I’m delighted to have stumbled across this forum. I have had the Neo Stream for several weeks. In general, it’s been great. I upgraded from zen stream. In terms of constructive feedback, I’d say one of the biggest issues at the start is the documentation. The manuals label features but don’t tell us how to use them. There’s almost no info on the settings. I’ve figured out most but I still have no idea what turning on or off the link (paper clip) icon does. There is no discussion about which outputs are optimal. For example, should I run usb or aes to my external DAC? Do I have to buy an AES cable to find out? Also, I had no idea how to bypass the internal dac. I looked for a long while on the internet. Nothing. How could I know if I was playing the output of the DAC into my DAC? I assume using the usb out instead of the RCAs bypasses the dac. It’s so simple to document that. I stumbled upon beautiful YouTube videos. Please refer to those in the instructions. Also, please call out iFi-local in the instructions and why you’d use it. I had to stumble upon that. Also, tell me why I would enable the Wi-Fi. I use the optibox input. But I set up Wi-Fi in case it was needed. Having read through this forum, I gather enabling Wi-Fi was a bad choice. Also, for the ignorant like me, tell people the optibox needs power. I thought the small slot was for a different optical cable and of course the unit didn’t work at all. I opened a ticket and then stumbled across the ifi videos on YouTube. Functionally, I have two issues. the first is that the unit sometimes forgets which output to use between power cycles. I’m on the latest firmware and Saved the output in iFi-local. Automatically recognizing my dac was a bit magical btw. Second, Qobuz sounds better on my system than Tidal, Amazon, or Apple. I’ve read that many have the same experience. I just can’t understand why iFi would not choose to play this major (some would say the best) streaming service natively. I use the paid version of mConnect and it’s passable at best. Very crappy in many respects. I know you use Roon but I don’t want yet another subscription. I see the NS accepts Airplay 2. Does that mean I can use my apple iPad to connect to the NS and use the Qobuz app on my iPad? I assume the UI software has no impact on the sound quality. How do I switch to airplay 2? Again, the documentation is insufficient. With the docs, you have to tell us how to USE the features, not just that they’re in the box. So that these comments are not misunderstood, I‘m really enjoying the NS. Documentation would have avoided initial frustration. Even though I still don’t understand a few things, I’m enjoying the NS a lot.
