Volumio Rivo Plus music streamer Review

Introduction

Volumio looks to be establishing a nice little niche for itself. The Italian brand has developed a number of compact solutions to your digital audio needs, created an OS that’s useful for newbies and experts alike, and has even made its software free to those who want to Raspberry Pi their way to audio nirvana. And so far, it all seems to be going swimmingly.

You won’t be staggered to learn that this Rivo Plus is a refinement of and an upgrade on the Rivo music streaming transport Ed Selley reviewed on this website towards the end of last year. He called it “a very clever product indeed” – so what is the ‘Plus’ treatment, and how has Volumio justified the increase in the asking price?

Design

• 50 x 270 x 150mm (HWD)
• 2.25kg
• Metal chassis

Like all Volumio products, the Rivo Plus is of very handy dimensions. At just 50 x 270 x 150mm (HWD) it’s not much more than half as wide as a regular piece of audio equipment, and given that it has no remote control you don’t even need to have line of sight.

So it can be positioned pretty much anywhere you like, as long as it has access to mains power and is close enough to the rest of your system to be wired to it.

Not only is there no remote control, the physical controls begin and end with the on/off button that’s front and centre on the otherwise-featureless fascia. Everything that happens with the Rivo Plus happens via the Volumio app that’s free for iOS and Android. So it’s just as well that the app itself proves to be stable and simple to navigate, as well as incorporating a very great deal of functionality.

Of particular note are the multi-room facility (available in conjunction with other Volumio ‘stations’ in your home) and the AI-powered ‘supersearch’ function that seeks to optimise your music discovery based on your listening habits. Volumio’s software has become established as a very credible point of difference, and the control app makes it easy to exploit it.

Rather than being in any way bad or even substandard, the quality of build and finish that’s on offer here is just, well, rather strange. The joints in the folded metal casework are obvious and relatively large, which makes the Rivo Plus seem a bit like some screws might need tightening.

And the fascia panel itself isn’t flush to the casework – position yourself correctly and you can look right through your Rivo Plus. The net result is a product that doesn’t so much look modular as a bit slapdash. It follows that its perceived value isn’t as high as its actual asking price.

Specification

• Numerous wireless and wired connectivity options
• Extremely high resolutions catered for
• Plug-in options provide wider compatibility

Anyone who’s familiar with the Volumio Rivo might, at a glance, assume the feature-set is identical. It’s not, although it’s very similar – the differences, though, are fairly significant.

Like its more affordable sibling, the Rivo Plus uses dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0 for wireless connectivity. It’s the physical outputs that have taken a step or two forwards.

The major upgrades are a dedicated ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) to provide cleaner output from the S/PDIF and AES-EBU outputs than having the CPU take care of the task can provide, and upgraded MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems) clocks to power the ASIC and provide a low-jitter timing reference. There’s a 12V trigger to power attached components on or off, and I²S-over-HDMI connectivity for use with appropriate digital-to-analogue converters. 

Otherwise it’s Rivo business as usual – which is a good thing. There are a couple of USB-A slots for attaching stuff like high-speed solid state or CD drives, and a USB DAC output (32bit/768kHz and DSD256) for connection to a DAC. An Ethernet socket offers rock-solid network connectivity.

There’s a microSD card slot to allow expansion of the Volumio’s memory and to store digital audio files locally. There’s a regular HDMI output for connection to a monitor, if you’d like to display the user interface that way, and the I²S/DSD-over-HDMI socket (32-bit/768kHz and DSD256) – its pinout is configurable to match that of the DAC it’s connected to.

The AES-EBU and S/DIF sockets (both 24-bit/192kHz and DSD64) complete the audio outputs, leaving just the 12V trigger socket and an input for mains power.

Spotify and Tidal subscribers have the ‘Connect’ versions of their services available. The Rivo Plus is compatible with file formats including AAC, ALAC, DSD, FLAC, MP3, Vorbis and WAV. It supports Qobuz, and Airplay via Shairport Sync. Plug-ins for Fusion DSP, Mixcloud, Pandora, Radio Paradise, SoundCloud, Squeezelite and YouTube, among others, are available.

And the Rivo Plus can be a Roon endpoint via Roon software (as long as you’re happy to cover Roon’s subscription costs, that is).

So yes, for a product that’s just a digital audio transport and has no decoding onboard, it’s certainly pretty adaptable and well-specified.

Performance

• Effective and efficient
• Maintains your system’s sonic balance

You know what your audio system sounds like, right? Well, the good news here – and it is good news – is that the Volumio Rivo Plus doesn’t stick its oar in where that sound is concerned in any discernible way.

All it does (and all is to understate things somewhat, I appreciate) is to bring high-quality, stable and reliable streaming smarts to those systems that currently don’t have it. Or, in the case of those systems with less-than-impressive streaming capabilities, offer a worthwhile improvement.

No matter where you access your digital audio content from – and during this test I mostly used 24-bit/192kHz PCM and DSD64 stored on a microSD card and variously sized stuff via Tidal Connect – the Rivo Plus passes it on to your decoding without any audible degradation.

In fact, when doing a like-for-like comparison using a 24bit/96kHz FLAC file of Frogs by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, the spaciousness and three-dimensionality of the presentation is just a little more apparent when it’s coming from the Volumio.

With the Rivo Plus connected via its S/PDIF output  to a Naim Uniti Star (which is then decoding and amplifying) or connected to an iFi iDSD Diablo 2 DAC via its USB-A output (with the iFi then decoding before sending an analogue signal to the Naim), the results are a mite more satisfying than using the Naim to access the tune via Tidal Connect. And they’re demonstrably better than connecting an Apple MacBook Pro (with Colibri software running) to the iFi and listening that way.

So while the Rivo Plus is undeniably a niche product, it’s an effective one. If your amplifier has a DAC but no streaming platform, here’s a very capable front end just waiting to be plugged in.

Should you buy it?