High tier audio streaming with Volumio Motivo
volumio Motivo is a digital platform and a DAC and also a headphone amp that we are going to talk about today and it's this oddly shaped device as you can see with a really big screen I'll turn it on a little bit later and all of the connections are located on the back there you can see that we can connect it to network which can connect USB devices and also there are several digital outputs USB is one of them I2S Optical and coaxial so you can feed the music over your network either from your local storage your PC or Nas or some streaming services like kobas tile Spotify Etc and in case you're using this as a digital streamer digital transport only you can output digital signal from it there are also analog outputs because there is a digital to analog converter on board here so you have single-ended RCA outputs and there are XLR balanced outputs one interesting thing to note here is that xlrs are not your standard male xlrs those are usually used for output in this case female connectors were used because they're combined XLR outs and headphone outputs and when it come to headphones you just connect 6.3 mm TRS connector one of these is optimized for low impedance headphones the other one for high impedance headphones and it works as intended but if you use XLR balanced outputs you have to use cables that come inside the box with the device and they will have these male XLR connectors on both ends which is just not the case with usual interconnect cables so you use these and you can connect this one to any external integrated amplifier headphone amplifier power amplifier Etc last thing to note is that this one is powered with the external brick of 9 volts 4 amp dc and the power supply being external means that you can upgrade it if you wish to do so sometimes down the road now volumio Motivo comes with volumio operating system and Volumio is actually better known for its operating audio file operating system that can be loaded on anything that is for example Raspberry Pi based any streamer based on Raspberry Pi like Pi 2 design Mercury or Pi 2 as or a Holo audio red etc etc also many Alo streamers that I've reviewed here on this channel and used personally if you wish to do so so you can load Volumio operating system on those but recently Volumio started offering their dedicated Hardware that is preloaded with volumio premium operating system with all features and abilities unlocked and I will not get into what this system can do and cannot do that would be like a whole different video and long review by itself but I will quickly go through some main features so you can use volumio operating system in its native form basically browsing through the user interface having your own music library just playing songs from it also streaming services kobas and tidle are natively integrated into the system so you can mix songs from these services and your local library and you can play everything from the volumio user interface itself and you can do all of that simply by using the touch screen on the volumio which is big and easily readable but as you can see the angle of this streamer is a bit weird and I actually think it's very convenient if you are using it as a part of your desktop system but in case of a room Hi-Fi setup when it's a few meters far from you you don't really see the display at this angle very well I don't really think that's a problem because if you're sitting few meters away from the device you're not going to use the touchcreen anyway in that case you're using a control app on your phone for example and everything is conveniently used from there you have all of the same info and the same UI just on your phone in your hand now while on the topic of this UI and operating system and controlling app I have to say this while in general in the past I had really good experience with Volumio and its reliability over several of my streamers in just raspberry pies and also previously with volumio Rivo this time around I did experienced several glitches and bugs that needs to be smoothed out and fixed for example when a song plays and it ends and the next one begins infos screen is stuck on the previous song and that doesn't change until you personally click on any other song in the queue only then will this info screen unfreeze and keep showing you the the real information also this happened several times while I was browsing my music library and I want to play a different album or a different playlist and I clicked that play button queue that was being played at the moment before my new Choice clears but the new one doesn't start to play and sometimes I only needed to repeat the play button but in few occasions it just wouldn't accept any play commands from any playlist and I would need to restart the device I think that this is a very new device and both software and Hardware will probably be made to work better together with a few updates that is unfortunately the reality of more and more complex operating systems and platforms that we are using for our music and something similar happened for example with Eversolo DMP A6 and A8 when I reviewed them their user interface and their software was lacking but with several updates it's now one of the best softwares there is when it comes to music streaming in my opinion and with volumio being like software company first I really hope they will smooth out these few bus and glitches with future updates now just two pieces of information before we continue to talk about its performance and its sound volumio Motivo sells for €1750 but that price same as it was with rivo and all volumio products includes worldwide shipping and all the taxes and in some countries that might not be too significant but for example for my country Serbia taxes and Custom fees pile up to 30% of the base value of the product so for me this is personally very important and significantly lower than if I would to order something from company that lists you the price only and then shipping and taxes and custom fees pile up to like 30% more this is the end price that you as a user pay to get this on your doorstep another piece of info is that if you don't want to use volumio operating system natively with its own user interface you can connect to it several different ways for example tidle connect Spotify connect UPnP or DLNA connection from a thirdparty software and also Roon app that is supported this is Roon ready device but at the moment of this review it's not certified yet because run certif ification process is several months long but it will come for sure now let's talk [Music] sound I started using motiv as a digital platform only using its digital outputs to feed my external DAC and I have to say that in that case I really liked its sound now in one way it's very revealing and open and there is plenty of detailing and that goes across the frequency spectrum but I was especially surprised at how informative it sounds in the mid-range and there's lots of inner tone textures there tiny stuff happening small small details from the recording but at the same time nothing is ever edgy and there is pretty great naturalness to the sound also dynamics of the sound are great it's quick it's Lively it's it's fastpaced but once again like many other devices that can achieve that but by being a bit overly lean and thin in the Baseline which gives the perception of great detailing in the upper frequencies that's not the case with Motivo it's just quick Nimble really fastpaced but tones do have boldness they do have weight that goes equally for the Baseline for the mid base but also mid-range for example I listen to some of my favorite vocals and they do sound big and bold and chasty while at the same time those vocals having that great tonal harmonic richness and that voice texture and sandiness and everything that a real vocal can have lastly sound staging is great Motivo and its digital outputs creates big wide and tall Sound Stage and it's just a very engaging listen very clear and informative but also very natural and also even bold sounding and to assess its qualities I quickly compared it to First volumio Rivo from the same company this is just a digital platform digital streamer without a DAC without a headphone amp we'll talk about those in Motivo later but it comes at half the price and the volumio states that Motivo has the basically same digital section as Rivo but slightly improved and I would say that's easily noticeable I compare them directly next to each other and first of all Rivo is itself a fantastic digital streamer with great detail retrieval yet come a natural kind of sound big Sound Stage but Motivo is doing all of that slightly better tones are a bit more energetic and palpable Sound Stage is touch wider and there's even a bit more information especially in that mid-range that I raved about just now and yes in terms of value in terms of price to Performance ratio Rivo is probably better because it costs half the price but it offers like I don't know 85 90% and these are just very personal numbers that I'm pulling out of my because there are no objective ways to put numbers to sound and to what you hear but to put it simply Motivo sounds every bit as good as Rivo and then some and I'll compare it to Eversolo DMP A8 like everything they offer a little bit later for now let's move to the analog outputs of volumio [Music] Motivo the DAC section uses saber DAC chip but it also follows the sound of the digital section quite well there's a great detail retrieval but there's also quite good naturalness to the sound and detail retrieval mostly comes from the mid-range and it's not intrusive not sharp not edgy even though you might expect that from a saber it's not it's not just a DAC chip it's everything around it and with Motivo here they did a great job of utilizing that DAC chip to its full potential I believe because it does sound truly revealing and there just very little to complain about the sound of the analog output and if you would like to improve the DAC section of the volium Motivo with your external DAC you should know that you cannot simply do that by drawing even like a slightly above $1,000 us for something like Denafrips 15th which is a great DAC or gustard r26 you would get sound that's different with gustard for example it would be bigger deeper and Bolder but in terms of resolution and information retrieval it would actually be slightly less revealing than what Motivo is doing then a Frip series 15th is similarly revealing of details and tone textures it has a bit slower but warmer Baseline than Motivo and also slightly more extended and more zingy Highs but at the same time it sounds a bit colder and to really and truly make that upgrade and not not just a side grade and don't get me wrong side grades can be okay if you look for a specific kind of sound but to make a true upgrade in performance in every way I had to use Laiv Harmony DAC which just sounded bigger more palpable more spacious than Motivo and had more inner tone texture but that's a DAC that's $2700 what I want to say with this is that internal da conversion in the Motivo is of a really high quality and you should never think of it as an afterthought if you buy Motivo I suggest you use its internal DAC and this leads me to a comparison with Eversolo d mp8 i compare them head to head and they're quite similarly priced the mpa 8 is slightly more expensive and that price doesn't include worldwide shipping and taxes covered so it it is more expensive and I like the look and the feel of the mp8 it's bigger it looks more authorative it looks more like a proper Hi-Fi component and also the mp8 has richer connectivity and richer feature set so you think about that and do you need any of those things that A8 has and Motivo doesn't you can always see that for yourself but now I'll talk about their sonic performance and Sonic differences so when I compare them directly and they firstly started using them as digital transport using their digital inputs the same ones of course when I compare them going to a same Standalone DAC I noticed that Motivo does sound better now dm8 is itself a very good digital streamer and and I do think it's slightly better than Rivo that I mentioned previously it's a bit more Dynamic Punchy and has slightly wider Sound Stage but Motivo is even slightly better than that it stretches that Sound Stage width even further and the tones inside of it appear to be bolder and richer within our tone texture so in a direct comparison DMP A8 appears to be just a bit more analytic and less full and less Rich than Motivo here it's not a huge difference by any means it's actually very very close in many decent Hi-Fi setups you would have difficulty to notice the difference but given that the system is transparent enough and can convey that Motivo does have a small Advantage when it comes to Sonics then moving to the DAC sections and the analog outputs the Gap is basically the same Eversolo here has a pretty good DAC section it's based on the akm chip and it's it's a really good performer there is nothing wrong with it it sounds natural it sounds revealing it also doesn't suffer from some nasty digital kind of sound characteristics it's just a really good sounding DAC but once again like with the digital outputs Motivo offers slight slightly more lifelike slightly Bolder and filled with more harmonic richness with more inner tone texture tones than Eversolo and Eversolo in a direct comparison once again sounds slightly thinner and just slightly more analytical even though in isolation it doesn't sound like that at all simply motiv is slightly better [Music] sounding finally let's talk about the headphone amplifier because Motivo has one integrated too and what I noticed when I connected several of my headphones first of all it doesn't wield some sort of really high power but it's decent enough I tried several headphones some of them are not so sensitive for example Verum 2 and I was always having enough power but regarding the tonal character it's slightly different than the DAC output section because headphone output actually has some pleasant warmth and Baseline heaviness and heftiness added and that's not much it's not creating some base head kind of tonality on this headphone output but you do notice it and I actually quite liked that kind of tonality tuning for headphones like vrm2 or highin for example because they do have that very revealing very neutral kind of linear kind of tonality and a little bit of Base wared makes them quite enjoyable to listen to detail retrieval in absolute terms is good I didn't feel like I missing anything speed and quickness of transient response is also good and just the feeling of the Sound Stage around me the spaciousness around me was not lacking I expected maybe because this is a fairly compact form factor headphone amplifier will have to suffer and that might be an afterthought but I didn't notice anything like that even the Sound Stage and spaciousness was quite decent so I wanted to quickly compare it to several Standalone headphone amplifier to see where it's set and for that I first started with topping L70 and topping L70 appears to be slightly more analytical and focused a bit more on higher frequency detailing but it also does sound drer and a bit more congested compared to motiva internal headphone amplifier and even though L70 did have more power if you need drive if you have really inefficient headphones that headphone amp will perform better that said if your headphones can be driven well with the Motivo internal head amp like basically all of mine could I did prefer motiva sound signature a bit warmth a bit of calmness and just being a bit more laidback but even more spacious than the topping less tense less congested brought win for internal Motivo zamp and then I moved to topping a70 and that's where internal Motivo zamp was stopped because a70 Pro Sounds really authorative in the Baseline but it has more detail retrieval it has more open mid-range and Highs transients are quicker snappier and drive and punch are simply better so to be quick here that amplifier did sound better than what Motivo packs inside but that's a bigger more powerful external headphone amplifier and it's really good one so that puts motiva's internal head amp somewhere in between L70 and a70 pro performance which is for a integrated headphone amplifier in a device that is a fantastic digital platform it's a fantastic DAC and it's a very very good headphone amplifier all in one and considering the level of performance on all of these outputs I think that its price is very competitive and when that software gets polished just a bit more it will be an easy recommendation at this price point and that's all I hope you like the video see you next time [Music]
2024-09-08 02:19
