There are some moments in life that remain indelibly in our hearts and souls. One of those moments happened a couple of weeks back, for me and the Volumio Team. We were setting up our booth in Munich High-End trade show (yes, we had a booth for the first time in Volumio history) and after a couple of hours, we received the first production-like prototypes of Volumio Motivo.
Then, I carefully unwrapped the prototypes from their protective package. I had, for the first time, Motivo shining in my hands.
Boy, this was a moment. A defining one. And after one year of hard work, passionate commitment and countless challenges, it was finally real.
It was so beautiful, so well proportioned, so finely crafted. Even its weight was just perfect.
Yes, I had a moment of magic in this rainy German afternoon.
This is what I saw.
We choose Munich High-End for the world premiere of Volumio Motivo because it was the perfect place for such a Groundbreaking product. We wanted to share our vision with all the Industry and make a bold and refreshing statement: this is our vision for the next generation Audiophile Streamers.
And then… The show opened.
And all the visitors, friends, partners, curious, press that saw the Motivo had the same shine in their eyes as I had the very first moment I saw it. I must admit, I never thought, even in my wildest dreams that one day we would have showcased such an iconic piece of equipment.
But, should you think that the Motivo is only an evocative design with lots of output options and a touchscreen, you’ll be very wrong. And here starts the boring part.
VOLUMIO MOTIVO: A WORLD’S FIRST TECHNOLOGY
You might have read in our previous post that Motivo is the brainchild of a Joint Venture between world-class industrial design firm Design Narratives and R&D and audio design Company Yottamusic.
Yottamusic has been working for 10 years on their the core-technology which is now in the Motivo: METACLOCK.
This Technology has 3 core principles:
- Do not use a generic SOC (System-on-chip to handle communication with the DAC)
- Use an interface that, other than USB and I2S allows faster data transfer
- Use a dedicated FPGA (a particular kind of processor which is extremely optimized for certain tasks) to handle communication with the DAC. Therefore emancipating the Audio Quality outcome from the OS\CPU combination.
It works this way:
- The audio stream is sent from the CPU via a high-speed BUS (SDIO) to a dedicated FPGA
- Here the stream is reclocked via a double buffer and stored on a high-speed memory
- It’s then sent, at the right moment to the DAC
The results that it brings:
- 104dB THD+N
- 110dB SNR
- Jitter: 200ps Maximum
- Network data correction
This means that with Metaclock technology, Volumio Motivo is able to achieve outstanding sound quality performances without the need of esoteric (and expensive) designs, following our core principle: the best possible sound quality with an unbeatable price\performance ratio.
Integrating Metaclock technology is being probably the biggest challenge Volumio Team has faced so far: since this technology has never been done before, in this way, there is no standard to follow nor any HOWTO nor literature. We are currently working hard to implement the very complex software integration to take the most out of this technology, without compromising on usability.
But, as soon as we were able to make the Motivo sing, all the struggle and the pain immediately was gone: Motivo sounds like I never, never, never heard anything before.
In this moment I understood why we were all doing this. And this is where the name Motivo was born: Motivo means Meaning and Purpose in Italian.
VOLUMIO MOTIVO TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
For those of you craving for technical specifications, here they are:
Balanced and Unbalanced Analog Audio Output up to PCM 32 bit 768 kHz and DSD 1024
USB Audio Output up to PCM 32 bit 768 kHz and DSD512
SPDIF and Toslink Digital Audio Output up to PCM 24 bit 192 kHz
I2S over HDMI Audio Output
8” Onboard OLED Touchscreen
HDMI Video Output
Gigabit Ethernet
Wireless 2.4 and 5 GHz + Bluetooth 4.1
Physical Volume Knob + Turn on\off button
Programmable state LED
THE BEST IS YET TO COME, AND WE WANT YOU TO BE PART OF THIS JOURNEY
We want to say a huge thank you to everyone that stopped to our booth and told us wonders about the Motivo. We want to say a huge thank you to everyone that wrote us (we’re overwhelmed by this reaction) asking more details and availability for the Volumio Motivo (the press already named it “A Gorgeous Audio Streamer“).
We want to say thank you to all our community members, for making us what we are today. We want to say thank you to all our partners who believe in us and what we want to achieve.
We want to say thank you for reminding us once again why we are doing this, and why Motivo is something important for all of us.
Now, the road which will lead to Motivo manufacturing has started, and our goal is to have it on sale starting from September 2019. The Motivo will be positioned as our flagship Integrated Streamer and although it will be priced sensibly higher than Primo it will offer, as always, an unbeatable Quality\Price ratio.
And this is where it gets interesting: as always, we think the best way to deliver what you guys want is to involve you directly in our developments.
So, we want to invite you to join us the final design phase of Volumio Motivo. We want you to be part of this success, and we do strongly believe that your help will make the difference for Volumio Motivo, as it was for everything we’ve done in the past.
By entering your email below, you’ll join a dedicated mailing list where we will ask your opinion about some final decision about features, design choices and product variants. You will be kept closely posted on the development of the project. And as a final thank you, you’ll get priority access to preorders when available.