Aurender

@lalitk Unfortunately no, when I did compare it was in someone else’s system and Taiko was running Roon. At that point the units have the same level of body and natural delivery (which is significant compared to any other streamer / server I’ve ever heard), but the N30SA had better clarity and separation. Maybe XDMS puts the Taiko up a notch, but for a $10K difference, I’m wondering if the SQ improvement from the software alone would justify the price difference.

What I would also say is that while I do have the N30SA, it is hooked up to the T+A SDV 3100 HV Reference Streaming DAC Preamp. I’ve spent a lot of time comparing the two, and it is really close. The N30SA does still beat the SDV’s streamer just ever so slightly with body and detail, but I have to try really hard to tell the difference. I’d like to try hooking up a simple fanless NAS, thinking of getting a QNAP HS-264 to try, putting one of my SSDs and a linear power supply to connect via Ethernet into the SDV and compare it to the N30SA’s local library. If the SDV is close, that really makes it a killer unit as its preamp and DAC sections are also the best I’ve ever heard.

And again, in full transparency I am both an Aurender and T+A dealer, so feel free to take my comments with a grain of salt despite these being my honest convictions compared to all other gear I’ve heard. 

lalik innous servers ajrun an older inferior processor so they are having Roon issues Sense is much less resource intensive.

432EVO uses a much newer and more powerful processor then Innous also unlike Innous we run Roon in its own core on the cpu

it took frederic vanden pool the evos designer five years to develop a totally unique operating system designed to run Roon properly

Fredeic is a master linux programer

so his operating system actually employs three cores of the processor.

One core runs Roon

One core runs machine operations

one core handles music files all run on a fast yet low noise processor.

combine this proprirtary operating sstem with great hardware you can produce a superior sounding Roon server.

Dave and Troy

audio intellect NJ.

US importers 432EVo music servers

@blisshifi

You’re probably right! If I am faced with the decision to pick between Taiko + XDMS with marginal gains over N30SA, I am very likely to keep the $10K savings.

The T+A SDV3100 scenario you shared is what I find most interesting. If you have to try really hard to tell the difference between SDV3100 streaming client and N30SA, then my hats off to T+A. But I know there is little bit more to the story, the T+A interface for Qobuz / Tidal is not very user friendly (you can’t have it all, right). A close friend of mine who owns SDV3100 actually prefers Taiko over SDV3100 internal streaming client.

You gotta love the subjective nature of our hobby :-) I do appreciate your candid feedback, thank you!

@lalitk I would agree the UI for the native T+A streaming platform isn’t as mature as Roon or Conductor, but I would anticipate that knowing T+A hasn’t been a company completely dedicated to designing digital sources like others have. Of all the platforms out there, Roon is my favorite one to use, but in my experience it’s not always the best sounding. The Grimm MU1 and Taiko SGM are two that are truly exceptional with Roon. Pink Faun is up there as well. 

@blisshifi

Pink Faun has developed fully customized OS called Euphony Stylus. The end users can switch between Roon and Stylus depending on one’s preferences in playback quality and UI experience. You can also add Merging Technologies +player to above list. The implementation of ROON in their +player is just as remarkable not to mention the adoption of RAVENNA which allows streaming upto DSD256 over Ethernet.