 Up till now Volumio only offered network player software for small board computers like the Raspberry Pi. Free software for consumers and OEM versions for manufacturers. But now Volumio introduced their first network player hardware, the Primo. I have reviewed the Volumio version 2 software two years ago, you might want to view this video too. I used a Raspberry Pi with HiFiBerry sound card then. Now you can buy a complete package from Volumio that you just have to connect to your network and stereo. Then you use a browser on your computer tablet or smartphone to control the Primo. Most people start networking audio with music on their computer. This computer is connected to the internet over a network cable to the router. The Volumio Primo needs to be connected to the router as well, using a network cable. You could also use a wifi connection instead of a network cable but if in your neighborhood many wifi access points are active, this might be less reliable. The analog outputs of the Primo are then connected to the aux or line input on your stereo and your set. Alternatively you could connect a USB drive holding music or use a network attached storage, NAS for short, containing your music. A NAS basically is a hard disk that has a network connector. If you have active speakers, speakers with built-in amplifiers, you just connect the Primo directly to the speakers over analog RCA cables or a digital SPDIF cable. The Primo is housed in a very sturdy metal housing that measures 171 x 120 x 40 mm. The front only contains the Volumio and Primo logos. The rear contains a gigabit network connector, four USB 2 sockets, a 5 volt DC input for the supplied power brick, an SPDIF output on RCA, a stereo analog output on two RCA's, the wifi antenna and the HDMI output. The latter can be used with a USB connection for a touchscreen but it can also output audio to an AV receiver. The Primo uses an ASUS Tinkerboard S small board computer instead of the more popular Raspberry Pi. The Ethernet connector and the four USB ports are indeed those of the Tinkerboard. Since Volumio has versions of the software for a range of small board computers, I suppose they like the performance of the Tinkerboard S the most. Let's see why. The Tinkerboard S runs a quad core rock chip, RK3288 ARM processor up to 1.8 GHz which is faster than the processor on the Pi. The advantage of the ARM processor is that it can easily speed down if speed is not needed which will of course reduce noise. The faster graphics processor will be of no consequence unless the GPU is used for DSP functions. The 2TB dual channel DDR3 memory is twice of that of the Pi and is faster. The DA converter is also better than the Pi but this is not used in the Primo. The Gigabit Ethernet port has its own controller as where the Pi uses the USB2 controller and thus limiting the speed to 100 megabit. The Wi-Fi BGN radio has an IPEX connector that facilitates the use of an external antenna. Given the metal housing, this keeps away the Wi-Fi signal from the audio electronics. Very nice is the 16 gigabyte EMMC memory that functions as a system drive. This is not only faster than the microSD card in the Pi, it's also more robust. The sound card so to speak differs from the usual headboards used by Raspberry Pi in that it's over twice as big. It uses an isolator, two voltage regulators and for the DAC chip a low dropout voltage regulator. The latter provides a very stable voltage which is important for high quality digital to analog conversion. The conversion is done by the ESS Sabre 9028 QM DAC that does PCM up to 32 bit, 384 kHz and DSD up to DSD 256. The clock oscillator is placed very close by to keep the jitter to a minimum. The DOP-DSD signal is converted to a DSD stream by this programmable logic device. The so called GPIO connector is for making contact with the thinker board that is situated so that it is clear of the audio electronics. When switched on the first time, you use a browser on your computer smartphone or tablet to select the options that fit you the best. Type volumio.local in the address bar and the Primo user interface will pop up. See my review of the Volumio 2 software. After all is set up, Volumio will start to build up a catalogue of your music and when that is done you are set to go. New in the current version of Volumio, version 2.5, is that two levels of extra options are available, Vituoso and Superstar. Both offer Tidal and Cobuse functionality, you still need to subscribe to these streaming services separately and automatic syncing of personal items. See volumio.org for details. Apps for Android and iOS are also available at small money and highly recommendable. The sound quality is remarkably good given the €400 price tag. That's the same price as the Sonos Connect that does only sampling up to 48 kHz. But even at CD quality, 44.1 kHz 16 bit sampling, the Primo by far outperforms to connect on sound quality. It is in the same league as the BlueSound Note 2, although slightly different in character, more rounded and milder. I would easily grind it a place in my setup too, be it on the lower end. Under no conditions the Primo sounds unpleasant but it doesn't have the resolution and tensions of the Mojo, driven by the yellow US bridge with sBooster power supply that normally provides the music in my setup too. And it better at two and a half times the price. Remarkably enough, using an sBooster with the Primo doesn't bring that much more sound quality. It does clean up the highs a bit, but it does that also when adding an iFi iPower supply costing clearly less. This must be the result of proper isolation of power circuits. Sound wise, the Primo is a winner in its class. Up till now I reviewed the Volumio software as being free. And it is the best I know in this class. But it is also basic, far more basic than the Sonos and BlueSound software, while you have to get a subscription for the use of the Tidal and Kubos add-ons. Rune endpoint functionality is being worked on and will be added later on. The software Sonos and BlueSound offer far more streaming services to subscribe to and without extra charge. They also support multi-room. So that makes the Volumio Primo the right choice for people that play their own music from a share or hard disk and like the simplicity of the Volumio software. Not everyone is always happy with a lot of options. And if Volumio does what you need, the Primo offers very good sound quality and build quality for the money. In the meantime the stack of review samples is growing fast with all kinds of his interesting products. 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