that IFi let such issues bleed all the way out to end users in a 400 euro / USD product is simply not acceptable in 2021 and the process therefore seems hand held.
To me this is a show stopper. I can not and will not accept the risk of my commercial grade HiFi devices being unstable or even being bricked due to a firmware update.
It sounds well and all but:
- I have issues with the lacking software QA and
- I am also a bit worried if / when iFi will catch up with Volumio 3 or if they are left in the dust due to the new architecture...
This product is going back until these 2 questions are addressed by iFi and I'm keeping my stable rpi4 + Volumio 3 at 1/10th the price for now and can live with the sound quality (not that I think I can hear any difference - haven't done a proper A/B blind test or anything).
Whether RPI or Zen it feeds into a Topping EX5 and from there into a Hypex class D amp and eventually to Dynaudio Contour 20 speakers and my room is equipped with acoustic panels and what not ;-)
