INNUOS STATEMENT

Jason Kennedy  |  The Ear

January 2019

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I particularly enjoyed the image scale that the Statement revealed, it’s not the bloom/halo effect you get with some tube amps because the size and nature changes with every album or track played. Regardless of whether you use the USB to DAC or the Ethernet to Streamer outputs the resolution is astounding. Pieces you thought you knew reveal new facets and depths, and it’s impossible not to be drawn into the music.

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The other very appealing characteristic is that everything sounds so relaxed and effortless, I thought that the Zenith SE was good in this respect – it is  – but Statement takes another layer of grain away. This is what eliminating noise in the source means -- a more natural, less digital sound that seriously competes with the best turntables.

In fact where bass is concerned you’d have to have a top flight turntable, arm and cartridge to get near it. And I’m a vinyl enthusiast with far too many records to prove it, but the dynamics and low frequency coherence makes me wonder if time has not come to change my ways.

Contrasting the [now discontinued] Zenith SE and the Statement is interesting. You get more space, more detail and less grain/sweeter cleaner treble with Statement, but the timing remains pretty much the same. It’s essentially a lower distortion version of what was already very, very clean sound. And the sense of space is extraordinary -- I’ve not encountered imaging like it nor have I heard digitally sourced highs that on the one hand are shiny and vibrant but on the other are relaxed. It really is a best of both worlds experience.

The longer you let the Statement settle in the better it sounds, and by the end of the server’s far too short (month long) tenure I was getting seriously addicted to it. Whether streaming Ryley Walker on Tidal or Bugge Wesseltoft from the drive it has a beguiling transparency and openness that is dangerous to get used to, especially as it has inevitably to go back.

The Statement is a more subtle source than most, its qualities are those of omission, it leaves out the distortion so that the music can come through.

In this and all other respects, this Innuos is a genuine state of the art component, put it on your ‘must hear’ bucket list straight away.