 Volumia has introduced newly developed hardware products recently. A few weeks ago I reviewed the streaming amp. The Revo Digital Transport is announced and in between is the Primo Streaming DAC that is on review here. Started as a company with a shareware music player for the Raspberry Pi, they soon made versions for other small board computers like the Asus Thinkerboard S. Currently there is also a version for X86 and X64 PCs. In all cases Volumia has its own operating system, so running under Windows is not possible. Stability is always difficult when software is written for unknown hardware like sound cards. Also, SD cards are not really suited as system drives since they are not always reliable enough for an OS. That probably was the reason for Volumia to also make versions for the Thinkerboard since that can start from its internal 16GB eMMC memory that is faster and more reliable. The first incarnation of the Primo used this SMB. The 2023 version not only looks a lot better, it also uses the Kaida Smallboard computer. Let's start with looking at how the new Primo is to be used. The Primo has a built-in digital to analog converter and thus is to be connected to the analog line inputs of an amplifier, like CD or AUX. The amplifier is of course connected to a pair of loudspeakers or alternatively a pair of headphones. The Primo needs to be connected to the internet over your router. That can be over a network cable or Wi-Fi. This way it can play music from internet radio stations and streaming services and can receive metadata and updates. A network connection is also needed since the Primo is controlled entirely over the smartphone tablet or computer. Music on your computer or NAS can be played too this way. You either share the folder holding your music or have a DLNA server program running on the computer or NAS. The latter has my preference and MinimServer is my choice. A free version is available. Music can also be stored on a USB drive, being a thumb drive, hard disk or solid state drive. If an ACD or DVD USB drive can be connected. That way you can even play CDs over the Primo. And you can connect your smartphone or laptop over Bluetooth or AirPlay to play music stored on it. If you connect a monitor or TV to the HDMI output, the volume your user interface is shown. Connect a keyboard and mouse, wireless would be handy, to the Primo and you can control the Primo that way too. To avoid confusion, you can't play the TV sound over the Primo. The Primo has an elegant anodized aluminium housing that measures 270 x 150 x 50 mm and weighs 1.3 kilos, excluding the Woolworth power supply. The front only contains a nice red standby button with an integrated LED that indicates the state. Red is standby, green is starting up and blue is ready to play. There's more to see on the rear, starting off with a USB 2 socket. That's where a CD or DVD drive can be connected or the receiver for a wireless keyboard and mouse. The USB C socket is for service purposes. Then the HDMI to connect a TV or monitor to display the user interface. Above it a card slot for a microSD card holding music. The network cable is plugged in here. The USB 3 socket next to it can be used for fast storage media like SSDs or for connecting an optional external DAC too. The external DAC can also be connected to the SPDIF next to it. The 5V 3A power supply is to be connected here. Then the analog output. Both balanced on the XLR and single ended on RCA are present. If you wonder where the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth antennas are, they are internally behind the front in an area where the radio waves can enter. With the combo, the Primo uses the KADAS VIM3L small board computer. It uses an M-LOG S905D3 system on a chip along with 2GB of LPDDR4 RAM, 16GB of EMMC flash storage and a neural processing unit capable of up to 1.2 trillion operations per second. A Raspberry Pi designed microprocessor handles the screen, the controls and the input selection. Next with the 16MB flash memory. The digital signal is sent to the ESS-9038 Q2M DAC chip that has a clock oscillator mounted close by. The analog output is sent to op-amps for the IV conversion and from there it goes to an op-amp as output buffer per channel for the balanced output and a single op-amp as output buffer for the single ended outputs. Since the Primo has no controls, apart from the standby button, everything is controlled from a smartphone, tablet or computer. That can be done in a browser by typing Primo.local in the address bar or by using the Volumeo app on a tablet or smartphone. I use the app on an iPad Pro. When you start up the Primo for the first time, you are asked a number of questions to set up the Primo. You then end up in this screen. The menu in the left top corner lets you enter your account if you have one and shows you the other volume players in the network, if you have them. I have four Raspberry Pi based players plus the Primo running for this test. If you like, you can couple them or switch to control another player. A nice feature of Volumeo is plugins, although in this version many plugins lack, I think that's due to the limited stability of those plugins and because a number of functions are already integrated in the Primo and Combo versions, like Roon Endpoint, CD Playback and Ripping, Tidal Connect, Tidal, Kubus, Multiroom Playback, Bluetooth Audio Playback, Music and Artist Credit Discovery and Cast to Sonos and Chromecast. These are paid options for the freeware versions. On the system menu, updates can be installed easily. Time to find the music. The button just above the lower right corner brings you to the music sources. The first two, Favorites and Playlists, are empty in my case. Music Library brings you to the music on the drive on USB3, it uses maps. Artist lists artists and in a given artist you see the albums you have. The music and genres work the same way. Internet radio is browsed by country, language, genre and so on. For a full review of Volumeo see my separate video. Links at the top right corner, in the description below this video in Youtube, click more and at the end of this video. I started the listening test in my setup 2, where the amplifier is the Maranskii Pearl Lite. It drives the Acoustic Energy Radiance 1 loudspeakers connected over Kimber 4PR loudspeaker cable. They are supported by the Rail T5 subwoofer that is connected to the loudspeaker terminals on the Maranskii using the cable that came with the sub. The network switch is the Uptone Audio Ether Regen with Uptone Audio UltraCaps 1.2 power supply. The DLA server is a Minim server running on the Synology DS1890 plus NAS with DX517 extender. Roon ROCK is installed on the Intel NOC 10i7 FNH with a 10TB Western Digital USB drive holding the music. The Primo was controlled from an iPad Pro while the equipment is housed in a target rack. In its class the Primo is good sounding using the power supply that came with the unit. The stereo image is good with fair focus while the lows go deep with average texture. Sipulence control is rather good and the resolution in the mids and highs are normal in its class. It sounded if there was more in it though, so I wanted to test it with a few audiophile power supplies. At the same time the amp in my setup 1 had a problem with the volume control so I had to remove the Morance amp and the iPad Pro downstairs to have music in the living. Downstairs the Primo was connected to the Morance again. The PMC FAC12 signature loudspeakers on the ISO acoustic Gaia 2 isolators were connected over AudioQuest Robinhood 0 loudspeaker cable. The Primo was connected to the SOtM SNH 10G network switch over the Neuan filter and cable. Again the Synology NAS and the Intel NUC running on Roon were connected over the network. All is placed in the Creative Trend 3 rack. Using the standard power supply in this setup didn't change my opinion on the sound quality. Changing it for the iFi Audio iPower 2 did clean up the stereo image slightly while the Sipulence improved a bit. Its power supply cost €69 including 21% VAT. The next step was the €329 costing SBooster BOTW P&P ECO 5 volts. That gave a bigger improvement. The sound got warmer without sounding woolly. Resolution improved over the entire band. The stereo image got wider and deeper and more stable while instruments were better in focus. The third power supply I wanted to use is the Ferrum Hipsis Hybrid Power Supply. It had €1,199 including VAT, not directly the obvious choice. But it did improve the sound quality quite a bit further. It kept the warmth of the SBooster but now with clearly more authority. Better rhythm and pace, more texture and lows. It shows the importance of the power supply and it indirectly explains why better stream is cost more money. With the standard wall-wood power supply I scaled the Primo at half way my setup 2, between 2B and 2A. With the iFi power supply it makes a small step up. With the SBooster we get ¾ in setup 2A and with the Ferrum Hipsis power supply we got top setup 2A quality. This kind of streamers are to be judged on both software and hardware. The software is largely a personal taste. Volumio is often criticized for its stability but that's largely due to Raspberry Pi builds. It's difficult for a software house to support all kinds of sound cards, plugins and power supplies. Software on the Primo and the earlier reviewed combo is very stable and versatile. The hardware, with the exception of the standard power supply, is of better quality than can be expected at this price. That opens possibilities, adding a higher grade power supply brings a higher sound quality. The higher the quality, the higher the gain in sound quality. And in price of course. A nice aspect of that is that you can start with the 799 euro Primo and later upgrade the power supply. A strategy, English amplifier manufacturers already do since donkey years. That makes the Primo a very interesting product. That's it for this week. See you next week, Friday at 5pm central european time. If you don't want to miss that, subscribe to this channel or follow me on the social media so you will be informed when new videos are out. Help me reach even more people by giving this video a thumb up or a link to this video on the social media. It's much appreciated. Many thanks to those viewers that support this channel financially, especially in these times. It keeps me independent and lets me improve the channel further. If that makes you feel like supporting my work too, the links are in the comments below this video on Youtube. I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you on the next show or on theHBproject.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music.