Intro
Contents
We have already written a lot about Metrum Acoustics, the dac designs and the designer: Cees Ruijtenberg. It caused some confusion when the name Metrum Acoustics disappeared from the scene and Sonnet Audio saw the light of day. Rest assured: both brands give support. We therefore write with confidence about the new streamer: the Sonnet Audio Hermes
We previously made a video about the Sonnet Audio Hermes. In it we already explained the differences between the Metrum Acoustics Ambre and the Sonnet Audio Hermes. These seem small, but they are not. The Ambre has a completely different power supply, different processing board, different casing and no display.
The Hermes is even more purposefully designed to function as an audio streamer. For details – think oscillators, compute boards, etc – refer to the video. There we’ll walk you through it all.
Not just ROON
What we didn’t really touch on in the video, but what is important, is that the Hermes has a much more readily accessible sd-card slot. And on that sd-card, of course, other software packages can be installed. After all: the core of both the Metrum Ambre and the Sonnet Hermes is simply a Rasberry Pi. And it works on the basis of an ARM processor. And that can process all sorts of things. Also Volumio. Just to name one. Unfortunately, to our knowledge Daphile does not yet have an ARM version. That would be really cool, because that software sounds really good.
Connectivity
As we already know from the Metrum Acoustics Ambre, the Sonnet Hermes also has almost all digital connections: optical, coaxial, AES and I2S. The only thing missing is a BNC output. The I2S output is specifically for the Sonnet / Metrum products. This interface works with an Ethernet cable to transmit the separated signals. Convenient, because everyone has a network cable lying around.
