Pink Faun 2.16 Ultra Streamer Review (2024)

2.16 ultra

The 2.16 ultra follows Pink Faun's relentless vision, commitment, and dedication to continuous research and the development of handcrafted products based on their philosophy: No sound, just music.

In search of the ultimate music server, Groen and his team embarked on an ambitious 15-month research and development project, the result of which is the stirring 2.16 ultra music server.

Pink Faun's primary goal with this project was to provide the music lover with an immersive, user-friendly music experience that turns the common perception of what is possible with a digital playback source.

The Pink Faun 2.16 ultra supports locally stored music files and streaming content from high-quality sources such as Qobuz and Tidal.

The 2.16 ultra digital playback system is the result of years of digital and analog experience combined with Pink Faun's breakthrough OCXO clock technology. Pink Faun has teamed up with the best companies in the world to create a music server that delivers the best music experience.

The flexible and modular architecture system guarantees a long-term investment that can easily adapt and grow with any changes in the evolution of audio systems.

The inner and outer chassis are an integral part of the 2.16 ultra's design. The CNC-machined chassis features shielded compartments, thermal management solutions, and vibration control. Using a dedicated internal and external chassis for the 2.16 ultra allows mounting all parts of the power supply, passive cooling system, and hardware in optimal locations without changing the external design. A high-performance chassis allowed Pink Faun to make radical choices for ultimate changes. It is the backbone of the Pink Faun 2.16 ultra.

Each unit is completely hand-built. From SMD soldering to assembly

A unique part of the chassis design is the motherboard's honeycomb-shaped platter. This platter is extremely rigid and this design handles various vibrations and eliminates resonant frequencies without damping them excessively to preserve and maintain energy.

All possible vibrations are almost completely reduced by a special platter inside the 2.16 ultra, on which all critical components are mounted.

All internal wiring is hand-built with Pink Faun propriety cable

The internal housing has a special shielding compartment for the Pink Faun Ultra OCXO clock. The clock generator and clock output circuitry are fully shielded and decoupled from the 2.16 ultra's internal housing.

The power supply is designed using Pink Faun's unique star power and star grounding principle called "Star-Light". The carefully refined Star-Light design has been taken to a new level of performance with the new 2.16 ultra.

More than 30 years of power supply design and engineering experience are combined in a fully linear, passively cooled ULN-FT (ultra-low noise, fast transient) ATX power supply. By using smaller, separated and regulated power supplies, current loops are now minimal and especially local, which also reduces the propagation of EMC inside the 2.16 ultra.

Extreme care has been taken to ensure that these power supplies are all grounded together in a single star. In addition, the running voltage is drawn from the star outputs of the power supply, resulting in minimal interference and minimal HF noise and harmonics.

Inside the 2.16 ultra deals with low voltages and high current spikes. To keep the power supply stable, ripple-free, and low-noise, the 2.16 ultra uses three specially wound transformers.

Fast Schottky diodes, a large capacitor bank with over 800,000uF of low ESR capacitors, and nanocrystalline chokes provide a very stable but clean battery-like current input for the low noise regulator circuits.

In addition, 2.16 ultra also uses a 5,000,000uF supercapacitor supply that gives the Pink Faun Ultra OCXO clock module excellent performance ratings.

Pink Faun Ultra OCXO Clock

An inseparable and fundamental part of Pink Faun 2.16 ultra is the Ultra OCXO Propriety Clock with extremely low phase noise, resulting in low jitter.

Pink Faun Ultra OCXO Clock is specifically designed for use in high-end audio and music servers. OCXOs are available in a variety of audio frequencies and can also be used to upgrade standard oscillators on motherboards. Common frequencies on motherboards are 24 and 25 MHz oscillators. Typically, OCXOs with these frequencies have significantly higher phase noise (compared to 10M XOs) simply because of their higher frequency.

Not so with Pink Faun Ultra OCXO Clock: the typical phase noise of the Pink Faun Ultra OCXO Clock is < -130 dB at 10 Hz offset from the carrier (i.e. 24 or 25 MHz). Each Pink Faun Ultra OCXO has a square wave output, making it very suitable for direct connection without the need for a multiplier circuit to achieve the correct frequency (which also increases the phase noise).

Faithful reproduction of high-resolution audio sources requires accurate digital signal processing and analog audio output with little degradation of the audio source in the digital audio device. This conversion accuracy depends on the noise characteristics (i.e., the frequency components outside the target frequency) of the clock frequency of the audio device used.

The clock frequency spectrum for a circuit without noise has the shape of a straight line (Figure 1, left). However, real spectra are modulated by noise and are characterized by an additional frequency component nearby (Figure 2, right), known as phase noise. The phase noise of a clock frequency affects the DAC and makes the time interval irregular. This phenomenon is called a jitter (see the figure below).

In digital audio devices, the phase noise of the clock affects the digital signal through a jitter, hindering faithful audio reproduction. To improve sound reproduction, a crystal oscillator with excellent phase noise characteristics (i.e., low jitter) is required. At Pink Faun, they manufacture their OCXO clocks. They are equipped with superior phase noise characteristics to ensure optimal sound reproduction.

Phase noise is expressed as the level of frequency components measured outside the original frequency of a crystal oscillator, and is based on the component level of the original frequency. The offset frequency is the deviation from the initial frequency and is usually measured in the range of 1 Hz - 1 MHz.

Frequency stability (the property that the frequency does not change over time) is generally considered an important property of crystal oscillators. However, for audio devices, short-term stability is required rather than long-term stability. With this in mind, XOs that have a frequency stability of about ±30 - ±100 ppm are commonly used as the main clock. High-end audio systems require an OCXO with excellent short-term stability close to the carrier for higher sound quality.

Pink Faun's dedicated and meticulous production of high-fidelity components allows Pink Faun to reduce noise as much as possible, dramatically improving music quality and pushing the boundaries of the music experience.

In developing the Ultra OCXO clock, Pink Faun focused on reducing jitter. Using high Q quartz material for the Ultra Low Noise OCXO and a special circuit to reduce noise in the oscillator.

These are two methods of looking at the same parameter: Phase noise looks at the signal spectrum, i.e. in the frequency domain, while phase jitter looks at the variations in the phase of the signal. The phase noise characterizes the shape of the frequency spectrum of the oscillator.

The term phase noise is used to describe the noise spectrum resulting from the phase jitter caused by random phase fluctuations of the signal. The noise arises from general noise in the circuit that manifests itself as phase jitter.

Since phase and frequency are inextricably linked, this can also be thought of as random frequency fluctuations. In high-end audio, phase noise is incredibly important because phase noise degrades signal quality, increasing the error rate of the communication link.

In their ongoing quest for the ultimate music server, Pink Faun has left no stone unturned. The combination of state-of-the-art computer hardware, their modular digital interfaces, proprietary ULTRA OCXO clock technology, and powerful linear ATX power supplies needed only one final piece of the puzzle to be complete. The software.

Pink Faun strongly believes in the synergy between hardware and software, and that it can make the difference between the success or failure of a system.

For this reason, a dedicated audio operating system of the highest quality was chosen to optimize the music data flow and complement the 2.16 Ultra Music Server.

This is where Euphony Audio came in with a fully customized version of Euphony Stylus OS designed for this hardware platform to complement its sophisticated and powerful hardware counterpart.

The exceptional harmony of hardware and software transforms the 2.16 Ultra into a next-generation digital audio source that can stream from Tidal, Qobuz, play files from NAS or internal storage, and more.

Pink Faun is also an original Roon Core Server Partner and the 2.16 Ultra has been designed and optimized to provide the complete Roon experience of music playback. Switching between Roon and Stylus is quite simple.

As with most high-end music servers, I found that the native playback software offered higher sound quality, but each user should find that out for themselves. The Stylus GUI might not be as appealing as other software, but it is easy to use, minimalistic and stylish, and under constant development and refinement. So a lot more to be expected in the future.

The CPU in the 2.16 ultra runs at an optimized clock speed while each core of the CPU is assigned to a specific task.

Assigning specific cores improves the overall efficiency of the system. This is because, in a multi-core CPU environment, all individual CPUs have a separate cache for each CPU core, which only that particular CPU can access.

Based on Pink Faun's internal listening sessions, they have assigned several individual parts of the operating system to their own exclusive set of CPU cores. This allows Pink Faun to keep background tasks to an absolute minimum.

Any additional CPU usage within the 2.16 Ultra will compromise the final musicality. With this approach, the CPU's minimalist yet agile custom operating system achieves little more than 1% load.

2.16 ultra uses a high bandwidth ATX motherboard with optimized BIOS settings, 24 threads CPU with optimized thread allocation, 32GB Industrial ECC DDR4 memory, with the operating system and music player run entirely from RAM. All selected music tracks are cached on RAM before playback.

It is a known fact, that the quality of this connection is as important as the quality of the music server itself.

The universal slots on the back of the 2.16 ultra music server allow seamless integration of a wide variety of PCIe cards.

Pink Faun offers its own USB output (DSD & PCM), a SPDIF (COAX and AES /EBU), and I2S connection modules.

All outputs can be individually clocked with Pink Faun state-of-the-art Ultra OCXO. The modular platform of the in-house-made bridges ensures long-term use of the 2.16 Ultra and easy adaptation to changes in any audio system.

In addition, multi-output bridges are possible to drive more than one DAC or to use optimized outputs for specific files, e.g. an optimized USB connection for DSD playback and at the same time an optimized SPDIF connection for PCM playback.

The bridges were designed with the same philosophy as the 2.16 ultra itself. Think low noise linear regulation with pre and post-choke / PI filtering extremely low noise, precise and low-noise OCXO, and fast and simple electronic circuits with high-quality components.

The unit is designed to be powered 24/7 to bring everything into balance, especially with the Ultra OCXO which requires 2-3 days for optimal stabilization. Like most high-end audio electronics, the 2.16 ultra needs a few hundred hours to "break in". After that time, everything settled down, feels more natural, and the music flows freely.

Pink Faun takes great pride in its quality control. Each unit that is built (by hand) is measured according to a strict testing protocol. After the testing protocol is complete, the 2.16 ultra goes on our test bench for a minimum of two weeks.

After two weeks on the power, the test protocol is run again and compared to the first.

There should be no difference between the values of the first and the second measurement. In this way, the reliability of the components is checked. Before the 2.16 ultra is shipped to the customer, each unit is compared to the Pink Faun reference unit in their listening room.

Most importantly, and something that many manufacturers lack, is Pink Faun's customer service. Anything that needs to be done or checked can be done via remote desktop.

This is part of Pink Faun's commitment to keeping its customers worry-free and happy and includes a remote control button to open a secure SSH tunnel that allows Pink Faun to remotely support, diagnose, and configure your 2.16 Ultra music server.

It was very quickly clear how Pink Faun 2.16 Ultra delves deeper and more profoundly into the mysterious layers and strata of the music.

All too often the digital is misinterpreted and the true meaning and potency of the digital front-end are not valued. Pink Faun 2.16 easily demonstrates how its technology allows it to deliver the zeros and ones with electrifying charm and in the absence of artificiality.

As usual in my reviews, here is a selection of reference tracks/albums that highlight the exceptional qualities of Pink Faun 2.16 ultra and what differentiates this streamer from the rest.

"Papa Was a Rolling Stone" by John Clayton, Christian McBride, and Ray Brown from the album SuperBass 2, released in 2001 released on Telarc, is a great challenge when it comes to timber, tone, clarity, and texture.

With 2.16 ultra, "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" was chiseled with a great sense of three-dimensionality, additional density, better spectral shading, casting a fuller dose of reality, and a greater sense of live atmosphere.

Pink Faun 2.16 ultra propelled "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" with far more palpable sonic richness and vibrancy than I had remotely expected.

The turbulent atmosphere held up delightfully well throughout the song, keeping the tempo and thunderous pace intact. Pink Faun 2.16 channeled the charm of the high spirit with a true-to-life tempo and ease!

With Magnar Åm: Vere Meininga (concerto for harp and strings) - Carl Høgset - Ellen Bødtker - Magnar Åm Pink Faun 2.16 ultra as with Munch/Berlioz, showed how ably it can abide with the diversity of music, overlaying the complexity and variety with its higher than usual grade, positive differentia.

The eerie backdrop of Sonar opens up a mysterious Nordic sphere of sound, where forces beyond the ordinary encircle the senses and take the listener on a very different voyage.

Magnar Åm was not presented as merely a surface of illusion, as is strangely the case with even some more expensive front-ends.

With Pink Faun 2.16 ultra, the Magnar Åm was more than a phantom play, not a figment of the imagination. 2.16 ultra operates outside the shadows with a full spectral radiance that can ignite an eerie, ghastly beautiful feeling throughout the album, with electrifying, enchanting goosebumps causing the hair-raising sweep. An undeniable sheer emotional impact! Not exactly an easy task to perform.

The Joe Policastro Trio interpretation of the timeless "Drive" by The Cars is part of many well-known classics covered on Pops! album.

"Drive" features Joe Policastro on double bass, guitarist Dave Miller and Mikel Avery's rousing, yet gently sweeping drumming.

I am not going to focus on the sense of space, and the separation of the instruments, but on the drive, which is extremely difficult to get right with "Drive".

Nailing the mood of a small club/studio where everything is cast directly and apparently is no easy task. Yet, the Pink Faun 2.16 ultra music server hit the home run, due to its mesmerizing and exhilarating rendition.

The 2.16 ultra thoroughly empowered sonic space where everything came together, proving that a digital front end can be exultant without being bombastic.

The Pink Faun streamer transcended the finitude of delays and decays, where tails are cut off too soon, and encapsulated the formation of newfound sonic enticements that achieved a higher emotional form. Impressive!

Pink Faun 2.16 ultra escapes the frantic pace that a surprising number of streamers can display regardless of price. It also avoids musical coloring and tempo moderation.

Quite the opposite. 2.16 ultra impresses with an ardent conduit that averts the orchestra from manifesting like a center of conflict and collision.

In keeping with a tune and the rhythm, 2.16 ultra reproduced the complexity and detail of a large orchestra and the right measure, so it did not sound like a small simulacrum, as can too often be experienced with streamers/music servers below and above the Pink Faun 2.16 price point.

Janis Ian's album Revenge is magnificently recorded, much like her seventh Grammy-nominated album Breaking Silence.

Pink Faun 2.16 ultra streamer unleashes "Ready For The War" with bewitching zeal, ultra-eloquent totality, and the track's dynamic currents hitting the sweet spot. No fluff, no fillers, no artificial overhang of overlapping notes, and no dispersed reverberations.

The 2.16 streamer fetched an intelligible instrument reproduction. Low notes, which are extremely difficult to get right were also presented with a remarkable foundation. In addition, Pink Faun achieved impressive dynamism and the ability to carry the raw capacity of the music with full poundage.

Unless everything is set up properly and all digital paraphernalia is in sync, Ian's voice can sound siphoned, scattered, lost in space, and overlaid by other instruments. Not with 2.16 ultra.

Ian's voice was lifted above the speakers and had the right size, weight, and presence. Thanks to the Pink Faun streamer resolution, "Ready For The War" oozed energy, topped with an unexpectedly vigorous emotional intensity.

The art of noticing was never missing from Pink Faun 2.16 ultra replay of any kind of music, at any time. It plowed through genres and time signatures with metronomic, yet realistic precision, feathery ease, and thunderous force when necessary.

After a few months, my first thought is still present and that was also my first answer to Groen when he asked me what struck me most during the first encounter with 2.6 ultra.

Unlike many, if not most, modern digital front ends that opt only for transparency, speed, and detail, 2.16 ultra operates in the emotive realm. Not that Pink Faun lacks any of those before-mentioned audiophile qualities. They are simply not in the foreground, not an obtrusive ear-catcher, but part of a harmonious whole.

Organic nature is the first and most important characteristic that impressed me from the very first encounter with the Pink Faun 2.16 ultra streamer. I never thought I would associate this word so closely with a music server, but here it is.

The Pink Faun 2.16 ultra is capable of not only serving the emotions but also clearly conveying the message of the music, which can ignite the emotional connection and trigger the inner sensors directly related to conveying the original temper of the music. This is a rare thing closely related to the Ultra OCXO clock system developed by Pink Faun, among other things.

The rosiny sound of the music connected with Ultra OCXO's extremely low phase noise/ jitter is not only intoxicatingly inviting. It also allows a greater gusto without sacrificing metronomic precision.

Our ear/brain system is very sensitive to timing and phase, which when done right, lets ones and zeros transmit and enable emotional interaction. Something that was in the past more or less only possible in the analog domain.

In this context, I believe that the usual clash of the titans between analog and digital is also moving into a different stratosphere, dealing more with the symbiotic properties, than the differences of this puzzling juxtaposition.

Over the years I have had the luxury of listening to 1:1 master copies of live recorded or direct recorded studio material in both state-of-the-art formats. What always amazed me was the ultimate concurrence of music played back over after being recorded via two separate feeds.

The puzzling thing is why this is (was) almost impossible outside the studio. Do note, that some of these studios have sophisticated digital equipment with individual digital clocks costing 80k+, along with an utterly optimized digital chain. On top of it, there's a whole art how to capture everything that makes the music potent.

I believe this high-end audio conundrum has been slowly unraveling over the past decade with the rapid development of digital playback. Especially in conjunction with the various digital types of transport and nonetheless DACs. With the evolution of DACs, some brands have started to look at the separate devices that feed the zeros and ones into the DACs. And the changes that started to appear were anything but minor.

There is little doubt that the 2.16 ultra, like all Pink Faun steamers/music servers, was designed from the ground up as a contemporary digital transport to provide bit-perfect playback. But in the highly competitive market of high-end music servers, that's simply not enough.

While the 2.16 ultra offers a more transparent window into the music universe with better clarity and details it is not limiting tactility and organicity, which is often the case with even more expensive digital front ends.

This puts Pink Faun 2.16 ultra in a unique spot among upper echelon music servers.

The Pink Faun 2.16 ultra streamer offers a unique technicolor and plasma quality ( TV ) that is not compromised by overexposure. With the expansion of the resolution of LED and other technologies, our sensors also have to contend with photosensitive fatigue, which can amplify the artificial light stimulus, which after a while becomes a (d)effect that can extend to different unwanted phenomena like epilepsy.

Our eye has a resolution of almost 600 megapixels. Even with 8k, we are approximately down to 33 megapixels. This tells, that there is still a lot to expand, but also that even at this point the progress in resolution is not everything. We still didn't reach the tech full resolution of the human eye and already have to deal with many distractions and deflections, the same is true for audio.

In the aural domain, the ear has a virtual dynamic range of almost 20 bits.

According to the Nyquist theorem, when recording digital music, the sampling rate must be at least twice the highest expected signal frequency. Therefore, the Redbook was set to 44.1 kHz to accurately reproduce frequencies up to 22 kHz, which is considered as the limit of human hearing is generally 20+ kHz.

As with visuals, it's not an end but an ongoing quest for equilibrium.

In audio, we are theoretically within the audible range with Redbook, but as has been ascertained in recent years, many of the inner workings of digital technology are still unknown or only partially understood, including the higher sample rate and bit depth.

Gradually the high-end audio industry is picking up on this phenomenon, resulting in sonic developments that finally make auditory advances.

As with every progression, the outcomes, especially with digital audio, can sometimes have an unexpected or unintended effect. Not so with the Pink Faun flagship digital front end.

The complexity of digital is also closely connected with what's happing outside of music servers. That is another quest that everyone has to figure out for themselves, within their given audio set-ups.

Audiophile switches and the rest of the LAN-related accessories can affect digital streaming. The result depends on many factors, but it's worth exploring the possibilities.

Similarly to Pink Faun 2.16x steamer sum up, it goes for 2.16 Ultra. This is a pure, pedigreed audiophile unit that was designed from the start to deliver unconditioned peak performance. The 2.16x streamer's approach of removing everything unnecessary and optimizing at a high level goes beyond the F1 box-stop logic that many streamer brands or DIY projects follow.

Rather, 2.16 ultra focuses on efficiency and top performance so you can run all laps at full speed and power without having to constantly stop, adjust and repair.

Pink Faun is a clear example of how high-end audio servers are meaningful and relevant in achieving digital audio nirvana, especially for those who want an investment in the form of an organic-sounding digital front end.

Groen and his team did not rest on their laurels. Pink Faun 2.16 ultra offers all of the 2.16x qualities but goes further. With highly notable differences and seamless integration of software and hardware, the 2.16 ultra deserves even higher recognition than the 2.16x.

Any basic high-end audio upgrade is expected to deliver a more realistic, lifelike experience with more transparency, more detail, better dynamics, and less fatigue, ensuring longer listening pleasure.

And Pink Faun 2.16 ultra does that in spades. The 2.16 ultra provides more oomph and an instant organic connection to the music. In lieu of what many modern high-end audio servers try to achieve on multiple fronts, the 2.16 ultra hits the nail on the head where it matters most and with uncommon unison, at the core of the music. The 2.16 makes you more aware of the music and simply allows for more listening pleasure without the digital glare.

With each passing year, things get denser in the high-end audio top tier, but Groen has continued to secure a clear place at the top with its latest flagship, the Pink Faun streamer/music server.

It's easy to see why Pink Faun music servers have already captured the hearts and minds of so many audiophiles and music lovers.

The 2.16 ultra streamer boldly continues Pink Faun's progressive and daring path, and the 2.16 ultra streamer undoubtedly deserves to be recognized and honored with the 2022 Mono & Stereo Editors Choice Award.

Pink Faun 2.16 Ultra is one of those rare high-end audio components that can be easily and almost instantly integrated into an existing high-end audio system. But that's not all. Perhaps an even more enticing feature is the 2.16 Ultra's unique, vibrant crux, which makes it an epicenter, a strong audio foundation with which to begin rebuilding or assembling a complete high-end audio system from the scratch.

And I do not think I can offer a greater compliment, especially for the digital front end.⧉

• Review model. €24.400 ex VAT ex shipping. Prices can vary depending on shipping/duties/taxes/exchange rates in different areas of the world.

• Custom-CNC milled aluminum internal frame.
• Honeycomb vibration management.
• Custom CNC chassis design.
• Passively cooled linear ATX supply.
• Passively cooled CPU.
• Three Low-B, internal- and external shielded custom power transformers, placed in a 10mm aluminum frame to avoid interference with the rest of the streamer.
• Dedicated power transformers for different voltages, specified during order.
• Separate linear supply for the processor, motherboard, SSD’s, OCXO's and Digital output.
• Schottky rectifier diodes, crystalline core choke Pi-filters, ultra-low noise regulator design, fast transient design.
• Power supply design includes Low-ESR Nichicon capacitors and Supercapacitors
• Star-grounding design.
• 5.000.000 uF Supercapacitor powered ULTRA OCXO board.
• Ultra-low noise powered Pink Faun ULTRA OCXO board for the system clock / fully shielded / vibration dampers.
• New designed ULTRA OCXO output stage.
• Multi ULTRA low noise, fast transient regulated output stage ULTRA OCXO board.
• Full size high bandwidth ATX motherboard with optimized BIOS settings.
• 24 thread CPU with optimized thread allocation.
• 32 GB Industrial ECC DDR4 memory.
• Operating system and music player are running completely from RAM.
• All selected music is buffered in RAM before playback.
• 1TB storage, which can be expanded to a maximum of 22TB.
• Best in class Euphony Pink Faun Edition operating system highly optimized for our hardware.
• Stylus Pink Faun edition music player included.
• Roon pre-installed (account needed).
• Remote Control button to open a secure SSH tunnel which will enable Pink Faun to support/diagnose/configure remotely your 2.16 Ultra music server.

• Dimensions (w)448 x (d)421 x (h)153 mm.
• Weight 30 KG.

Color

Voltage Vac

Storage

Bridges

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