Times flies so fast! The Volumio Team can’t believe that a little more than a year ago we introduced you to Volumio Primo, the complete Audiophile Music player and Streamer designed and manufactured by our team and partners. The Primo is, in our intentions, the complete package for the audio lover, providing elegance, simplicity and high-quality, both on the outside and inside.
All photos courtesy of Lorenzo Chiccoli, follow him on Instagram
When we launched Primo, even though every feature was carefully thought-out, this was to us more of an experiment than anything else. Our goal was to understand if there was an interest for Volumio branded products. You can then imagine our surprise when we saw Primo’s first batch of 20 units go sold-out in less than 20 hours. Not even in our wildest dreams, we could have imagined that.
And our surprise kept on growing in the following months when we could not get the pace of incoming orders (you might have noticed, that Primo has been regularly unavailable in the first months… luckily we now know how to plan production a little bit better…). Our first year of Primo has been literally a rollercoaster of emotions: the joy of seeing it so appreciated by customers and the struggle to learn how to effectively distribute a product worldwide (keeping customer support and satisfaction as high as we could).
There was so much to learn: from logistics management to customs and duties calculations, production planning, certifications, packaging design, supply-chain, distribution agreements. Luckily, in the process, we met and worked with several great partners from production, to logistics, retail distribution and legal advice that helped us achieve what we wanted. So, it’s really fair to say that Primo would not have been possible without the help of our partners.
And most important, Primo’s biggest success is the satisfaction of our customers. So we want to say thanks to everyone that believed in us getting, reviewing, trying and listening to Primo.
But enough talking from us. We think that the best way of celebrating Primo’s first anniversary is by letting who tried it speak for it: we feel so proud about the reviews and comments, from the minimalist compact box design to the functionality in both hardware and software, the Primo has been reviewed as an all-in-one solution for the audiophile.
We received high praises from big members of the HiFi community, from John Darko saying that Volumio Primo is a “very good sound streamer both digitally and analog-wise and a nicely made product”, to Hans Beekhuysen telling the “Primo offers very good sound quality and build quality for the money.”
AVGuide.ch expressed that “The Volumio Primo is an excellent streaming/player software in a modest device with outstanding sound characteristics and a neat GUI with many possibilities”. Primo has been reviewed as being an easy-to-use device, any music lover can get and use their Primo. According to Digiphonix, Volumio Primo is “an exciting and pleasant product, especially for a first time user of a networked streamer device, someone seeking a good music source that can grow with their audio gear acquisitions over time and also, for the avid listener that already makes use of lossless music files and streaming.”
The Volumio Primo was created to give three main fundamental properties every audiophile should enjoy: the sound quality, the practicality and the wide range of features, all by using best audio hardware combination made of the ASUS Tinker board S and the ESS ES9028Q2M DAC.
To this regard, AV Forums has described the Volumio Primo as “a seriously impressive product that comes enthusiastically recommended.” As well as HiFi Choice saying that “When you consider the flexibility and outstanding sonic performance on offer, the Volumio Primo looks like a very attractive option at the price.”
It’s called Primo not only because of the Italian meaning “first“, being the first of its kind created under Volumio qualifications, but also because Primo means “of top quality or importance”. Volumio’s purpose is to give our community that, the uppermost experience.
We are kindly grateful to you, because with your help, Volumio Primo came to life and now, according to all the reviews, it is one of the top HiFi music player streamers in the market. Needless to say, this gave us the strong motivation to keep on bringing new products to life (the next of which will be Motivo… ). We have many new products in the works and we are uttermost excited for the future ahead of us.
So, once again: thanks to everyone who made it possible. Thanks to anyone who’s listening to music with Primo. Thanks to anyone who talked about it. Thanks to anyone who believed in it. Thanks to anyone who waited impatiently for it.
And… thanks to anyone who hasn’t got it yet but will do it now.
Happy birthday Primo!